Direct Lines

Rights? Wrong.

Are we really practicing what we preach when it comes to free speech? The numbers say no.

By Sandy Woodcock

Apparently, most high school students don’t know how they feel about basic rights guaranteed to all American citizens by the Constitution. Nearly three-fourths basically shrugged their shoulders when queried about their appreciation of the First Amendment.

That finding comes from a recently released survey by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation of more than 100,000 high school students. Much was made of that response and the fact that only 51 percent of students think that newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories. And rightly so; it is alarming, distressing news.

However, after spending more than half of my adult life in high school–teaching, not attending– I didn’t find student responses surprising. While students may be taught the words of the First Amendment, perhaps even have to memorize them, today’s high schools provide them little, if any, opportunity to practice any of the rights guaranteed therein.

In addition, school newspapers that operate as uncensored, open forums for student voices are the exception, not the rule, in scholastic journalism.

The study also reported that “participation in media-related activities has some impact on appreciation for the First Amendment,” and that participation on the student newspaper had the greatest impact.

 

As an industry, we must do a better job of supporting and mentoring the student media so more students have an opportunity to practice their First Amendment rights.

That news didn’t surprise me either.

As the adviser of an award-winning, student newspaper, I had students who understood and strove to practice their free speech and press rights. They were taught how to understand press law.

I’m not saying they could recite all five of the freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment, but they knew of, appreciated and sometimes fought for at least two of them.

But the fact remains that the results above were from students, mostly young people who haven’t finished their schooling and whose thoughts and opinions likely aren’t yet cast in stone.

You can’t say that about the principals and faculty members also surveyed as part of the Knight study. It is the responses of the nearly 8,000 teachers and more than 500 administrators and principals that I find more than distressing, more than alarming.

It’s scary to know that 40 percent of teachers and 31 percent of principals say Americans don’t have the right to burn the American flag; that half think the government has the right to restrict indecent material on the Internet; and that 20 percent disagree that newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.

If 54 percent of teachers and 57 percent of principals admit to taking the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment “for granted,” that’s scary. So it’s no surprise that 64 percent of students they teach do the same thing.

The students I taught were some of the lucky ones, and not because they had me as their instructor. Rather, it was because they attended high schools that had student newspapers.

All students aren’t so lucky. Another finding says that 21 percent of schools offer no student media. Forty percent of high schools have eliminated student papers in the last five years despite the partnership grant programs of the NAA Foundation and Knight Foundation.

School systems must do a better job of teaching students about the First Amendment. That can’t be accomplished solely by additions to curriculum or by school media–not when student media struggle in a school climate in which only 25 percent of principals and 39 percent of teachers believe that high school students should be allowed to report controversial issues without approval of school authorities.

If there is one thing I’m passionate about, it’s the merits and value of student media. I know that students in media classes learn life skills–thinking critically, taking personal responsibility, tolerating opposing opinions. They learn to appreciate and understand the First Amendment.

As an industry, we must do a better job of supporting and mentoring the student media so more students have an opportunity to practice their First Amendment rights. As a society, we need to urge schools to teach and provide opportunities to practice First Amendment rights.

One way is to agree to partner with a school to begin or restart the student newspaper. Another is to reach out to schools in your readership area and see what you can do to help.

Let’s make student learning about the First Amendment a priority, a very high priority.

Sandy Woodcock, director, NAA Foundation, can be reached at (703) 902-1732 or woods@naa.org.

 

Published Apr 25, 2005