Tough times at 'Free Speech High:' School administrators teaching dismalFirst Amendment lessons

Ombudsman

By Paul McMasters
First Amendment Ombudsman
First Amendment Center
pmcmasters@freedomforum.org

12.07.98

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For just a taste of the dismal state of free expression for the nation's young people, consider last week's story of the Phoenix high school student who tried to publish his own newspaper and wound up in the headlines himself.

When junior Ben Powers tried to distribute his independent newspaper at Central High School, school officials confiscated the copies. What's worse, the school's attorney warned the 17-year-old in a letter that he could face legal action.

Only after the story started getting prominent mention in the Phoenix media did school administrators start rethinking their actions. Eventually they decided that they would allow Ben Powers' newspaper on campus.

"Far from condemning this student, we should be impressed," Superintendent Rene X. Diaz said. "After all, he did what I hope we are teaching all of our students, and that is to use critical thinking and creative skills to constructively address issues of concern to them."

Superintendent Diaz is to be commended for those words, but it would have been a lot better if he and his subordinates had developed that insight a little earlier. An ideal time would have been before they confiscated Powers' newspapers the first time, back in October.

The suppression of student free-press rights should be an anomaly, but it is not. In fact, it is all too common. Here are just a few examples of what is going on in the nation's high schools:

• In Tampa, Fla., a high school teacher was barred from discussing the Starr report in her class of 17 seniors and one junior, despite having gotten written permission from all of their parents.
• In Denver, South High Principal Shawn Batterberry supported local police after they accosted two student journalists taking pictures of the aftermath of an altercation at the school, took their film away from them and exposed it.
• In Blue Springs, Mo., students have filed a lawsuit against South High School claiming officials fired their adviser for refusing to censor stories that the officials didn't like.
• At Mosely High School in Florida, a teacher who had advised the award-winning newspaper for eight years was fired because of the "negative" content of the paper.
• In Los Altos High School in California, school officials ordered the removal of a front-page photo in the student newspaper because they thought it might provoke an adverse reaction from students at a rival school.
• In Silver Springs, Nev., high school officials pulled a student literary magazine from store shelves and apologized for a poem that townspeople thought was too critical of the community.
• In New York City, Stuyvesant High School officials shut down an award-winning newspaper after it published articles critical of teachers.

The list goes on and on. Since the Supreme Court's ruling in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier a decade ago, many school officials have felt free to censor the student press — in newspapers, magazines, yearbooks, radio or television broadcasts.

But these attacks on the independence and integrity of the student press is just part of a larger picture in which high school students are only sort-of citizens when it comes to First Amendment rights. The suppression extends to all aspects of student expressive activities.

At the high school in Bellevue, Ohio, the play "Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down" was canceled only a few days before it was to go on because two of the topics it touches on are death and suicide.

In Rhode Island, a Westerly High School student has decided to go to court after he was suspended twice for wearing a White Zombie rock group T-shirt.

In Vernon, Conn., high school students presented a petition asking the town council to rescind a curfew law. Instead, the town council voted to extend the law for another year.

In Van Buren, Mich., when students in advanced-placement biology and ecology classes opened their new textbooks this fall, they found that all the pages headed "abortions and pregnancies" had been ripped out by school officials.

In St. Louis, school officials yanked the 1960s Jefferson Airplane hit "White Rabbit" from the marching band's half-time routine because the song's lyrics referred to drugs, even though the song wasn't being sung.

Last spring, the valedictorian at Musselman High School in West Virginia was told by the principal that he could not make his speech because he was saying that sports was more valued than academics.

In Fall Brook, Calif., a sophomore was punished for remaining seated during the Pledge of Allegiance, despite numerous court rulings that it is the First Amendment right of a student not to be compelled to stand.

And in Marble Hill, Mo., a student was disciplined for insulting teachers and administrators on a personal Web site that he put out on his home computer.

This list, too, could go on and on. As chilling as these examples are, they are just a glimpse of what goes on in the nation's high schools day after day, year after year. Only some of these incidents are reported. Many times they go without notice or without challenge by students too busy or too intimidated to stand up for their own or fellow students' rights.

Literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these incidents happen every school year. A student, a class, or even a whole school is stripped of fundamental freedoms by a school official more concerned with asserting firm control than teaching good citizenship. Schools should prepare students for citizenship and empower them with the rights that must precede responsibility. Instead, school officials, by their actions, are teaching a cramped and distorted understanding of our First Amendment heritage.

Of course, we must appreciate the responsibility that teachers and administrators have for creating and maintaining a safe and orderly learning environment in their schools, as well as understand the difficulties in achieving that goal. We also must insist that it is possible — perhaps not easy, but possible — to create a good learning environment and still respect First Amendment rights and values regarding students.

The lesson all educators must never forget is that their young charges learn as much from example as they do from books and lectures. If there is any doubt about that truism, consider the lessons implicit in just one event, say the cancellation of the school play in Bellevue, Ohio:

The student actors learned that the reward for hard work is hard knocks.

The drama teacher learned that it is better to placate her bosses than to challenge her students.

The school officials learned, once again, that might makes right.

And the students learned, once again, that might trumps rights.

Every time such an incident occurs, it reverberates throughout the school, into the community, and into the future. When what our young people see contradicts what their teachers and textbooks say, the civics lesson learned makes a mockery of the fundamental freedoms that we as a nation celebrate.

Paul McMasters can be contacted at pmcmasters@freedomforum.org.

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