Posted on 02/20/2005 6:10:28 PM PST by Ender Wiggin
Making his way through Framingham High School's construction zone, Dan Devlen heads from the old, dark Flyer News television studio to its future: a new, more expansive headquarters in another school wing.
The school's administrative media director said the new location will give the television production and live morning news program more breathing room, with a new studio, a classroom and office space.
"I like to say that we've been working in the Millennium Falcon of Han Solo, and now we're moving into the Enterprise," Devlen said, describing the move to larger digs. "All brand new and nice, and I'm excited about it."
The Flyer News' move provides not only a boost for the program, but suggests the school is willing to devote money and effort to giving students a greater voice.
Apparently, other high schools aren't giving free expression quite as much thought, according to a study commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The organizers of the two-year, national study, "The Future of the First Amendment," suggests American high schools are falling down on the job of teaching students about their rights.
The study of more than 100,000 high school students found that many teenagers had little use or fondness for the First Amendment's guarantees. Among other conclusions, it found that nearly 75 percent either give the amendment little thought, or take it for granted. In addition, more than a third said the First Amendment goes too far in protecting those rights.
"These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous," Hodding Carter III, the Knight Foundation's president and CEO and a former assistant Secretary of State, said in a statement released with the survey results three weeks ago. "Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation's future."
Several local students who take part in school media clubs offer a more complex view toward free speech than the survey results might suggest. They say students really do appreciate free speech and other First Amendment rights -- they just don't always know it.
"I think kids read the paper," said Emily Kellner, a freshman at Algonquin Regional High School in Northborough. She writes for the school's Harbinger newspaper. "They might not understand the controversy and the work that go into it, but they definitely appreciate the paper."
At local high schools that list First Amendment awareness as one of their priorities, educators say the effort requires an ongoing conversation in social studies classes, in media courses, in student-run publications and television studios, and in the way they try to balance free speech rights with the need to maintain order and a respectful environment.
For the staff of Algonquin's newspaper, the business of journalism is one of trial and error. Students say they're proud of the controversial stories and editorials they have run, on topics such as gay marriage, student drug use and the whether the school was right to send letters to parents of students who weren't standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.
In that case, the principal said he simply wanted to inform the parents about the students' behavior, but letters caught the attention of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The Supreme Court has said that people cannot be required to participate in the pledge.
The students acknowledge that the paper is a learning exercise, and that sometimes mistakes do happen. And when they do, the students hear about them.
"You should have your rights," said Harbinger editor Ben Shattuck, a junior from Northborough. "But you should be able to back yourself up, especially in the case of journalism."
Shattuck said the paper tries to strive for editorial balance, like when it published information and opinions about both George W. Bush and John Kerry before the presidential election.
"I was proud to be a part of that issue," Shattuck said. "I think it was good to say what we wanted and not feel threatened."
Teacher Sean Bevan, who advises the Harbinger and teaches a journalism class, said he leads students through the First Amendment, journalism ethics and libel law. He said he wants students to know their rights, but also to understand the responsibilities that come with the ability to publish.
Early on in the course, Bevan said he gives the class a 20 question, true-or-false quiz on the First Amendment. Students are asked to put a "T" or "F" next to statements such as, "The government regulates the news we read," and that "freedom of the press" is one of the five protections in the First Amendment. Not everyone does well on the test, he said.
"The degree to which they don't know about journalism is frightening," Bevan said. For instance, he said, some students don't understand conflict of interest -- that a soccer player really shouldn't cover the soccer team, and that students should avoid writing about staff members who are relatives.
If students view the First Amendment differently, it might have something to do with the fact that free speech isn't as free in American schools. Though local educators who were interviewed said they don't decide what runs or airs in the student media, other schools around the country have seen showdowns over issues of student expression.
Over the years, the U.S. Supreme Court has supported educators' attempts to exercise some control over student speech. In Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, the Supreme Court ruled that educators could exert editorial control over what appears, "so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns."
In that 1988 decision, the justices backed up a Missouri high school principal who had parts of a school newspaper removed, because he said an article dealing with pregnancy and birth control wasn't appropriate for the school's younger readers, and that a second article did not give someone mentioned a chance to comment.
But while rulings like this coming from the highest court in the land, their interpretations often get made at the high school level.
"It's the hardest struggle, to point out to students that you have rights, but there are boundaries," said John Stapelfeld, principal of Hudson High School.
Hudson High School is one of a few institutions around the country designated as First Amendment Schools by the Arlington, Va.-based First Amendment Center. Hudson High has received grant money to promote First Amendment education, hold free-speech events, and involve students more in general decision making.
Before the school started the project more than three years ago, Stapelfeld said, it wasn't doing as good of a job teaching students about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The change in students' attitudes is slow, but is starting to bear fruit, he said.
Hudson High offers several media choices for students, including the Hawk Talk newspaper, whose "lively" letters-to-the-editor section sometimes criticizes the administration about school policies, Stapelfeld said.
"I'm certainly not advocating that the day-to-day operations be turned over to the students," Stapelfeld said. "But the students have a right to be heard, and to understand why their goals may or may not go forward."
Even in a First Amendment School, though, issues of free speech can get murky. Over the past few months, the school has found itself at odds with a new student conservative club, after the school said the club couldn't advertise a Web site for a national conservative student group.
The school had objected to naming a Web site operated by the High School Conservative Clubs of America. Stapelfeld has said the group promotes violence, in part by allowing visitors to watch beheadings by Iraqi insurgents. The founder of the Hudson club, Chris Bowler, said the move violated his free speech rights, and that the school has a liberal bias.
A few days ago, Stapelfeld said he has asked teachers to assess whether they are presenting balanced information to students, but the school has not changed its position on advertising the national student Web site. He has said he supports the school having a conservative club.
Some students may bristle at schools' attempts to place limits on their expression, but nationwide many students appear willing to grant the government that power over the media. In the Future of the First Amendment study, only 51 percent of students said newspapers should be able to publish stories without government approval, compared with 80 percent of teachers and administrators, and 70 percent of adults overall.
In another finding, about 75 percent of students said flag burning is illegal, which it is not.
The study found a correlation between students' attitudes and the availability of media programs at their schools -- namely, that students who participate in those clubs have a greater appreciation for First Amendment freedoms. It also found about one-fifth of schools surveyed have no student media offerings, and that low-income and non-suburban schools have the hardest times maintaining those programs.
Many local high schools would likely stack up well against some of the media-poor institutions described in the study. At Franklin High School, for instance, students can take a journalism class, write for the newspaper or submit writing to the literary publication, said Principal John Lucas.
When students take part in those activities, Lucas said, they learn about the ramifications of abusing a public forum, how people can be hurt if speech is untrue, or contains racial epithets, for instance. For the most part, he said, he cannot recall any major fallout from what students have published.
"It's a learning curve, but I think students have an age-appropriate understanding of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights," Lucas said.
At Framingham High School, the administration doesn't decide what goes on the air, Devlen said, but he and the students think about what they air, because the program is live, and then gets rebroadcast to the wider Framingham community.
Some things never make it on the air, if they're deemed inappropriate, Devlen said. But they don't shy away from politics or controversial topics, he said.
"I think my job, and the kids' job, is to get the school thinking first thing in the morning," Devlen said.
Jason Cohen, a Flyer News co-producer, said he has to think about free speech issues all of the time, and he said his fellow students should think more about their rights as well. But that's the point of high school, he said.
"I think there's a lot of ignorance in schools in general," Cohen said. "That's why we're here. Hopefully by the time we leave, that ignorance will be gone."
The principal has asked the teachers to look and see if they are as biased as the students say they are. I wonder what the teachers will say in reply?
Having a legal firm contact the school on behalf of the conservative club, and having the First Amendment Foundation look into pulling the charter, and getting tons of emails and phone calls after articles on FR and from David Limbaugh has generated some concern. Now an oblique article about high schools and first amendment issues from Metrowest Daily. I'll bet principal Stapelfeld gets nervous every time the phone rings these days.
The change in student attitudes is slowly changing...
They are not really that concerned about the First, unless they catch students actually using it. Look for the threads on HHS and their new Conservative Club. Since the school is somewhere in PRMass, their view of the Second is likely to be quite warped anyhow. That's not the current issue.
HHS forces viewing of Schindler's List and lots and lots of holocaust and Armenian Genocide pictures, yet a Conservative Club poster with a link to a national high school conservative club website is "too violent to be viewed" because the site (on the poster) has other links that show Islamic beheadings if you follow them, with a "Very Graphic" warning prominently displayed above the links.
So the teachers ripped the Conservative Club meeting posters down, and won't put them back, because the superintendant (founder of Educators for Social Responsibility) has declared the High School Conservative Club of America "the worst [violence] I have ever seen".
Even more violent are actual examples of what is taught in Hudson High School, with scanned examples of class handouts. IMHO, that's what Stapelfeld and Berman really want to stamp out of the public view.
So hunt up the FR threads and have fun!
You are right, the first amendment was written to restrict Congress only.
IIRC the Supreme Court has ruled that the principles are extended to the States in various ways; they have even ruled on high school speech issues. Some of the other links on the HHS Conservative Club mention these rulings, though I did not follow them up.
So in today's world, there is a set of rules on free speech in high schools that we follow as law, whether or not that's what the original authors had in mind.
And I to think it ludicrous that the principal, John Stapelfeld, thinks that we should be concerned about what the rest of the world thinks of us.
His knowlege of what "mainstream conservatives" think is no doubt influenced by being in Massachusetts, which (as I understand it) is so tilted to the left that Kerry is mainstream, Chomsky and Zinn slightly to the left, and their governor is far to the right. The president of Harvard U, keeper of the liberal torch, is seething about their suddenly right-wing president, who dared say something centrist.
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