Student journalism should teach civics, not censorship

By Warren Watson
J-Ideas Director

The First Amendment, the foundation of American liberty, is under assault in our public schools.

From Woodlan to Washington state and clear back to Washington, D.C., the issue of whether students should enjoy the same rights of free speech as adults has worked its way into the community and public-policy conversation. Although the clock has not yet wound down, the students appear to be losing. Oh, yes, our democracy may be losing as well.

The issue: Should certain sensitive issues be kept behind a shroud of secrecy and not be considered in the marketplace of ideas?

Let’s start our tour locally – right here in east Allen County. Student newspaper adviser Amy Sorrell has been reprimanded and suspended for allowing the publication of a Jan. 19 student editorial advocating tolerance for gays and lesbians. She is fighting back as the issue has created a firestorm around the state.

To make matters worse, East Allen County Schools has dictated a new publication policy for the district’s five high schools. Students are being forced to print the policy, which shows the front door to the First Amendment. And they’re pushing back.

Under the new policy, the principal may censor the publication if material that is “socially inappropriate to the maturity of students” is introduced. The principal becomes the sole arbiter of content. Students and journalism advisers are shunted out of the journalism process.

“What happened is wrong,” said Diana Hadley, executive director of the Indiana High School Press Association, “and the strategy gives the students at Woodlan High School a negative civics lesson about power.”

No one in the district schools seems to want to talk about the whole affair, arguing that it is a “personnel matter” that they can’t discuss. Students and others attempted to raise the issue at a March 20 school board meeting but were turned away.

Mike Smith, executive director of the Northwestern-based Media Management Center and a former student journalist at Heritage High School in East Allen, is shocked at what he termed a “boneheaded move” by the district. “This move sets the First Amendment back a notch,” said Smith, a lifelong reporter, editor and news executive. “Students are the victims of this. They are on the verge of losing a courageous teacher, and the principal has forced them into an option of giving up something they care deeply about. Talk about your teaching moments.”

Added Hadley, “The East Allen School Board has tried to disguise a First Amendment issue as a ‘personnel matter’ with the idea that it can’t be discussed publicly if it’s ‘personnel.’ It’s ironic that the board doesn’t want to discuss censorship.”

Let’s leave Woodlan for a second and travel west to Olympia, Wash., where censorship is also on the agenda. The Woodlan problem would not have happened if Indiana had a state law guaranteeing freedom of speech for high school students. Six states currently have such statutes. In Washington state, a grass-roots effort instigated by a young college student, Brian Schraum, could result in a seventh and a reversal of a long trend nationally toward suppression of student free speech.

HB 1307, which has passed the Washington House of Representatives and is now before the Senate, would give students such guaranteed rights. The bill passed the first hurdle last week, but not before some legislators tried to trivialize the bill as “silly.”

Since when is democracy “silly”?

The bill is given a solid chance of passing, but school administrative groups are working hard in the back hallways to stymie the effort.

Principals and administrators continue to be in the position to censor legitimate news content in school media. Since the Hazelwood Supreme Court decision in 1988, administrators have gone far beyond the parameters of the law, which allows for censorship in limited circumstances – that is, when they can demonstrate a legitimate educational reason for doing so. In countless cases, principals have squashed material that is controversial and/or might put a school in a poor light. Imagine if professional newspapers such as The Journal Gazette avoided issues that are controversial or might be viewed as offensive? That would be the end of journalism.

And this is clearly not the way to teach students journalism, which is a proving ground for future professionals and a true application of civics.

“The purpose of school,” said executive director Dick Johns of the national Quill and Scroll Society, an organization for youth journalists, “includes enlightening students and preparing them to be contributing citizens in our democratic society. Both educators and parents know that students best learn to do by doing.”

The way it stands, student journalists will be left in East Allen to learn the craft through the prism of prior restraint. They will be pushed to underground newspapers and blogs, thereby being denied the opportunity to to learn under trained advisers – like Sorrell – in a supervised school setting. Student journalism is education in action. All that East Allen students will learn under the new policy is that a principal is the source of arbitrary power within the schoolhouse gate.

The Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., was considering another case – Morse v. Frederick – as news of Sorrell’s suspension spread statewide Tuesday morning. The case also involves student expression and could result in a further marginalization of students in our democracy.

One prominent daily newspaper editor, when informed of the East Allen developments, simply said, “This really stinks.”

Joe McKinney, lawyer and chairman of Ball State’s Department of Educational Leadership, sees the conflict that arises over censorship issues. “Administrators generally are conservative. Sometimes it appears to some that it is more expedient to not raise certain questions,” he said. “The First Amendment is the hallmark of our liberties. A student media outlet enhances a student’s ability to become a good citizen.” But not in East Allen.

Jan Roland, an administrator in the Wabash school system, said: “If administrators don’t care about the First Amendment, then the students won’t care about the First Amendment. If administrators don’t see that the First Amendment is vital, then there is something wrong with education.”

This column ran in the March 27, 2007 edition of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.