New generation blasé
about old freedoms
By Susan Llewelyn Leach | The Christian Science Monitor | February 16, 2005
Quick quiz. Can you name the five freedoms of the First Amendment? If you're stumped,
you're in good company - 99 percent of American adults can't either.
That lack of familiarity with one of the cornerstones of American democracy has
now found its mirror in a recent study of high school students. The largest survey
to date of more than 112,000 students in ninth through 12th grades reveals basic
misconceptions and a disheartening lack of interest in what it means, what it
protects, and why it matters.
For instance, 75 percent of students think flag burning is against the law (it's
not); and 49 percent say the government can legally restrict indecent material
on the Internet (it can't). Add to that the students' surprisingly restrictive
view of First Amendment freedoms - more than one third think the Amendment goes
too far in the rights it guarantees; and only 51 percent think newspapers should
be allowed to publish stories without government approval - and the land of the
free starts to sound like another country.
Although educators and rights advocates say the results are alarming, few seem
surprised.
"We now have the proof of what we would intellectually assume, which is:
The reason adults don't know much about the First Amendment is that as teenagers
they are not taught much about the First Amendment," says Gene Policinski,
executive director of the First Amendment Center. Funded by the John S. and James
L. Knight Foundation, the survey based many of its questions on the annual survey
of adults conducted by the First Amendment Center.
To teach those freedoms requires more than a few lines in a textbook, Mr. Policinski
says. The survey showed, for instance, that students who had participated in media-related
activities were more likely to think people should be allowed to express unpopular
opinions.
Diana Hadley has seen it firsthand. The assistant director of the Indiana High
School Press Association, who has taught journalism for 33 years, says hands-on
experience is key. Learning retention improves if you make it practical, she says.
Students get a chance to write, hear feedback, and understand the impact of their
words.
But it's perhaps a truism that the positive influence of media studies is only
as good as the experience itself. "If, as at many schools, the administration
runs their newspaper like Pravda, they are probably not coming away with much
more understanding or knowledge than those students who never worked on a publication
in the first place," says Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student
Press Law Center, which provides free legal advice to high school and college
journalists about the rights and responsibilities of the First Amendment. Student
papers need to offer real journalism, not propaganda, he adds.
He cites the survey finding that even among students with experience on a newspaper,
when asked if a student publication should be required to get administrative approval
before covering controversial issues, 25 percent said yes. Mr. Goodman says this
is a frightening reflection of what's being taught in schools.
School publications, however, are not carbon copies of the outside press. In the
1988 Hazelwood case, the US Supreme Court ruled that students were not entitled
to broad First Amendment protection and schools could censor content.
While the quality of media programs and student newspapers may vary, fewer schools
are offering them at all. The reasons are broad but include budget crunches, pressures
from standardized testing, and resistance from principals. As Goodman puts it,
student newspapers are "headache-inducing in the minds of many school administrators."
They are also extracurricular, which makes them more trimmable when funding is
tight.
Ms. Hadley sees a longer trend pushing against media courses, one that has become
acute in the past five years. The study bears out that perception: 26 percent
of schools have no newspaper and 40 percent of those eliminated it in the past
five years.
Goodman worries about a parallel challenge. Over the past 20 years, he says, schools
have slowly created a more repressive environment. Since the mid-1980s, he says
he has seen a deterioration in the amount of freedom that high schools students
are given when it comes to expressing themselves.
Creating an atmosphere where students can speak freely, contribute, and be involved
in the decisionmaking, is crucial to their understanding of the First Amendment,
Policinski adds. "If you wonder why someone at 19 doesn't know much about
free expression," he says, "if they've not been allowed [to freely express
themselves] when they were 14 through 18, why should we expect them to suddenly
flower at age 19?"
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