Home > The Study > Principals > Allowing a Student Voice

Allowing a Student Voice

Terry Nelson column on prior review of student press

Exactly 25 years ago, Terry Nelson was fired as a teacher and student media adviser at Yorktown (Ind.) High School after clashes with school administrators over freedom of the press issues. She was re-hired a month later after the school realized it had overstepped its bounds. Twelve years later, she was elected to the same school board that had ousted her. Now the journalism teacher and adviser at Muncie (Ind.) Central High School, she remains a symbol of freedom of the press for scholastic newspapers nationwide. In 2000, Nelson was named an ALL USA Teacher, First Team, by USA Today. A year later, she earned the honor of Dow Jones Newspaper Fund National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year.

Imagine a math teacher's chagrin if the principal told her that from now on he would like to preview all of her math assignments and tests prior to distributing them to math students because the students did not all receive As on their tests and classroom work.

Picture the reaction of a basketball coach, who has just been told by the head school administrator that because the team did not hit all baskets, rebound all loose balls and play an error-free game that now he will demand the coach to turn over game plans and player lineups for prior approval by the principal before the game can be played.

These requests and reasons for administrative takeovers would be just plain ridiculous.

Why then does an administrator feel justified in exercising prior review over any high school publication for any reason: editing mistakes, grammatical errors or unpopular story subjects for discussion?

Prior review of student publications is a practice that is dehumanizing for the faculty adviser and detrimental to the students' sense of self worth and opportunity for a quality education.

It is a betrayal of our students in a public school system when they are not encouraged or even allowed to participate in expressing their unique perspectives in their own school newspaper. For a principal to review or edit a student publication is to rob these students of one of the best educational opportunities available in high school: to research, form opinions, write, rewrite and publish for a peer audience in a very real exercise of citizenship and community activism.

After 29 years of teaching journalism and advising publications, I have experienced first-hand the growth of students at any and all educational levels when they are allowed to have ownership in a very real publishing project: the school newspaper, where they are allowed to debate, discuss and offer divergent opinions: stretching their thoughts and concerns outside of a personal realm and into a community one.

School mission statements across the U.S. speak to nurturing a diverse student population who will become part of a global society, and communication and citizenship is surely a big component of that vision. Students will not become community leaders or know how to communicate upon graduation if they are not allowed an opportunity to experience their strengths and their boundaries while in high school, under the supervision of a teacher trained in publications.

Allowing all students a voice in their school newspaper, taught and advised by a licensed journalism teacher, insures that all student voices are valid and justified. It insures that students will not only read, memorize and study the U.S. Constitution, but be able to live and experience it as well. That math teacher is never going to be able to guarantee her principal of 30 students with all As on all math tests. That basketball coach is never going to coach a game that is error free and where all players hit the basket all of the time. And that journalism class is going to sometimes miss some spelling or grammatical errors, and from time to time choose a story topic some adult is not going to like. But don't the potential education, growth, leadership and academic freedom far outweigh the risks of imperfection? America was founded by imperfect peoples who yearned for freedom of expression. Our public schools should not be the institution to hinder or take those freedoms away from the next generation of leaders.

	This web site is produced by J-IDEAS
	J-IDEAS is funded in part by the John S. and James  L. Knight Foundation's High School Initiative and Ball State University.		J-IDEAS Department ofJournalism Ball State University, Muncie, Ind. 47306 (765) 285-8923 Terms of Service