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PRESS RELEASE: Silencing student voices hurts education, democracy
SPLC joins with other journalism advocates to decry result of adviser Amy Sorrell's case
© 2007 Student Press Law Center
May 11, 2007
Students who work on high school media learn to think critically, research
topics, conduct interviews, write clearly for an audience and work together as a
team. In schools with strong journalism programs, they also learn how a free
and responsible press can work to improve their school communities, to inform,
influence and entertain.
The highly publicized suspension of a
journalism teacher and a growing number of school censorship cases prompted a
coalition of 16 state and national organizations today to urge parents and
others to rally behind students who, under the guidance of a qualified
journalism educator, seek to practice journalism at school and learn the
valuable lessons it teaches.
The group’s concern arose when the
East Allen County (Ind.) Schools suspended and then transferred newspaper
adviser Amy Sorrell to a new school after she allowed a student’s column
supporting tolerance of gays to run without administrative approval, even though
the district had not followed a policy requiring total prior review. School
officials gave her an unpaid five-day suspension and say Sorrell will not teach
journalism in her new school.
The situation Sorrell and her students face
is becoming increasingly common, those working with high school media say. An
Ohio principal pulled a column in his school’s student newspaper when it
criticized the football team and coaching decisions and added an administrator
untrained in journalism education as an additional adviser for the publication.
A student editor in Texas filed a formal complaint against his
administrator for prohibiting distribution of his high school paper that
contained articles on sexually transmitted diseases. A Florida high school
principal demanded student newspaper staff members physically cut out an article
from every issue of the paper before distribution because it reported an
achievement gap in state standardized test scores between white and minority
students at his school, a story the students obtained by searching public
records.
In Washington, Michigan, Minnesota, Idaho and elsewhere,
advisers are threatened with job loss and newspapers face censorship or
threatened closure even though research shows stifling student speech does not
follow the mission of public schools.
“No advocate or practitioner
of prior review or restraint has yet provided substantial evidence that this is
an educationally sound practice,” said Journalism Education Association
Scholastic Press Rights Commission chair John Bowen. “Journalism educators
are charged with helping students learn critical thinking and reasoning. Prior
review only blocks that growth in students and interferes with the public's
right to be accurately and truthfully informed.”
This coalition of
educators and journalists believes public schools should model democratic
principles by providing a forum where student voices can be heard. This forum
can be a newspaper or other student media where students, under the guidance of
a trained adviser, determine content. School administrators, who govern the
school community and are primary news sources, should not control the content of
school media, the group believes.
The group stresses the need for
policies that reject prior review because less offensive and more effective,
democratic ways exist to keep student journalists on a responsible track. A
policy that allows students to think for themselves supports a long list of
educational values:
• It teaches responsibility for content and presentation because
student staff members know no one else is going to second-guess their
work;
• It shows students their ideas matter and empowers them to make a
difference in solving problems in their school and community;
• It emphasizes core ethical and character values such as respect,
caring, self-control, honesty, patience, cooperation, perseverance and
effort;
• It allows them, under the coaching and support of a trained
teacher/adviser, to practice the democratic principles they learn in government
and social studies classes;
• It instills in students the values of democracy, including how to
express themselves in effective ways and be tolerant of views with which they
disagree.
Some administrators understand the value of operating under
such a policy. One of these is Franklin McCallie, retired 22-year high school
principal and former JEA Administrator of the Year. He said he saw how well this
operated in Kirkwood (Mo.) High School when he was there. “Just about the
time some educators get close to real education, they close down on their
students in order to void the educational process they said they were
initiating.” That shouldn’t be the case, McCallie said.
Gene
Policinski, vice president and executive director of the Nashville-based First
Amendment Center and a former professional journalist, believes censorship
issues affecting high school journalists and advisers need to be the concern of
every citizen.
“You can't teach values and the necessary role of a
free press in an environment in which there is no journalism program or in which
student voices are subject to heavy-handed censorship by administrators that we
never would tolerate in our society outside of a schoolhouse,” Policinski
said.
Parents, school board members, teachers, administrators and
concerned community members need to be sure their student publications provide
forums for student expression so that kind of learning takes place, coalition
members agree.
“Every year, the Student Press Law Center hears
from hundreds of high school journalists and their advisers who are being
threatened with censorship for simply reporting the truth. Our schools teach
troubling lessons, about journalism and about democracy, when we allow that
censorship to occur,” said Mark Goodman, director of the SPLC in
Arlington, Va.
For More Information:
Contact Candace Perkins Bowen, cbowen@kent.edu or 330-672-8297 or any of the representatives listed at the bottom.
Organizations supporting this statement are:
Candace Perkins Bowen, Director, Center for Scholastic Journalism, Kent State University, cbowen@kent.edu
Warren Watson, Director, J-Ideas, Ball State University, wwatson@bsu.edu
Steve O'Donoghue, Director, California Scholastic Journalism Initiative, steveod@caljournalism.org
Jack Dvorak, Director, High School Journalism Institute, Indiana University, dvorakj@indiana.edu
Diana Hadley, Executive Director, Indiana High School Press Association, dhadley@franklincollege.edu
David Adams, Director, Office of Indiana University Student Media, dadams@indiana.edu
Linda S. Puntney, Executive Director, Journalism Education Association, Kansas State University, lindarp@ksu.edu
John Bowen, Chair, Scholastic Press Rights Commission, Journalism Education Association, jbowen1007@aol.com
Cheryl Pell, Executive Director, Michigan Interscholastic Press Association, Michigan State University, pell@msu.edu
John Ullman, Acting Executive Director, National Scholastic Press Association
Wendy W. Wallace, Director, High School Program, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies
Richard Johns, Executive Director, Quill and Scroll Society, University of Iowa
Carol Knopes, Director of Education Projects, Radio & Television News Directors Foundation, carolk@rtndf.org
Mark Goodman, Executive Director, Student Press Law Center, splc@splc.org
H.L. Hall, Executive Director, Tennessee High School Press Association, director@tennpress.org
Kathy Schrier, President, Washington Journalism Education Association
Terry Nelson, high school adviser with 31 years of these experiences, terrymnelson@hotmail.com
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