Student Journalism

Much of the debate surrounding the issue of free speech rights in public schools involves student published magazines and newspapers. I came across a couple of articles in my education and censorship feed that speak to both sides of the issue. On one hand, you have inmany cases a school newspaper or magazine that is essentially owned by the school district because they provide the materials, funds and instruction for it to be published. This was the point made by Robert Johnson in a Cinncinatti Enquirer article. The original article that prompted this response was regarding an article in the Princeton Highschool magazine, Odin’s Word, which was pulled because it ‘harshly’ criticized the school’s football team.  Jhonson argues that;

“School officials acted within their rights as property owners when they disallowed the article from being published. It is they who provide the physical means, administrative support and management necessary for this magazine to be produced. It belongs to the school board. They own it. They provided the resources to initiate it and continue to provide the resources to maintain it. It belongs to them, not to the student. It is their property.

It is their right to property that allows them to determine what goes into the magazine and what doesn’t. In this case, the school board’s property rights were properly exercised.”

In my previous post “Drawing Lines” I mentioned the group of students who refused to publish their newspaper, rather than submit it’s content to the school administrator for review.  I find it interesting that these issues of free speech in journalism and the Newspaper owners’ right to determine content are not only happening at the highschool and sometimes Colligate level, but on a national level as well.  Some of the quotes from the Everett Herald article speak to the other side of this debate – one that has several Washington law makers persuing a bill that would protect student’s first amendment rights;

“When students are empowered to make those[editorial] decisions, they are more likely to feel a sense of leadership and take ownership of their work,” he said.

Attorney General Rob McKenna supports the legislation.

“If it is protected by the First Amendment, it is protected by this bill,” said Greg Overstreet, special assistant to McKenna.

Rep. Al O’Brien, D-Mountlake Terrace, also has signed on to the bill, which he said will help educate students on their constitutional protections.

“If students do not understand certain rights, they are not in a position to govern our country,” he said.

Lueneburg, now a college freshman, said she hopes the bill will draw enough support to pass.

“You grow up to be a more responsible citizen than you would have been if you were controlled your entire 12 years of schooling,” she said.

While I agree with the idea that, if you give students the freedom to edit and publish a newspaper as they see fit, they will learn many lessons about the value of good, sound reporting as well as exercise their right to free speech - but when you try to apply this idea to the ‘real world’ and actual news organizations, it falls short.  Unfortunately, our press is only as free as the editorial board (and the companies which pay their salaries) allow.  In a recent NPR brodcast on News Media Economics , Lowell Bergman explains that, because so many news organizations are publicly traded commodities, profits, rather than a duty to report the news, are their major concern.  As a result, even the most ambitious reporting is subject to review, even censorship based upon financial interests. 

This is so similar to the issue that student newspapers are facing.  In the so-called ‘real world,’ journalists aren’t simply free to publish whatever they wish, and neither are student’s given free license to publish without oversight.   The  questions we must keep in mind are: What do we want students to learn?  How do we teach responsible citizenship without stifiling our students’ creativity and inquiry?

Hip Hop in the Classroom

I found this article in my education & literature feed – It is about Southern California teacher Alan Sitomer and his use of Hip Hop lyrics in the classroom; check it out…

Using hip-hop to teach literature – Calif. teacher of year tries to liven up the classics.

Imagine the stir when English teacher Alan Sitomer injected the hip-hop lyrics of Run-D.M.C. and Eminem into literature courses laced with the classic works of William Shakespeare and Robert Frost.

The inner-city kids in his Lynwood High School classes loved it, but many adults did not share the students’ enthusiasm.

“Yes, it met with a lot of resistance,” said Sitomer, 39, a Southern California resident who is California Teacher of the Year. “But my goal was to engage reluctant readers. And it worked.”   Full Article Here

I thought that this article was an excellent example of how innovation in the classroom, even though it may be resisted and challenged, can be successful. Aside from the fact that this is a really sweet idea I would love to use in my future classroom, there are a lot of things that could have brought it down at the beginning. I’m sure, being the author Hip Hop Poetry and the Classics, Sitomer knew his stuff; that is he had a very clear & defensible reason for using Rap music in his classroom. The most obvious problem he had to deal with was the language, as well as sometimes violent and demeaning lyrics in some of the songs, that would probably violate school policy (and create an angry swarm of parents) within the first 30 seconds of being played – this was addressed by excluding lyrics that demeaned women or homosexuals as well as profanity.  I think that this teacher also had a good feel for the community around the school – Lynwood Highschool, where Sitomer teaches, is an inner-city school in an urban area with many of its associated problems – and he knew that his students would relate to the hip-hop culture. It would probably be more difficult to teach a literature course this way in a mostly white, affluent suburban district. But demographics aside, I think that Alan Sitomer is on to something here. He says in the article,

“The classics cannot be the only source of literature, because many students are not initially hooked by such works….it [hip hop] is about the challenges of life and how we deal with them… The classics have many similar themes.”

This is definitely an encouragement for those of us who, like Sitomer, want to positively engage students through any means, be it art, music, drama or hip hop.

If you want to find out more about the book or possibly order your own copy check out Sitomer’s website  for more info.

Drawing Lines

When I first moved to Zeeland, Michigan in the summer of 1998, I had no Idea that I was entering the hotbed of censorship & controversy (at least that was how it came to be known in my sophomore year of highschool – I’m sure some of you remember the Zeeland Highschool student who was suspended for wearing a Korn t-shirt) The district had a policy in place that prohibited clothing “bearing any references to obscenity, drugs, violence, or sexual innuendo”, which made the Administrator’s decision a stretch at best – as the shirt didn’t make any specific refrences to any of those things, only to the rock band Korn. It was quite a scandal for us at the time and it ended up generating a ton of publicity for the band (which was quite amusing).

I mention this because, for as much negative publicity this generated for the school, it was also an invaluable lesson in civic responsibility-not a sammeless plug for a subpar and shoddy rock band, mind you.  The student body ended up circulating a petition condemning Eric’s suspension as well as the administration’s censorship,and collecting 400+ signatures within the school. It didn’t happen right away, but over the next year the Administration reversed its position on the band t-shirts.  As trivial and silly as this seems now, at that time we found that we could make our voice heard – and prompt change. 

I recently read an article in the Everett Herald which shed some light on the lines that are being drawn by student groups advocating First Ammendment rights, and school administrations that want oversight of student publications.  Student editors at Everett Highschool in Washington, chose not to publish their school newspaper when the administration insisted that the student-authored paper be submitted for review before it would be published. Student editors felt that the review process was a violation of their First Amendment rights and filed suit – a trial is scheduled for May in Seattle. However, what caught my attention was the a survey that was cited in the same article. The survey reported that;

49 percent of highschool students agreed with the statement that “It is OK for the government to censor the news.” That’s much more disturbing than bad math scores.

“Civics education, especially learning about the protections guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, is essential if we want our kids to grow up to be good citizens,” Upthegrove said.

The survey also found:

* Seventy-five percent of high school students erroneously think that flag burning is illegal.

* Half believe the government can censor the Internet.

* More than a third think the First Amendment “goes too far” in the rights it guarantees.

* More than one in five schools offer no media opportunities; of the high schools that do not offer student newspapers, 40 percent have eliminated them in the last five years.

The results of the Knight Foundation Survey are quite disturbing.  The trouble is that it seems to attribute its results to a decline in student authored newspapers and “media opprotunities.” As important as these are I can’t help but feel that there is an overall trend in public education to avoid controversy – something far more damaging to students that a lack of media opprotunities or journalism classes. By controversy, I mean that many important historical and social events, as well as literature are presented in a one-sided manner that focuses on producing test questions, rather than engaging students in critical thought and debate. The ‘T-shirt scandal’ was a rare chance for us as highschool students to debate and attempt to change rules we believed violated our rights. Looking back it’s seems silly, even trivial, but the lesson is still there. I can only remember only one class in highschool that challenged me in a similar way – my AP English Literature class.  In our discussions of Orwell, Yeats especially Shakespeare, everything was up for debate. Our instructor did a great job of creating an environment where most of the students would share their own ideas freely; where respectful debate and controversy were encouraged.  It’s a lofty and maybe impossible goal, but I think if students could be engaged in learning environments like this, perhaps we would see fewer survey results like those above.

~Nathan

Censorship

For most people the word brings a myriad of negative associations to mind – myself included. However, when you combine this word into phrases like ’student censorship’ or ‘censorship in education’ things definately become more heated. As my intrest in this blog is focused on English and Language Arts, for now I’ll be exploring the issue of censorship as it applies to teaching English and literature.