Student Censorship Essay

Issues of censorship in public schools are contests between the exercise of discretion and the exercise of a Constitutional right. The law

Ellsworth, J. E. (1988). Censorship in secondary school newspapers: Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. BYU Journal of Public Law, 2, 291–306.

Although we, as citizens of this country, are guaranteed freedom of speech and press by the first amendment, we are encouraged to “watch what we say”. In order to avoid unnecessary violence and to keep people from being offended, it is recommended the certain things be censored. While many may look at this censorship as a well-needed percussion it can reversely be seen as going against one's first amendment rights, in itself causing controversy.

Censorship can take different shapes depending on the public school system: Schools can give teachers a list of acceptable books to teach, just provide guidelines, or leave it up to the teachers to judge which books are appropriate (Agee, 1999). Teachers are often very nervous about including texts that are not traditional or specifically approved by the school, especially because of the highly publicized cases of teachers whose careers have been ruined because of censorship debates in courts and school systems (Agee, 1999).

Book banning is a prime target for censorship. Censorship in print media, notably book banning, occurs across homes, schools, stores, and other facilities daily. Censorship in the schools is the most widespread and exposed place for book banning. Do

Facts: In May of 1983, proof pages for the school newspaper was given to Principal Robert E. Reynolds. Upon review, Reynolds discovered that the paper, the Spectrum, included two articles that he deemed inappropriate for the school paper. One of the articles was about a girl who blamed her father for her parent’s divorce and the other was about school life as a pregnant teenager. Student Cathy Kuhlmeir, along with two other former Hazelwood East students, brought suit in the District Court (Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, n.d.).

They used adequate restraint in their use of examples by withholding the names of the students, as well as using nondescript details that made it easy to determine who the article was talking about. This alone leads to the conclusion that the journalists had no intent to put the students names in print. The journalists were only trying to get information out to students who might be in similar situations. The journalists who wrote these two pages were denied their First Amendment rights under the pretense that the articles “disrupted classwork” and “invaded the rights of others.” This argument is invalid because not only did the journalists omit the names of the students, they did not make it the cover story of their newspaper. It was an article in the middle of the paper, and little attention was drawn to the two pages until it was brought up by the

In May of 1983, some students in the journalism class at hazel wood high school in Missouri, made the final edition of the school newspaper. They then gave the newspaper to the adviser, Howard Emerson, who wa a newbie. He gave the principal the final review of the paper before it was published. When the principal, Reynolds, reviewed the paper, there were 2 articles that he didn’t like. The first article was about teen pregnancy, including some comments from students that were pregnant at the school. Names weren’t given, but Reynolds thought there was too much information on the topic and he was concerned about the privacy of the students. So he took that article out. The second article was about divorce, and this one included a lot of personal stuff. Reynolds was not happy about what the students said about their families. One student said a lot of revealing things about their dad, and the dad hadn’t been given a chance to explain himself. He also didn’t want 9th graders to be reading about sex and birth control, which were in both articles. Reynolds took out the second article also, and published the rest of the paper.

As part of their journalism class students produced a newspaper with a collection of student-written articles about teen pregnancy and the impact of divorce on kids. As a result, the principal made the decision to delete the two articles from that edition of the school’s newspaper. Consequently, three students sued the school district alleging violation of their First Amendment rights.

From past censorship, America has had different guidelines on opinions of censorship. This may relate to different preferences and viewpoints from various types of people. As in the past censorship may not be on the citizen’s choice, it may have been on the government’s decision. This did not meet certain guidelines for citizens of America, as an example, the puritans wanted to “purify” themselves and the protestant church. For the puritans to successfully purify themselves they

A group of student created “The Spectrum” and 2 pages of “The Spectrum” contain stories of of divorce and teen pregnancy. These stories were controversial because not everyone had the same opinion about them. Especially the principal who thought the 2 pages of the newspaper was inappropriate so he censored them. This caused outraged because the student thought that the principal’s action violated the 1st Amendment which is their freedom

The Columbia Encyclopedia defines censorship as the "official prohibition or restriction of any type of expression believed to threaten the political, social, or moral order". It is necessarily broad definition. 'Any type of expression' in fact, covers just about everything from clothing to print to movements and even to simply being. George Bernard Shaw described assassination as an "extreme form of censorship". It is now omnipresent in society and has been as long as society has existed. If one were to consider the course of an idea (and it is essentially ideas that are being censored) as its natural evolution, censorship takes this evolutionary course and disrupts and changes it, often until it is no longer the same

22). One form of silent censorship occurs out of fear of challenges (Kampen & Spino, 2007, p. 223). Allen (2007) notes the difficult balance an information professional must make when making selection decisions. Information professionals working in a school must contend with fear of reprisals from those within the school system. (p. 5). Author Norma Fox Mazer (1997) relates how a principal of a school allowed the fear of possible reprisals from the community to cancel Mazer's scheduled visit which had been arranged for nearly a year. As well as another incident where Mazer and another author were scheduled to visit a school, but were asked to not discuss a particular book. (p. 46-48).

According to Essex (2006), one of the requirements placed on schools is that they remain viewpoint neutral. This means that if the literature was suppressed because it was religious in nature, the suppression violated her First Amendment rights, even in the school setting. In all court cases, the real message has been that schools are responsible for making sure parents and students are aware that the schools are merely sending messages indiscriminately from religious and non-secular sources and that they are not in support of any of them (Essex, 2006). Really the essence of the article is that sound policies must be in place, well documented, and consistently followed for a school to be able to regulate what a student says or distributes and there must be no endorsement of any particular ideas from any group or student.

Another very good example of a good use of censorship is a parent raising his/her children. Children who are raised with parents who only speak of abhorrence and hate, will eventually become young people who only tolerate abhorrence and hate. The guardians of children need pay attention to the world around their children thus committing the act of censorship.