First Amendment No Big Deal, Students Say

Only half of the kids surveyed thought that newspapers should be able to print stories without government approval! Only half!? Maybe they're just so terrified of that evil Dan Rather popping out of their closets at night or something.
At least Robert Byrd seems to be looking out for civil liberties. He seems like a pretty rational statesman, he majorly took issue with Condoleeza Rice over her refusal to condemn torture.
The worst thing, though, is the fact that these kids don't even know what the law is, they think that flag burning is already illegal and that the government can regulate the Internet.

Holy... !!! That would endanger POOP!

This is news to you? Ignorant voters don't start off as bright children, you know--they grow up as ignorant kids first. I don't find this scary, since it's expected and largely unavoidable. There's always going to be ignorant people, and people are going to vote. I don't like it, but there's not much I can do about it, and there's not much chance it'll change. Therefore I can safely ignore it as irrelevant.

Irrelevent? It is not irrelevent that 50% of high school kids think that freedom of the press isn't important. In fact, that's exactly the attitude that allows people to form such opinions. Being apathetic about such a serious problem(and it is one) won't fix anything.

Well are they supposed to be anything besides apathetic? I mean they can look at the problem and wonder what they could do about it. They would probably come to the conclusion of nothing and even if they tried something who would bother to listen to them?

A large proportion of high school students typically don't see anything outside their immediate sphere of influence particularly important. The fact that so many high school students are savvy enough to understand such issues and note their importance is actually quite impressive, all things considered. It can be improved, no doubt, but still, 50% of students give a damn about the right for free speech. I don't know many issues where you'll get that many students caring about it...

Scary. Makes me glad I don't go to school anymore. What DO they teach you there?

Mostly whatever we need to know to pass a standardized test, but that is a topic for another thread.

Half of those polled probably haven't taken a civics class (yet) (if ever), so you've got to take it into account that their education isn't finished yet.

Still, it makes me sick, knowing that no matter how smart I happen to become, a majority of my fellow humans will be as dumb as rocks.

Kids like that should be made to live in Burma for five years. You can go to jail there just for having a copy of Time Magazine.

Well, now, what good is freedom if it doesn't include the freedom to be ignorant?

it also depends on how it was worded. Studies are only as reliable as their methods.

For instance, if the questions were like "Should the government monitor articles released by major publications" or "SHould organizations like the FCC be concerned with the content of articles that are viewable to the general public" rather than

"Should the government be able to completely control the news"


you may get different answers.
but it's true, there's so many things going on in high school, caring about the freedom of the press may not matter so much when you're trying to get your own personal "freedom" in the first place

Oh, and on a different note, I'd just like to say that the teachers and administrators who voted that newspapers should be able to publish freely but students shouldn't are the biggest hypocrites ever. I can't stand that kind of attitude.

I think Rysto catches what's going on here, but I completely disagree with his evalution of it.

Yes, the reason that student's don't think it's important that the press be allowed to publish whatever they want is that students are not allowed to publish whatever they want.

But, as a member of a school, a minor student does not have many rights. Children are not adults, and a school is a place that needs to be controlled. Public schools have to take everybody, and they have to find a way to make a educational environment out of essentially forced conscription with no health or mental excuses. One way is to make lots of rules and get rid of a lot of rights. So, no, the school paper cannot publish anything it wants to. It is subject to censorship of the administration. Think about it; would any learning get done if the school paper published photos and narratives of the teacher's love lives? I know it would have been even more impossible for me to keep a classroom under control if I had to deal with that kind of disruption.

We need a free press in the wider culture in order to keep our government honest. It is not the students who create or make the rules for schools. It is the people who vote in the school boards and vote for representatives which makes rules about our educational system. The students in public schools do not have the power to change the system, and they do not need the power to spread information. Their parents and the wider culture, outside of the school (the local paper, not the school paper) have the power and the responsibility.

So, yes, maybe more attention needs to be paid to the transition from a person who accepts censorship (a good student) to the person who fights censorship (a good citizen). But we need to remember that students are citizens are different.

Gee, why would children educated in government schools not see government censorship as bad?
I think the answer is in the question. No end to the conundrum, but the problem is that when children are educated by and have many of their needs met by the government (breakfast, lunch, counselling, after school programs, sports, etc.) they would naturally think that government is good. The next step in that logic could be that government censorship is not bad.
I'm not saying end public education, but when you have it set up this way, these things happen.
That is one of the reasons I am a state's rights proponent, and I feel that issues such as education are best left for local politicians to have more of the power over what and how things are taught (with some higher oversight, but mostly local power base). This way, the federal govenrment's reach into our lives would be diffused, and we individuals may have a say in what is going on in our schools without having to get a senate bill passed.