US High School Students Show Apathy Towards First Amendment
Saturday, May 14th, 2005This isn’t exactly news, because this article is dated January 31st. I just wanted to highlight a few parts of the study, especially those that the MSN article downplays.
The first “key finding” of the study, and the most visibly distressing I might add, is that “Nearly three-fourths [of high school students] say either they don’t know how they feel about it [the First Amendment] or they take it for granted.”
It gets worse.
“Students are less likely than adults to think that people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions or newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.” This leads me to one important connection that seems to go unnoticed by both the Knight organization and the MSN article. I’m going to compare two statements given to those that took the survey, the percentages given will reflect those that agree with that statement.
Newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.
- Students - 51%
- Teachers - 80%
- Principals - 80%
- Adults - 70%
High School students should be allowed to report controversial issues in their student newspaper without approval of school authorities.
- Students - 58%
- Teachers - 39%
- Principals - 25%
- Adults - 43%
It should be noted that this was only one of two questions that principals and teachers responded less favorably to than students and regular adults. The other was “Musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics others find offensive.”
Perhaps the problem is that the high school students aren’t encouraged to investigate and report controversial issues. No one likes criticism when it’s directed at them. This is why the First Amendment is so important; to protect citizens from their government, lest they decide to pass legislation forbidding criticizing them.
The thing is, folks, hypocrisy is dangerous to liberty. Teachers and principals, upon their initial offense at being criticized, can cause the next generation of Americans to be extremely apathetic about their own freedoms and liberty. Your freedoms are a double edged sword, it does no good to demand your freedom of speech while limiting the free speech of others.
