Jonathan Zimmerman: Schools Must Teach Our Children that Free Speech Requires Civility
[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory" (Yale University Press). He can be reached at jlzimm@aol.com.]
Let's suppose a student walks through the halls of her high school carrying a big banner denouncing one of her teachers. I'd be OK with the school's confiscating the banner, and I bet you would be, too.
So should we let her post similar remarks on the Internet?
Last week, a Florida judge said yes. And, unlike most of my fellow liberals, I think he was wrong.
If we really care about protecting free speech, we need to teach our kids some basic principles of civility. And sometimes that means we have to restrict their speech, even on the Web....
The Florida case began in 2007, when a high school principal suspended senior Katherine Evans for creating a Facebook page that vilified her English teacher. "Ms Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I've ever met!" Evans wrote. "To those select students who have had the displeasure of having Ms Sarah Phelps, or simply knowing her and her insane antics: Here is the place to express your feelings of hatred."...
Last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Garber ruled that the case could go forward. "Evans' speech falls under the wide umbrella of protected speech," Garber wrote. "It was an opinion of a student about a teacher, that was published off-campus ... and was not lewd, vulgar, threatening, or advocating illegal or dangerous behavior."
But it was rude, boorish, and ill-mannered. It showed just how little Evans has learned about civil discourse, which requires a set of shared values: reason, tolerance, and decency. And when we forsake these ground rules, we lose our ability to communicate - literally, to "make common" - with each other....
All of the recent decisions rest on the Supreme Court's landmark 1969 ruling Tinker v. Des Moines, which allowed students to wear black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War. As the court famously pronounced, students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." To suppress student speech, the court added, officials must show that it would "disrupt the work and discipline of the school."...
So why not let the kids have their fun? The answer lies elsewhere in the Tinker decision, which insisted that public schools must promote "a robust exchange of ideas." That means they also must show kids how to engage in such dialogue: with clarity, patience, and respect for one's adversary.
Otherwise, our much-vaunted "exchange of ideas" devolves into a crude shouting match. That's why we should punish students' Internet attacks on school employees, which echo the worst aspects of our debased popular culture.
Isn't it time we taught children a better way to talk? Their very freedom depends on it.
Read entire article at Philadelphia Inquirer
Let's suppose a student walks through the halls of her high school carrying a big banner denouncing one of her teachers. I'd be OK with the school's confiscating the banner, and I bet you would be, too.
So should we let her post similar remarks on the Internet?
Last week, a Florida judge said yes. And, unlike most of my fellow liberals, I think he was wrong.
If we really care about protecting free speech, we need to teach our kids some basic principles of civility. And sometimes that means we have to restrict their speech, even on the Web....
The Florida case began in 2007, when a high school principal suspended senior Katherine Evans for creating a Facebook page that vilified her English teacher. "Ms Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I've ever met!" Evans wrote. "To those select students who have had the displeasure of having Ms Sarah Phelps, or simply knowing her and her insane antics: Here is the place to express your feelings of hatred."...
Last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Garber ruled that the case could go forward. "Evans' speech falls under the wide umbrella of protected speech," Garber wrote. "It was an opinion of a student about a teacher, that was published off-campus ... and was not lewd, vulgar, threatening, or advocating illegal or dangerous behavior."
But it was rude, boorish, and ill-mannered. It showed just how little Evans has learned about civil discourse, which requires a set of shared values: reason, tolerance, and decency. And when we forsake these ground rules, we lose our ability to communicate - literally, to "make common" - with each other....
All of the recent decisions rest on the Supreme Court's landmark 1969 ruling Tinker v. Des Moines, which allowed students to wear black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War. As the court famously pronounced, students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." To suppress student speech, the court added, officials must show that it would "disrupt the work and discipline of the school."...
So why not let the kids have their fun? The answer lies elsewhere in the Tinker decision, which insisted that public schools must promote "a robust exchange of ideas." That means they also must show kids how to engage in such dialogue: with clarity, patience, and respect for one's adversary.
Otherwise, our much-vaunted "exchange of ideas" devolves into a crude shouting match. That's why we should punish students' Internet attacks on school employees, which echo the worst aspects of our debased popular culture.
Isn't it time we taught children a better way to talk? Their very freedom depends on it.