Rights go "too far"

This wasn't supposed to happen here

[Reprinted from Issues & Views January 31, 2005]

Some people are expressing dismay at the news about a survey that finds high percentages of American high school students believing that greater restrictions on free speech is a perfectly fine idea. The research was commissioned by the Knight Foundation and conducted at the University of Connecticut.

The survey reports that 36% of over 12,000 students think that newspapers should get government approval of all articles before publishing, while 51% say newspapers should have the right to publish freely without such censorship. Does the press have too much freedom? "Yes," say 32% of the students.

The Associated Press reports that "When told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes 'too far' in the rights it guarantees." A large percentage appear not to comprehend why freedom of speech is important, or just what the Constitution's protections mean.

Response to the survey's findings is typical, with lack of appropriate education leading the list of reasons for the apparent indifference to civil liberty guarantees. "Schools don't do enough to teach the First Amendment," says Linda Puntney of the Journalism Education Association. Jack Dvorak, director of the High School Journalism Institute at Indiana University, claims that "Kids aren't learning enough about the First Amendment in history, civics or English classes."

But is this all there is to it? Isn't it possible that youngsters are picking up on what they see happening around them in the real world? Can they escape hearing about the hapless souls who are punished for speaking out too freely with opinions considered unacceptable in certain quarters? As high school students, haven't they already felt the pressure to self-censor, even on topics theoretically open to public discussion?

Where so many politically correct pitfalls exist on the Left, as well as on the Right, can a kid grow up believing that there really is such a thing as "freedom of speech?" Once a youngster learns that it's possible for a person to lose job, career and reputation, why would he take the risks to exercise such a freedom? When someone as important as a United State Senator, who, after expressing some inane sentiments, is forced to engage repeatedly in public self-abasement, in order to hold onto his lifetime profession, what kind of a "freedom" is that? Perhaps it's a freedom that's best kept at a distance, best left in books.

The teenager reads in those books about the Constitution's supposed protection of individual rights, yet it's clear that in the real world group rights are more important. Which should he believe? When a kid reads that the Constitution "guarantees" one thing, yet sees the contrary is socially accepted, it's pretty clear that the document, supposedly held in such high esteem, is simply an antique. And this gets confirmed for him by the behavior of most of the adults around him, probably beginning in his own home.

Consider that these kids have not yet reached college. Life on campus might very well reinforce their indifference to exercising their "rights." At college, the student who has no intention of rocking any kind of civil liberties boat could find himself entangled in legal proceedings due to an innocuous notice he put up on a bulletin board, or words he expressed in private, or the nature of a costume worn to a Halloween party. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) was founded expressly to deal with what is now the norm in academia--that is, suppression of free speech rights.

It is very likely that the current 36% of students who believe that newspapers should first get government approval before publishing, will increase in number. If they take their cues from the current trends in today's society, this would make sense. "Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation's future," Hodding Carter III, president of the Knight Foundation, observes while reflecting on the survey. But perhaps these kids do understand the basics of this society, and freedom is not what they envision for the future.

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