March 3, 2005
The Future of the First Amendment:
High School Students Just Don't Get It
By Floyd Johnson
The way many high school students see it, government censorship of the news may not be a bad thing. It turns out that the First Amendment is not a big deal for many students nearing adulthood. In a recent survey of high school students funded by the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation (http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/Future-First-Amendment31jan05.htm), it was found that basic freedoms such as the freedom of speech and the press contained in the First Amendment were not important to them.
Conducted in the Spring of 2004 by the University of Connecticut, the survey of 112,003 high school students at 544 public and private high schools found a disturbing ignorance about the fundamental rights contained in our Constitution.
* More than a third of the students surveyed said they believed the First Amendment goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees.
* One-third of the students said they believe the press has "too much freedom."
* More than 35,000 students in the study believe that newspapers should get government approval of their stories "before" they are published.
* Half the respondents thought the government has the right to censor Internet content.
Hodding Carter III, president of the Knight Foundation, summarized, "These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous" to the future of our country. What high school students think about the First Amendment is important. The attitudes of each new generation can greatly affect the precious, hard-won freedoms we enjoy in America. The rights defined by the First Amendment do not change, but how we interpret them too often does. Annual surveys of adult Americans by The Freedom Forum show that public support for the First Amendment rises and falls during times of national stress. In the wake of the 9/11, the nation was almost evenly split on the question of whether or not the First Amendment "goes too far in the rights it guarantees.''
It is especially disconcerting, almost frightening, that 35,000 high school students in the survey think that the government should be able to approve news stories before they are published, that the government should be able to censor news it deems unsuitable, inappropriate or offensive. If such censorship were to be allowed, it would be a very short "next step" for the government to censor political views judged unfavorable to the government and a "first step" towards tyranny.
The study has renewed debate by lawmakers and educators alike about the importance of teaching civics in schools. The survey revealed that the absence of even a basic education in the history of our colonial struggle for freedom has led to increasing ignorance throughout America about the very democracy our forefathers fought and died for.
The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, is the very cornerstone of our way of life and the rights we all enjoy. The original draft of our Constitution (finished by the Constitutional Convention in 1787, but not yet ratified by the thirteen states) did not include the Bill of Rights. As it was finally drafted in 1787, the Constitution did not solve the possible problem that a majority of voters might impose unreasonable laws without regard to the rights and needs of individuals or minorities. It took four more long years of discussion and debate by our founding fathers and the writers of the Constitution before the Bill of Rights was finally agreed to and added to the Constitution. Only then did the original thirteen states agree and finally ratify the Constitution on December 15, 1791.
If we Americans do not learn, or if we choose to forget, our early colonial history - why we rebelled against British rule, how we as citizen soldiers fought for and won our freedom, how we came together in a constitutional convention and argued and struggled to reach agreement on how our government should be formed (a government "for and by the people"), then those precious rights the founding fathers fought for will surely fade into oblivion and be lost. Our colonial history is a rich and important period in not only our own history, but in the entire history of all mankind. That history should not be ignored or forgotten by Americans, but treasured.
All high school students should be required to take a senior-level, semester-long course on our Constitution - how and why it was written. It should be a requirement to graduate. The course should include an in depth examination of the Bill of Rights, the debates that surrounded its writing, and why the Constitution was held up and not ratified for four more years until the Bill of Rights was agreed and included. The course should provide an historical overview of our early colonial period, why colonists felt oppressed by British rule, and how they finally rebelled against British laws, taxes and censorship being imposed on them from London without colonial representation.
A thorough understanding of our Constitution is necessary for our young people to become successful citizens and responsible voters. If we wait to teach the history of the Bill of Rights as an elective course in college, then we will have failed. We will have waited too long.
------------------------------------------------
Floyd Johnson describes himself as a depression-born, unreconstructed FDR-Democrat. He moved to Phoenix from London in 1975 after residing several years in Brussels and London. He received a Masters Degree from Thunderbird - The Garvin School of International Management in Glendale, Arizona in 1981. After 35 years in the computer industry, he was a used and rare book seller in Peoria, Arizona until his retirement in 2002.
------------------------------------------------