free speech left behind in US high schools

welsh

welsh

Junkmaster
Unbelievable.

For Europeans who sometimes wonder- "Are these young Americans so susceptible to government propaganda?" Yes.

Worse, they seem happy about it and want more.

http://www.knightfdn.org/default.asp?story=news_at_knight/releases/2005/2005_01_31_firstamend.html

Survey Finds First Amendment

Is Being Left Behind in U.S. High Schools
Jan. 31, 2005
A Call to Action
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new national study, the largest of its kind, says America’s high schools are leaving the First Amendment behind.

In particular, educators are failing to give high school students an appreciation of the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and a free press, say researchers from the University of Connecticut, who questioned more than 100,000 high school students, nearly 8,000 teachers, and more than 500 administrators and principals.

The two-year, $1 million research project, titled “The Future of the First Amendment,” was commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The survey suggests that First Amendment rights – freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, of assembly and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances – would be universally known if they were classroom staples.

“High school attitudes about the First Amendment are important because each generation of citizens helps define what freedom means in our society,” the report reads.

Among its findings:

Nearly three-fourths of high school students either do not know how they feel about the First Amendment or admit they take it for granted.

Seventy-five percent erroneously think flag burning is illegal.
Half believe the government can censor the Internet.
More than a third think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.

“These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous,” said Knight Foundation President and CEO Hodding Carter III. “Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation’s future.”

In addition, the more students are exposed to the First Amendment and use the news media in the classroom, and the more involved they are in student journalism, the greater their appreciation of First Amendment rights.

Among those students who have taken courses dealing with the media or the First Amendment, for example, 87 percent believe people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions. Among students who have not taken such courses, however, the number fell to 68 percent.

Though student journalists are the savviest among all high school students on the First Amendment, a quarter of U.S. schools do not even offer media programs to students.

“The last 15 years have not been a golden era for student media,” said Warren Watson, director of the J-Ideas project at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. “Programs are under siege or dying from neglect. Many students do not get the opportunity to practice our basic freedoms.”

Nearly all principals surveyed agreed students should learn about journalism, but said financial constraints block the expansion of media programs.

The Department of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut was commissioned by Knight Foundation to conduct this study of students, faculty and administrators at 544 high schools across the country. Dr. David Yalof and Dr. Kenneth Dautrich of the University of Connecticut conducted the research.

“Civic education is crucial to developing well-informed and responsible citizens,” said Dautrich, chairman of the university’s Department of Public Policy. “By surveying students across the country as to their awareness and appreciation of First Amendment rights, Knight Foundation has provided a timely window into this important and often overlooked aspect of the educational process.”
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4488491
 
I believe it. At my high school, I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers were even higher. So many kids in the school seem to care about nothing but sleeping and smoking weed. Sigh.

And as for free press, we certainly don't get to exercise that in my school. We posted a criticism of the National Honor Society program (An honor for students who excel that ultimately fails at each of its objectives) in our newspaper (I'm sports editor for it) and received a lot of criticism from the school that threatened our existence. Everything we publish has to be approved by an advisor and it's definitely monitored tightly.
 
Somone please say superior american education system. Ha!
So basicly, the freedom of speech, the very thing the American society feels so very proud of, and on which it claims its right to show other peoples the light of Democracy, is something that a great part of the people visiting highschool (do not want to think about the Fox audience) think is a bad idea.
So not only the governement, but also a great part of the educated people is turning away from freedom, as soon as it counts for unpleasent people.
I am realy happy i do not live there.
I`d probably get a free holiday in Guantanamo Bay in no time.

I´m sorry to hear that, Lilfyffedawg, and it sounds rather strange to me, since our teachers, some of them Anarchists, other Communists/Socialists, encourage the students to write realy critical, being disapointed when they do not.
 
Heh, this reminds me of my journalist days. I co-edited the school magazine and came to see that declarative freedom of speech rarely corresponds with reality. It wasn't so much the problem of legislature (back then Croatia was, and still is, a democratic country where freedom of speech is contitutionally guaranteed, even though many attempts have been made to limit it), but of mentality. I have always been a vocal sound of discord, so I had no qualms about criticizing the ruling party on all occasions. But whenever I tried to slip a dissentful thought into my articles, the English teacher who supervised the magazine always stopped me. Her reaction was always nervous, almost fearful, as if she expected government agents to storm into the office any minute. Though her fear was (more or less) unfounded (but not totally - the government was at that time quite repressive to the media, though they likely wouldn't have given a damn about some shitty school magazine), it was still indicative of her post-totalitarian mentality which exists in most people who spent most of their lives living and working under communist dictatorship and are hesitant to embrace libertes that come with democracy (even the fragile, transitional democracy we had throughout the nineties). I fear American citizens may be slipping into the same kind of unhealthy mentality, where freedom of speech is considered a cubersome privilege rather than a God-given right, and exercising it against the government and its (often wrongful) actions is regarded as dangerous non-conformism that borders national treason, instead of every responsible citizen's duty. What's even more worrying is that such ignorant and irresponsible attitude towards freedom of speech appears to be slowly prevailing among younger generations, who are, in brevi, supposed to be the seed of democratic consciousness in every society.
 
welsh said:
University of Connecticut, who questioned more than 100,000 high school students, nearly 8,000 teachers, and more than 500 administrators and principals.
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Represent. Damn straight.

Also, pretty much all public education below university level in the United States is just bad.
 
jesus i know what it means to have unpopular opinions. at my old job i told my coworkers that sexual reproduction should be made obsolete, and the only means to produce offspring should be test tubes. hehe they gave me a fuss about that. but i don't know if it was so much as a form of play or if they were really just offended by my idea. I think it's strange that you can meet someone who is so opposed to your words that they would silence you and deny you your wordy breathes. What is the mentality behind it? These are stupid high school kids, so maybe they didn't respond accurately? (Ie adopt an edgy negative attitude or bubble randomly in the forms.) Although that would be insane to actually believe that survey error accounts for such finding.
 
Oh Lord...

Well hopefully most of the people who didnt care just werent in the mood. However, there are just too many people who can and do get through school with just a slick smile and occasional memorization of random facts regardless of whether there capable of actually applying them or even using their mind to make sense of them.

I hear the European schools stress the ability to comprehend and use knowledge over memorization and recitation by letting the students learn through their own study. Is that true?

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
Great article Welsh.

I find is really impressive though that so much money is dumped willy-nilly on the school systems of rich districts and they still can't find the funds to support anything that doesn't involve athletics.

-sigh-

I'm moving to Croatia.
 
In Australia self-learning is encouraged with no guidance, which is pretty useless for the less academic students. According to my European friends and those in South Korea, they actually stress the memory and recitation more than other elements. However the standards are much higher in Europe than in Australia and America. Able Europeans do well with the greater work load and competition because although there is more pressure to follow the teacher, students are given the tools to make their own conclusions. In Australia, work is only really started in years 11-12, at the end of high school. The previous ten odd years could easily be compacted to half the time. Consequently much time is wasted in university bringing undergraduates up to world standards.

America is even worse than Australia in that as well as not knowing anything, most American students seem to have a mindset tainted with an arrogant and narrow minded attitude which I can only assume originates in high school. In spite of having some of the lowest educational standards in the Western world, many Americans feel that they are entitled to get a college/uni degree and most do, which looks good on paper. However this means that average standards have to be lowered and only the top departments will give a quality education in a capitalist economy. This idleness in regards to the first amendment is only one example of the greater problem of poor standards in American education.
 
welsh said:
Well quietfanatic-

These tables bear out some of the problem of education in the US compared to elsewhere-


In Math-
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/dt407.asp

and Science-
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/dt411.asp
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Holy shit! You guys suck!

Note how Holland is the highest in maths and the second-highest in science...those tables must be pretty old. Hi-yuck hi-yuck*

Notice how the Russian Federation scores higher than you. That doesn't surprise me one bit. I looked through one of the 11th class students maths workbooks at the orphanage I worked there; their maths standard (what everyone has to do) is almost as high as what I had to do, and I had to do highest-level maths at the highest form of high school of Holland. Science has the same thing.

It must be left-overs from the whole Space Race, Russians are obsessed with exact sciences

* yes, Dutch education is being destroyed by "reforms" and liberalization as we speak
 
The_Vault_Dweller said:
I hear the European schools stress the ability to comprehend and use knowledge over memorization and recitation by letting the students learn through their own study. Is that true?
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Yes, or at least it is here. As evidenced by the fact that I got through the last 4 years of the highest level of high school almost entirely on comprehension, and not on memorization and recitation.

However, this depends entirely on the country. Go to Belgium and you'll notice that memorization and recitation are a lot more important there. Hell, they have to be able to literally write down mathematical axiomas and laws instead of being able to apply them. I am extremely allergic to those kinds of things.

Kharn said:
yes, Dutch education is being destroyed by "reforms" and liberalization as we speak
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Sometimes, yes. VMBO has turned into a disaster, Profielwerkstuk is silly, Tweede Fase has largely failed and is being applied differently at every school. Most universities are starting to adopt measures so they can ban people from studies if they don't try hard enough and are contemplating measures to get students to study harder, and most of those measures mean taking away the so-called academic freedom and replacing it with enforced learning, flunking and whatnot. The interesting bit is that this would lead to the Tweede Fase becoming obsolete: who needs preparation for Universities and the freedom you get there if you don't get any freedom there?

Even more interesting in this respect is that the three Universities of Technology (The 3TU project) are starting to move towards a much more central way of offering education, basically killing off diversity. I have a lot of problems with that, and because I'm in the students council of my faculty I hear a lot of interesting things about this. One of them is that they are going to centralize all three mathematical educations offered by the three TU's in one place (probably Delft) within the next ten years. They're starting with using the same exams and books in all three Universities, and want to end up with it only being offered in Delft in the end.
This will not only have a bad effect on the amount of people going there ("Hey, I live in Groningen but don't want to get a room.....ah well, I'll choose a different study"), but it will also mean that certain fields of study will simply be dropped. The department of Discrete Mathematics at the University of Technology Eindhoven is extremely pissed off, because chances are that Discrete Mathematics will, quite simply, dissappear from the roster in Eindhoven and that their department will cease to exist. The same goes for departments and substudies in the two other cities.
And this is all due to the declining number of mathematics students (even though it seems to picking up slightly)and the fact that funding is hence lower.
 
Sander said:
Yes, or at least it is here. As evidenced by the fact that I got through the last 4 years of the highest level of high school almost entirely on comprehension, and not on memorization and recitation.

However, this depends entirely on the country. Go to Belgium and you'll notice that memorization and recitation are a lot more important there. Hell, they have to be able to literally write down mathematical axiomas and laws instead of being able to apply them. I am extremely allergic to those kinds of things.
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AMEN BROTAH!

i can first hand tell you that the first year at the university is pretty much parrot work... writing down axiomas & proving them and stuff... arf, sucks

however it does get better in the later years.

i suppose they want you to first know the 'basics' *cough* and then later you can build on it...

btw: Flanders is amongst the best in math together wiv the japz i believe. which can probably be attributed to the fact we have to know all that stupid shit by hard...
(yes, you wont find Belgium that high because of our wallon counterparts ;) )
 
I wonder what the results would have been if this survey was conducted 40 years ago?

Honestly, though, High School kids these days are dumb as shit. This doesn't surprise me.
 
I can relate and sympathize with the results of the essays, but I know many people for whom the curve does NOT apply.

Take myself: I spent my afternoons either a) Model United Nations b) debating philosophy with my teachers c) working on homework or d) online with such stellar people such as yourselves.

In America, yes the average really DOES suck. However, education is really what you make of it. You study after school, you take the highest level courses available, you do well. It isnt genetic or subject to what particular blip of land you live in, it is about determination and drive. Racial and ethnic claims aside, if you want to do well hit the books and the library. That is all there is too it...you have to be insane to take a teacher's words at face value. My own teachers said to me "Examine everything I say critically and do outside research. Do not take what I say as being factual."
 
Of course there is an educated elite in America, just like everywhere else, but it is depressing that the average is so poor. It sounds like you are actually at a disadvantage in education in most cases. The system has a knack for dumbing people down which could not be good for the future. Australian standards are not good enough and we will pay for it later. America similarly will suffer and it will fall further and harder. I know little or nothing about economics but I would assume that poor standards will have serious repercussions for the workplace.
 
SuAside said:
i can first hand tell you that the first year at the university is pretty much parrot work... writing down axiomas & proving them and stuff... arf, sucks
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The point isn't to memorize proofs; the point is to understand them. Without having perfect undestanding of theory, you will never make a good engineer in practice, so suck it up, boy. :wink:
 
Kharn- well the surveys were a bit old and there have been reforms since 1995. I tried to find other comparative statitistics but only got so far. I will keep digging.

Fireblade-I kind of agree with what you are saying and agree. But I would also think that individual effort only goes so far.

Education quality often rests with the economic income of the area. Schools get their money from property taxes, so the better the property (more affluent the neighborhood) the better the schools. Schools from Long Island, a fairly well off area, are generally better than schools in poorer, more rural areas.

Truth is, educational opportunities are not equal in the US because of the issue of economic distribution- better nieghborhoods can pay for better schools, better books, better teachers, better infrastructure.

There are also cultural and social reasons for replicating educational classes as well. A rich lawyer will want to see his children become rich lawyers too- or similar professionals. This numbers also indicate public school and, even in 1995, a lot of the better secondary and primary education was in private school in the US.
 
If I could do it over again I definitely would have gone to a private school. Perhaps I would have learned to be more excited about education and consequently gone to a higher tier of college.

Ironic that in retrospect I wish the parennts would have pushed me harder in terms of education, and less in other realms; a good GPA and ACT score would have been worth much more than Eagle Scout...
 
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