Should School Newspapers Be Censored?

The First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution guarantee Americans’ rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press—unless those Americans happen to be students. More and more principals are censoring articles in school newspapers, and the courts are upholding their right to do it.

The editors and writers of school newspapers are aware that they cannot print material that is obscene or damaging to anyone’s character. As long as they keep those restrictions in mind, I think they should be allowed to include any other material they choose in their publications. School administrators, however, have recently censored articles that are not obscene or libelous, but that merely make the administrators uncomfortable.

In a famous case in Hazelwood, Missouri, the principal removed two articles from the school newspaper—one about the effects of divorce on students and the other about teen pregnancies—that he said were “unsuitable for student readers.” Several students sued the school district, saying that the action violated their constitutional rights to freedom of expression. The students took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which, in 1988, upheld the school principal’s right to censor the articles. In my opinion, the Supreme Court was wrong.

I think that one of the most important responsibilities of the educational system is to teach student how to discuss controversial issues in a free society. How can that happen if school administrators won’t even allow certain issues to be mentioned? Some administrators say that they are trying to protect students from inappropriate and controversial subject matter. The fact is, though, that censoring stories in the school newspaper does not protect students from inappropriate information. It just makes that information harder to get.

Student editors and writers have a responsibility to discuss issues that their student are concerned about and need to know. If there is a drug problem in the school, for example, the student newspaper should be able to confront it openly. Not bringing the problem to students’ attention will not make it go away. It will only make students lose respect for the publication. It will also prevent editorial staff from learning valuable lessons in freedom and responsibility.

Those who support the rights of school administrators to censor student publications think that student reporters have no more right than other reporters to have their stories printed. Censorship, they say, is just a lesson in the realities of the publishing world, where the publisher has all the power. Even a reporter for The New York Times, for example, might not get an article on gangs published if the editor of the paper decided against using it for any reason.

My answer they did not become involved in a demanding extracurricular activity to learn how to be controlled by the administration. The school should give the opportunity to develop their skills as responsible thinkers, organizers, writers, and citizens, which means exercising their freedoms of speech and of the press. The school’s social studies classes teach the value of those freedoms; its extracurricular activities should allow student to put them into practice.

Censorship supporters want students to realize that the people who own their school newspaper—the administrators—are responsible for its content. My position, however, is that the administrators don’t own the newspaper; we, the students, and our parents do. The paper is funded with our parents’ tax or tuition money. The principal and other administrators have no financial investment in it. Because we actually own the newspaper, we, therefore, should have the power to control its content.

School newspapers should provide the opportunity for student journalists to gain experience seeking out and reporting on issues that concern students at their school. Student journalists need to use this opportunity to explore and express their constitutional freedoms, not to have those freedoms censored.