It's amazing what you find in the papers sometimes...
The way many high school students see it, government censorship of newspapers may not be a bad thing, and flag burning is hardly protected free speech.
It turns out the First Amendment is a second-rate issue to many of those nearing their own adult independence, according to a study of high school attitudes released Monday.
The original amendment to the Constitution is the cornerstone of the way of life in the United States, promising citizens the freedoms of religion, speech, press and assembly.
Yet, 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. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.
It just goes to show you how some people take their freedoms for granted. This is an especially stark comparison to the Iraq Elections where people voted in spite of violence. Maybe these kids need a few months WITHOUT their Freedom of Speech to understand why they need it so much. I think that would be an excellent lesson for some teacher. I think, however, that teacher would definitely be fired for trying to teach it.
Too Bad!!!
Good Morning Darren - hey I wanna see that basketball shot - I think for your next cat olympics, your cats could torture you with various ways of making you sneeze...
and of course my comments on this particular post - being a mom of teenagers (they were hatched and aged far more quickly than normal, as I am far too young to be a mom of teenagers)I feel that these students may have some mis-directed ideas, but I hope the media (all the media) will take a look at this and see that they have over-hyped, jumped in too soon to report, and OMG over-interrupted our lives with empty reports about nothing repeating and repeating and repeating they over-hyped underinformed way too early to know anything messages. These kids are responding to a life of EVERY channel and radio station coming into their lives with graphic, sometimes incorrect, overdone, repetitive news reports of everything. I remember watching the declaration of war between Desert Shield and Desert Storm while I was laying in the hospital recovering from the birth of my first dear teenager... that's when it all started, we all sat enraptured watching that guy from CNN stand in front of a backdrop of bombs being dropped on Baghdad... now all news is realtime, and every media outlet is in a race w/ the media outlet next door to be the one to report it first. It really doesn't make ANY difference in my life if I have real-time news, I can't do anything about something going on half-way across the world any better 30 minutes ago than I can tomorrow. My kids think the news is a joke, they truly do, they love getting the initial news, more than I did at their age, or the complete news, but they moan and groan and pick apart the production of every news story they hear/see/read. They critique the news like Siskel and Ebert, and they laugh at the newspeople and some of the ridiculously dumb questions they ask. As for flagburning, which you briefly mentioned, keep in mind these kids were very impressionable on 9/11 - they are far more patriotic than their parents ever were at that age. They were in grade school during Columbine and 9/11, we were in grade school during VietNam and Watergate. Government censorship is not the answer, and they will learn that, but accountability from the media would go a long way toward insuring that our freedoms are kept intact.
Posted by: mlrmpem | February 01, 2005 at 02:01 PM