Pennsylvania School Press Association

Earlier this year, I visited with advisers and journalism students attending a workshop at Bloomsburg University.  A common theme when I talk “press freedom” with student journalists these days is the need for staff strategies.  No single approach will work in all schools, with all administrators, but the ingredients for success are the same—confidence in the value of good journalism, professional and ethical performance as student journalists, and communication that helps the audience (including administrators) understand why and how you do what you do as journalist.

After one workshop session, an adviser with five years of experience approached me.  She said she valued my suggestions, adding that she’s learned a lot by attending the Pennsylvania and Columbia scholastic press conferences, acquiring material from the Journalism Education Association, and participating in an American Society of Newspaper Editors’ summer institute for advisers.

Then she sighed.  “But we can’t do many of those things,” she said.  “My principal won’t let us.”  Later that day, I heard as much from three of her students during a discussion of their newspaper.  Two juniors and a sophomore who are on the staff said they don’t even want to talk to the principal.  She just lectures, they said.  She never listens.

I was more angry than saddened after those conversations.  After four decades of work with student journalists, I’ve come to expect incidents of self-censorship.  I know that many advisers struggle to learn and share what they themselves were never formally taught.  And I know how easy it is for advisers and J students—isolated, exposed and vulnerable—to retreat in the face of intimidation.  They value their school and community, their colleagues and friends.  But advisers are teachers, too, working with students in school to learn.

What is the high school principal there to do?  Care about the school and community?  Of course!  Protect students and staff from harm?  Certainly!   But school officials are educators, too.  They teach through policy and practice.  And the principal in the school described above is doing a terrible disservice to her school’s students and teachers.  What her terror-tactics are “teaching” is a lesson about power that will scar and embitter young citizens, who should be learning that their ideas matter.

I talked that day in Bloomsburg to journalism students who want to Care Out Loud about their school, and write what’s important and interesting to their readers.  The humiliating treatment they receive in return is making them cynical, disenchanted and discouraged.  Two actually laughed when I suggested they invite the principal to a discussion of stories they would like to report.

High school students facing such obstacles in other parts of the country have in increasing numbers gone outside of the school to express themselves.  They have their own Web sites, produce their own online publications or blogs, even produce and distribute alternative school newspapers.  And although school officials are trying harder to stop anything critical or ‘negative’ from these independent voices, administrators find that there is little they can do legally to stop or punish students who use their own means to communicate outside of school, without teacher supervision.

I don’t advocate that as a first, or even useful, alternative to existing school publications.  I didn’t suggest that the frustrated students or adviser take their case public outside of the school.  This should not be the first, and may not be the most productive, alternative.

For example, newspaper staffs in some schools have effectively made the principal or an assistant principal part of the process—not as an editor, but as a consultant.  When editors meet regularly with an administrator for a discussion of the previous issue, that person can be a sounding board for story ideas and a resource to help the students report stories of their choosing.  Such discussions remind all parties that theirs is a student AND school publication.

Where such dialogue cannot take place, administrators should not be surprised that students resist.  They should cry out when the only publication allowed in school forces students to accept the imposed message that their views are not important, and that the only ideas they can print are those acceptable to school officials.   That clearly is not lawful regulation of a student publication, as courts for years have said to high school administrators.

Perhaps it is time for scholastic press associations, including PSPA, to draft a strong, affirmative, pro-education letter to all Pennsylvania high school principals.  Remind them of their obligation as educators. Caution them that scaring students into silence is anything but beneficial to young people who are supposed to be learning how to be productive citizens.  And tell these administrators that there are other sound avenues that are mutually beneficial.

School Boards consist of elected public officials who occasionally must court public opinion and behave as the politicians they are.  But the public sees the School Board as a watchdog, monitoring the education system and its employees on behalf of the community, parents and children.

School administrators, also public officials but without the election burden, should be educators first, not the Thought Police, instead responsible for creating an atmosphere conducive to teaching and learning.