The Schools Are Destroying Freedom of Speech

                In the article “The Schools Are Destroying Freedom of Speech” by John W. Whitehead, Whitehead begins with explaining how schools used to be considered the hope of freedom and democracy and how that is no longer true.  He then gives some statistics on how many high school students know about the U.S. Constitution.  It’s eye-opening to see how few students know the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or the Fifth Amendment.  What’s worse yet, if the students don’t know, then the schools aren’t doing their job to teach them.  Even though the article is about freedom of speech and Whitehead begins with statistics about other things, I still think those statistics were important in making his point.

                Whitehead uses two examples as to how schools are not allowing students to use their First Amendment freely.  The first example is a student Nicholas Noel who referred to his school as a prison, so the school refused to award him with his diploma.  The second incident was also a student, Brittany McComb, who at graduation night gave a speech that the school did not approve of because she used Bible verses, references to “the Lord”, and mentioned “Christ”.  During her speech, they unplugged her microphone to censor her.  She made a lawsuit out of the incident but a federal appeals court sided with the school.

                Whitehead compares the school to Hitler and Saddam Hussein saying that the “government officials can pull the plug on microphones when they disagree with whatever any citizen has to say.”  To think of the government as being so controlling is actually kind of scary.  It is easy to see, though, how the government keeps changing the First Amendment to only benefit them.