So what do you do if you are a student in Nashua, NH and along with your community, you’re staring a teacher walkout in the face?
Well, you put together a whole slew of Read/Write Web tools and get ready to cover the event, everything from a Facebook group to a video channel to a blog. Here is the deal according to the Facebook page:
A team of students from both Nashua High Schools, skilled in video production, computer editing, webcasting, and Internet social networking have established an off-campus production center to keep the community informed, moment-to-moment, in the event of a Nashua Teacher’s Union job action. The student center will webcast daily, upload video interviews and other footage constantly. The team will employ video chat, instant messaging, and social networking activity through sites such as Facebook to keep in touch with their audience.
And the kids seem to get what the possibilities are:
“What people don’t see is how this situation is impacting the students.” said Korey O’Brien, producer. “We have first amendment rights, and as citizens in a democracy have an obligation to get involved.” O’Brien believes that students can be objective: “Given the extreme opinions on both sides that I’ve read about in the newspaper, it should be easy for us to offer a more reasonable viewpoint. If we broadcast the student’s perspective, perhaps our voices will affect how the issue is resolved.”
They’ve got over 230 members in the Facebook group since Thursday, a half a dozen videos up already, and according to Nicole Tomaselli who sent me the link, they’ve got quite a following already.
The Nashua teachers have been modeling the uses of these tools for quite some time. I’ve had a link to their YouTube channel on my presentation wiki for over a year now. (Check out this video from their “Education Worth Paying For” series.) I have no idea if these kids have been “taught” to use these tools for the intended purpose or if they’ve recognized it on their own, but I think this is an amazingly cool example of kids doing real work for real audiences, the same audiences which will, in the end, assess the effectiveness of their work.
So where is this in your currciulum?
Maybe it’s due to the teachers that attend the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference http://www.nhcmtc.org/ hosted in Nashua every year? Maybe the students are attending too?
Hi. I’m the instructor for the course. Unfortunately neither my students or I have ever been to the Technology Conference. I’m mostly teaching during the times of the conference.
Jim Pfeiffer
I know exactly where this is in my curriculum, because we’re covering First Amendment rights.
Students at school do not have full First Amendment rights. I’m sure FindLaw could cite you a dozen court cases where absolute freedom of speech has been strictly limited, whether it’s the school newspaper or “Bong Hits for Jesus.”
That kid needs a civics course, stat.
I’m the instructor for the students that started we-the-students.org. You are right that students do not have full First Amendment rights, but they still do have them. Students can give consent in high school and they do have free speech rights such as those exercised by these students using school equipment to cover this topic and speak their mind. This crisis has led to discussions of federal privacy laws, analysis of balanced reporting, partnerships with local reporters, and has raised the visibility of the students substantially. They have reacted professionally. We’re in a mess and trying to make lemonade.
@Benjamin Thanks for the comment. I taught journalism for a lot of years too and we discussed Hazelwood and other decisions in these contexts. But let’s play this out. What if the 16 year old is using a blog, creating and posting video, and using these other technologies absent anything to do with school, school time, school equipment, etc. Does he then have equal First Amendment rights? I would think the answer would be yes. Not saying that’s the case here, since I don’t know the particulars, but it could easily be.
The student has First Amendment freedoms outside school. By all indications, this does not fall under that umbrella.
The “Bong Hits for Jesus” kid was standing across the street from the school. That these kids are off-campus doesn’t make any difference to my mind. As long as they can be said to represent the school or the campus, they would be found to have limited First Amendment freedoms.
I’m not saying I’d like for the student to lack full First Amendment protection, but I seriously doubt they have it. If he were using school equipment or at school when he puts it together, there’s no case for his protection at all.
As you imply, the Hazelwood verdict wouldn’t apply as the principal would not be the publisher of the content. Unless, of course, the student uses school equipment, in which case prior restraint would be perfectly acceptable.
I doubt that this would see the inside of a court, though. Principals are not about to discourage a student from showing the poor conditions of a school without teachers. If anything, that’ll put pressure on the teachers’ groups to stop the walkout.
Or so the principal might imagine.
The principal has been supportive. There are many legal issues that this work has raised and they are all intriguing. How much can be said? Where? So far, everyone on the adult side of the fence has been reasonable and supportive of this student effort.
@ Benjamin: the legal arguments/questions are mildly interesting, at best.
Change occurs when people use tools/resources in different ways. In this example, students are using available resources to craft a message.
The original point stands: how well are we preparing our students to do the same thing? In two years, today’s 16 year old will be 18, and out of school, and the legal barriers you describe limiting free speech in high school will vanish.
Cheers,
Bill
I personally find them fascinating, but that’s all up to personal taste.
I imagine that we’re preparing students not well at all for the experience, considering that, at best, we’ve spent eleven years of school plus kindergarten to prepare them for a life of following instructions and a workman’s bell before we hit them with that civics course.
Is that the realm of school? How could a school teach that almost-absolute freedom of speech adults have and yet maintain order enough on campus to teach students anything else?
Why should it be the place of high school or elementary education to teach freedom of speech, and why not let them discover it on their own once they graduate?
I’d argue furthermore that we can’t teach them free speech in a controlled environment — that would totally defeat the purpose of that freedom. I say we give them the tools as they head out the door, as most schools do already.
Considering that an inside look at a teacher’s strike might be believed to have no possible negative consequences for the principal, I don’t see why the principal shouldn’t be supportive.
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