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"A Suburban Surprise"
August 5, 2005

By Warren Watson

Researchers at the University of Connecticut caused quite a stir last winter when they reported in a nationwide study of 112,000 high school students that America's high schools are leaving the First Amendment behind.

Hundreds of newspapers and Web sites picked up the story. Many wondered out loud: At a time when we are at war in the name of freedom, how could it be? How could schools be failing to instill an appreciation of the basic ideals of our democracy?

Commentators from the right and left joined voices in support of First Amendment awareness, from Kathleen Parker to Michael Moore to Rush Limbaugh ? even Dear Abby. James Spader, the actor, took up the cause, delivering an impassioned defense of the First Amendment in an oral argument in an episode of the TV series ?Boston Legal.?

After a time, the commotion died down ? but never went away.

Well, David Yalof and Ken Dautrich, the Connecticut team behind the massive Future of the First Amendment study, are at it again, releasing new findings from the study funded by the Knight Foundation. America's suburban schools should brace themselves: the research shows that lack of awareness and appreciation of the First Amendment is most acute in the area least expected -- the relatively richer and student-media-saturated suburban schools of our nation.

You see, the original report showed conclusively that high schools were doing a poor job of instilling an appreciation for the First Amendment. Many young Americans surveyed said they welcomed government censorship of the media.

But there was one piece of good news in the original study: students exposed to journalism classes and various forms of student media were more likely to be tolerant of the five freedoms of the First Amendment: speech, religion, press, assembly and petition. Those not exposed were more likely to be indifferent or oppose those freedoms.

A deeper analysis of the data provided a shocker. Suburban schools, those with the most resources, the most classes, the most forms of media, lagged behind rural and urban schools. Those greater resources available in the suburbs ? where some schools have a student newspaper, yearbook, sports magazine, literary magazine, Web site, TV and more ? do not parlay into greater tolerance and support for the First Amendment.

?Yes, it's a sad story,? said Susan Hathaway Tantillo, an Illinois educator and local site chair for the November convention of the Journalism Education Association (JEA) in Chicago. JEA traditionally is the largest gathering of high school journalists and teachers in the land. ?The findings are right on the money.?

The research, which also probed regional differences in attitudes, showed that urban students (86 percent) were more likely than suburban students (81 percent) and rural students (82 percent) to think people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions. Those suburban kids are somewhat less tolerant despite the fact that 82 percent of suburban schools offer student newspapers as an activity, as compared to just 68 percent of rural schools and 77 percent of urban schools.

Teachers and scholastic journalism experts found themselves scratching their heads over the latest research. Some said the study verified feelings they had all along.

?Suburban kids don't want to rock the boat,? said Ann Akers, the assistant director of the National Scholastic Press Association, and former teacher. ?They avoid controversy. They go along with authority all the time. They're comfortable.?

Rod Kuhn, a journalism teacher and publication adviser at Homestead High School in Fort Wayne, Ind., attributed the results to good old-fashioned politics. ?Suburban families tend to be conservative. Kids normally pick up the politics of their parents. (Those parents) feel strongly that liberal politics threaten their lifestyle, and they see liberties such as the First Amendment as a threat to that lifestyle.?

Interestingly, researcher Yalof probed the political question by comparing student attitudes from the so-called red states, which supported conservative Republican George Bush in the last two presidential elections, against the blue states, which supported Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004, respectively. He found no significant differences in attitudes about the First Amendment. Nor did he find significant variation in attitudes regionally.

?The last elections revealed sharp political divisions in the American political landscape,? said Yalof. ?Yet many student opinions about the First Amendment and freedom of the press tend to stay remarkably consistent across these otherwise widely accepted political fault lines.?

Yet Yalof agrees that the political division did show up in the suburban findings. ?I think you find that greater per capita income translates into people who are more conservative politically and distanced from an issue such as freedom of speech and press,? he said.

Dawn Nelson, former director of the Colorado High School Press Association, said the issue goes beyond politics. She remarked that suburban students have an ?attitude of entitlement,? and are used to taking direction ? and are accustomed to privilege. They have sacrificed the First Amendment for perceived safety and comfort, and hold tenaciously to the status quo.

?The kids in the suburbs are all focused on getting into good colleges and don't want to get caught up in a controversy. They're worried about angering the administration and not getting a good college recommendation,? she said.

Akers said that a few years ago her eyes were opened when she first advised a journalism program at a suburban California high school. ?We were putting the paper together in the journalism room one night, and I heard a lot of banging down the hall from the student lockers. I asked the students what the noise was. They said matter-of-factly that it was probably another locker search,? she said.

?I said to the kids that they should write something about that for the paper. But no one seemed fazed. One student remarked, ?Why is that a story? The administration owns the lockers, don't they?'?

Journalism student Nancy Eichhohltz of Lawrence Central High School in the Indianapolis suburbs admits she thinks very little about the First Amendment. ?I've never really felt that First Amendment freedoms were on the verge of being taken away from me,? she said.

Andrea Beaulieu, a journalism student at North Side High School in Fort Wayne, Ind., agreed most students are indifferent. ?I don't think kids our age really think about the First Amendment,? she said. ?They have their own lives and are really wrapped up in that.?

Nick Ferentinos, an educational consultant in San Francisco, attributes the latest findings to the overall erosion of student media and increased censorship of student voices by principals and administrators.

In particular, he worries that the 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision Hazelwood vs. Kuhlmeier, which allowed principal censorship of student media in limited circumstances, is having a ?chilling? effect on students and teachers.

?It's becoming reality. Kids are self-censoring,? Ferentinos said.

(Warren Watson, a 30-year reporter and editor at U.S. newspapers, teaches journalism at Ball State University, where he directs J-Ideas, a national institute dedicated to excellence in high school journalism, First Amendment awareness and media literacy. He can be reached at wwatson@bsu.edu . J-Ideas associate Gerry Appel contributed to this report.)

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