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Recommendations and comments collected at the news conference releasing the
"Future of the First Amendment" report on Jan. 31, 2005.

Recommendations from:

Gene Policinski
Director, First Amendment Center
Nashville , Tenn.

The report's findings -- and the results of our own program, "First Amendment Schools" -- should wake up educators to the idea that the entire education process is impacted positively when students can say and print and express themselves freely.

We cannot expect generations of Americans who have not learned about the value of free expression, and who as children have not had a chance to consider in an educational setting the tough questions that freedom can raise, to stand by those principles as adults.

I am convinced that the education effort benefits when students can freely express themselves on serious issues and matters that they consider important in their lives. Do we really think creative thinking can be taught in an environment where creative ideas and expression are not nurtured as well -- or worse, where such is extinguished out of undue concern over controversy or a preference for order over learning?

Recommendations from:

Randy Swikle
Illinois Journalism Education Association Director
Member of JEA Scholastic Press Rights Commission

Every educator should read the Knight Foundation's First Amendment report, because its impact reaches across the curriculum to the very core of education: enlightenment. The First Amendment protects learners from those who would detour discovery because of controversy, self interests, autocratic attitudes, prejudice, incompetence, and other ignoble reasons. The First Amendment is relevant to every course, every activity, and every person in school.

Every school should use the Knight report to measure its own relationship with the First Amendment. It should be a top priority to develop strategy for teaching and practicing the First Amendment in school. Students, faculty, parents, administrators, and other citizens of the community should all work together in developing and implementing a First Amendment plan for the school. It takes a partnership approach.

Let the 3 Rs of the First Amendment ? Rights, Responsibilities, and Respect ? be the hub of your plan. Teach the entire school community the rights citizens ? young and old ? have under the First Amendment, and honor those rights. Cultivate the ethical responsibilities that accompany the legal rights. Respect diversity by accepting controversy, dissent, and unpopular perspectives within the parameters of law and safety. Let the clout of arbitrary authority yield to logic as the first and best tool of persuasion.

Serve the best interests of democracy.

Recommendations from:

Terry Nelson
Journalism teacher and adviser
Muncie ( Ind. ) Central High School

After 29 years of teaching journalism and advising publications, I have experienced first-hand the growth of students at any and all educational levels when they are allowed to have ownership in a very real publishing project: the school newspaper, where they are allowed to debate, discuss and offer divergent opinions: stretching their thoughts and concerns outside of a personal realm and into a community one.

School mission statements across the U.S. speak to nurturing a diverse student population who will become part of a global society, and communication and citizenship is surely a big component of that vision.

Students will not become community leaders or know how to communicate upon graduation if they are not allowed an opportunity to experience their strengths and their boundaries while in high school, under the supervision of a teacher trained in publications.

Allowing all students a voice in their school newspaper, taught and advised by a licensed journalism teacher, insures that all student voices are valid and justified. It insures that students will not only read, memorize and study the U.S. Constitution, but be able to live and experience it as well.

Recommendations from:

Warren Watson
Director J-Ideas
Ball State University
Muncie , Ind.

The Knight/ Connecticut report is a call to action. Training for students and advisers must be more thorough, center on the basics of news writing and editing, and be based on the First Amendment.

The study also shows that scholastic media training organizations must also focus on principals and administrators. They can make or break programs. They can facilitate new student media and fortify existing programs. They may be the key.

We also must reach the education community. Bring civics back! Make it part of the core curriculum. Make the First Amendment the first priority.

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