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Freedom of Speech?
Since the beginning of high school, it’s been drilled into students’
heads that everything they do here will help them get into good
colleges, which will ultimately help students become successful in
whatever they do in the future. What has also been told, though not
quite so… fanatically, is that high school is a time to make
friends, have fun, and most importantly, develop our personalities
and opinions.
Recently, at
ESHS’s annual talent show, certain students were reprimanded and
could potentially have been disqualified for “offensive”
jokes, dance moves, and hand gestures. This is censorship
in a high school situated in the United States. Censorship in a
country in which freedom of speech and expression is a revered
tradition is completely ridiculous. If the administration, however,
felt as if something were dangerous, it would be understandable.
Instead of
doing everything hush-hush, and allowing rumors to circulate around
the school (as El Segundo does), the school as a whole should be
educated. This does not mean that a student’s personal business
should be reported, but the administration should do its best to
educate students on appropriate behavior, and prevent such a
controversy to arise again. Also, the organizers of school events
should work with the authority of the school and/or district to
stress to the participants the importance of acceptable conduct.
High
school students are old enough to be able to handle the consequences
of a bad decision, or the rewards of a good one. They do not need to
be spoon fed or babied, and the administration should be aware of
this. They are not, after all, paid to baby-sit, and students don’t
need to be potty trained. |
