Free speech defined and my role in it, part two

free speech?  It's messy.  Protesting?  It's messy.  It's sometimes raw, sometimes disrespectful, and sometimes it is very inconvenient.  But to see that happen and to have that be the freedom that we exercise in this country is glorious and THAT is what we in America are blessed with. 

Yeah, I know I'm quoting myself to start this intro, which is quite possibly the douchiest thing you could do on a blog (or ... is it innovative?  Nah, I have neither the experience nor arrogance, nor do I command the salary to consider myself "innovative."  I'm just a schmuck.  Oh well.), but when I was thinking about what I wanted to write today, I kept coming back to this particular part of a previous post, and the reason for that is that I wanted to take a look at what the First Amendment means in the context of my everyday role as a classroom teacher and my students' everyday roles as well.

I guess I'll be more clear--and since I actually started this post about six days ago and have repeatedly erased everything from this point forward, I might wind up being brief because I'm kind of in "Oh just get it done" mode here--and talk a little about where my students and freedom of speech actually collide.  Obviously, I could get into the whole idea of freedom of the press and student newspapers and yearbooks, but I've talked at length about this particular subject and want to get more general with it anyway.


Every once in a while, something happens at school that pisses students off.  Okay, there's something that happens every day that pisses A student off, but a whole class riled up about the same thing isn't an everyday occurrence.  Usually the riled-up-ness has to do with whatever overblown rivalry is being played out on a football field that coming Friday night; rarely is it something that happened in the world (I think that I may have had the occasional current events conversation in the past couple of years).  Sometimes, though, it's something like a change in school rules that directly affects them.  For instance, a new policy concerning cell phones or a change in the dress code.

I've used these particular moments of outrage to my advantage before, usually because I have no problem setting aside the day's discussion and because most of the time the discussion we wind up having is way more fun than vocabulary (not that vocabulary can't be fun, but come on, let's be real here).  Plus, since I do teach writing (okay, ATTEMPT to teach writing.  Let's be real here), it fits because I do cover argumentative writing.  So over the course of however long the discussions last (they've gone 10-45 minutes depending on the group), I do my best to mediate a civil discussion (i.e., one person talks at a time so people can actually hear) and also provide counter arguments and other points for discussion.

Okay, so I play Devil's Advocate.  And playing Devil's Advocate is fun, but I swear there's a point to it too.  No, really.  I'll get to it.

At some point in the discussion, especially if it's lengthy, someone brings up what they as students can do.  The three I hear most often than not (and this goes back to my own days as a student, back in the early 1990s nadir of pencils, paper, and Z.Cavaricci jeans) are:

• Let's get a petition going!
• Let's walk out of class!
• Let's protest!

In my role as Devil's Advocate, I often shoot down the first two and ask them to go deeper with the third.  Why do I shoot down a petition?  Well, I personally find petitions to be kind of ineffective.  They're often poorly planned (i.e., they don't know who to give the petition to) or peter out after the first day, or kind of show their relative ignorance of how change within this particular system gets going (i.e., it's probably going to be ignored).  Walking out of class seems like a bold move, but let's be real: even if you could get everyone behind you to walk to the school board office to scream "Donna Martin graduates!" quite a number of your fellow walkouts would be doing so in order to cut class and at the end of the day, TPTB will probably focus on the cutting class rather than the message sent (see also: TEA Party bitching about how the Occupy movement didn't clean up after themselves).

So, the protest.  In trying to get them to dig deeper I'll ask five questions:

1. What are you protesting?
2. Why are you protesting it?
3. Who is your protest directed towards?
4. What is/are the result(s) you want to see?
5. What is the best way to get your message across?

Then, the "teaching" begins, in a way.  We talk about voice, audience, and purpose.  We talk about knowing a desired result and finding the best way to go about doing it.  We talk about how too often the audience for their protest wants to dismiss them as "whiny teenagers" so it's worth the effort to show that they aren't and are worth listening to.  After all, for all of the smoke adults blow about students, they still take a "We know what's best for you" attitude when it comes to things like rules.

So while this will sound arrogant (I KNOW, right?!), I believe that as teachers, we're bastions of free speech.  We provide a place where students not only can use their voices but can work to hone and fine-tune that voice so they get what they want or need.  We should never blow a student off when he or she has a concern or wants to express an opinion; instead, we should help them develop that opinion by either strengthening it or challenging it (after all, it is possible for a student to actually be wrong about something).

Okay, that wasn't brief at all.  My bad.