Hard lessons from poetry class: Speech is free unless it's critical

[Katarina]

This is a must read! It is unbelievable how peoples rights are being lost. Truly frightening.

<snip>
Bill Nevins, a New Mexico high school teacher and personal friend, was fired last year and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated. It had nothing to do with obscenity, but it had everything to do with extremist politics.

The "Slam Team" was a group of teenage poets who asked Nevins to serve as faculty adviser to their club. The teens, mostly shy youngsters, were taught to read their poetry aloud and before audiences. Rio Rancho High School gave the Slam Team access to the school's closed-circuit television once a week and the poets thrived.

In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel.

A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being "un-American" because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its "No child left behind" education policy.

http://www.n-jcenter.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/03OpOPN62051504.htm

[OneBlueSky]

1. this is very scary stuff . . . yet another BushCo product . . .

curtailing freedom of speech in this way, and in a school no less, is unconscionable . . . and allowing the school's "military advisor" any kind of role in determining what happens academically is downright scary . . . this is not the America I grew up in . . .

[scarletlib]

2. Blame the adults in charge

Shame on the gutless school administrators who let this happen and the faculty who just accepts it. Cowards all and setting an example of "patriotism" and "american freedom" for their students.

[struggle4progress]

3. Maybe I should start buying guns. eom