Evolving Notions of Freedom of Speech in Modern Education

In the late 20th century, many public colleges and high schools in America designated areas on their campus as “safe spaces”: areas where students were encouraged to speak any thought free of retribution. Other students could provide feedback, and debate was encouraged. Today, many universities still retain these spaces, and many have labeled their entire campus a safe space; however, their definition has shifted drastically.

A safe space is no longer an area where speakers and their speech acts are protected – the term now refers to safety for the listener. In an attempt to create a “safer” educational environment, many universities have placed bans on comments deemed vulgar, bigoted, or otherwise offensive by administrators. Debates can be shut down in the name of safety rather than encouraged. Colleges that once saw argument as healthy now view it as threatening.

The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that modern public education in America coddles students; through restricting offensive speech and limiting the types of books and media, students can consume while in school, the American education system breeds a population that is unhealthily averse to a disagreement while actually endangering the minority groups it seeks to protect.

Background

First, it’s notable that defending constitutionally protected free speech doesn’t imply the defense of all speech unconditionally. For example, the constitution already makes reasonable restrictions on the time, place, and manner of protests and doesn’t protect against threats or calls to violence: i.e., students are allowed to hold protests, but not in the middle of biology class. Court rulings are currently up in the air, however, on whether or not public schools ought to have a unique ability to restrict speech beyond what is constitutionally protected, i.e., restricting jokes that are deemed racist or comments that could provoke anxiety in a sexual assault victim.

Some court cases have answered yes. For example, the court case of Hazelwood v. Kuhmelier has set a precedent that high school administrators are able to restrict student speech that they find offensive. As a result, public high schools and colleges across America have been notably averse to free but offensive expression in the last decade. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education found that in 2016, 49.3% of colleges maintained “highly restrictive” speech codes.

Education

Proponents of in-school censorship and modern, safe spaces argue that schools are designed to be places of learning and that education is stifled if students are offended by things that they see, hear, or read. This argument, however, fails to see the issue from a wider perspective. Students actually learn less if they’re only exposed to a fraction of the entire marketplace of ideas. This is not only because speech restrictions make it harder to uncover the truth but because sensitivity to novel opinions harms the development of ideas.

Books

Speech restrictions intended to serve as a buttress to education frequently work against it. For example, of books banned across American high schools in the last decade, the second most frequent reason cited for their restriction was “offensive language” – primarily the word “nigger” (NCAC, 2016, fig. 1). Frequently restricted classics include Adventures of Huckleberry Finn & To Kill a Mockingbird. The absence of historically relevant books in the classroom can leave students without valuable educational resources.

Internet

Moreover, the even-more-rampant internet restrictions and filters prove equally harmful to the educational environment because they almost always censor information that could be valuable to students. M. Fulgei explains:

Many students already have unfiltered access to the internet at home or on smartphones. The best way to protect students is to expand their media literacy skills and educate them about the potential for harm online . . . Districts and schools with overly vigorous internet filters deprive students of opportunities to build academic skills they’ll need in the future . . . Socioeconomic divides also widen when some populations have unfiltered access to the internet while others, who may not have smartphones or internet access at home, do not.

Trigger Warnings

Professors in a host of American universities are additionally required to provide “trigger warnings” for students prior to discussing any sensitive topics like rape or domestic abuse. This common example of speech compulsion is likewise counterproductive; recent research indicates that “trigger warnings increase peoples’ perceived emotional vulnerability to trauma, increase peoples’ belief that trauma survivors are vulnerable, and increase anxiety to written material perceived as harmful” (Bellet et al., 2018). It appears that speech restrictions and compulsions almost necessarily make the fundamental mistake of believing that a lack of engagement solves problems; the truth is that most issues are best solved through discourse and exposure.

Critical Thought

Speech restrictions tend to be especially dangerous at middle and high school levels because developing children ought to be exposed to a variety of ideas in order to learn to think critically. Information retention is greater when students engage in more critical discourse.

Authoritarianism

Lastly, censorship of speech is always dangerous. Restriction or compulsion of speech is the first step that authoritarian regimes take in order to gain or consolidate power because the language that we use shapes our perception of the state and of morality as a whole. J. Rodzvilla explains:

The art of censorship has always been an act of reduction. It is an art practiced by bureaucrats and authoritarian regimes on work by others to create a pastiche of the larger culture that reflects how those in power want it to be perceived rather than how it is. In America, we have a history of people banning books to deny ideas that are already part of the culture. School boards ban books that involve teen sexuality and drug use in an attempt to deny issues that already exist.

Speech restrictions, in fact, aim to restrict certain ideologies rather than allow engagement with an issue; they’re band-aid solutions to issues that reach far wider than communication. Academic liberty must be valued over sheltering sensitivity.

Discrimination

Proponents of in-school censorship also tend to be especially restrictive of what they call “hate speech.” For example, a handful of colleges will expel you for saying something racist, sexist, or anti-gay – in 2016, Harvard even rescinded offers of admission from 10 students for “sharing joke images in a private group chat on Facebook” (FIRE). The danger of restricting even wildly offensive speech outweighs the increased sense of security; hate speech restrictions are actually used disproportionately against the very minorities they seek to protect and do virtually nothing to stop racism.

Protection

Speech codes are always ideologically motivated, and as such, they tend to be especially harmful to members of perceived tribes who don’t align with their proscribed position. D. Jacobson (2016) explains:

The immunity to racism and hate speech ordinarily given to members of protected groups does not extend to those who fail to espouse progressive positions. On the contrary, they are attacked even more vehemently as traitors, often in overtly racist or sexist terms. Women, minorities, or gays and lesbians who dare to stray from the opinions they are supposed to have—that is, those considered representative of their assigned identity—not only are subject to abuse by the supposedly oppressed campus activists but also forfeit the special protections they would otherwise be granted . . . But whites . . . who “check their privilege” are allowed to speak.

Solvency

Moreover, forcibly shutting up bigots does very little to stop them from actually thinking in racist ways – and this can backfire once students leave campus. N. Strossen (2018) found that racist ideologies are solved almost exclusively through counterspeech and dialogue (p. 24). Furthermore, speech codes fail to actually stop hate speech, both on campus and off campus; some studies have even found that speech codes on campus increase instances of hateful speech off campus (Jacobson, 2016). Solutions to discrimination necessitate the identification of racist beliefs – a task made far more difficult by speech restrictions.

Conclusion

The premise of the safe space mentality is correct: public schools should be places of education and safety. There is scant evidence that safe spaces do anything more than increase student sensitivity, jeopardize the security of free speech, and damage discourse. Speech must be protected unconditionally, foremost in educational environments.

References

1. Bellet, B. W., Jones, P. J., & McNally, R. M. (2018). Trigger warning: Empirical evidence ahead. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psichiatry. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005791618301137
2. Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). (2019). Spotlight on Speech Codes 2019. FIRE Quarterly. Retrieved from https://www.thefire.org/spotlight/reports/spotlight-on-speech-codes-2019/
3. Fulgei, M. (2017). How Internet Filtering Can Affect Education. Room 241: A Blog by Concordia University – Portland. Retrieved from https://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/classroom-resources/how-internet-filtering-affects-education/
4. Jacobson, D. (2016). Freedom of Speech Under Assault on Campus. CATO Policy Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/freedom-speech-under-assault-campus
5. Lenatsch, Z. (2018). 30 Years of Hazelwood: Revisiting the First Amendment Rights of Minors in the Education System During the Social Media Age. Texas State University Digital Collections. Retrieved from https://digital.library.txstate.edu/handle/10877/7815
6. Mercer, N., & Hodgkinson, S. (2008). Exploring talk in school: Inspired by the work of Douglas Barnes. SAGE.
7. National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC). (2016). Book Censorship in Schools: A Toolkit. OCLC. Retrieved from https://www.webjunction.org/documents/webjunction/Book_Censorship_in_Schools_A_Toolkit.html
8. Rodzvilla, J. (2019). Margaret E. Roberts: Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall. Princeton Univeristy Press. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12109-019-09635-x
9. Strossen, N. (2018). Hate: Why we should resist it with free speech, not censorship. Oxford Univeristy Press.