25 years of stifled student press freedom deserves attention

I remember sitting with others lucky enough to hear oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in the fall of 1987. It was an important case about educating young citizens, and the first that the court heard dealing with a high school newspaper. I also knew it mattered because the student newspaper is the voice of many young citizens in our public schools. My mistake. This wasn’t about the court’s earlier mandate that schools foster citizenship education. The Supreme Court said that 18 years earlier in Tinker v. Des Moines, and lower courts echoed this for two decades. But this Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier case was not about educating free and responsible young journalists. It was about administrative authority. And power. And it obscured the Tinker assertion that students learn citizenship in part through practicing free and responsible speech in school.