I was 11 and spent fifth period in Mrs. Putnam’s world history class. She taught art the prior hour, and I welcomed the distraction of the paintings hung on her wall. One afternoon, small rectangular canvases, still drying, were perched on the ledge of the chalkboard, spanning the front of the room. One painting, breaking the line of color, did not face outward, but was tilted toward the board, the back visible.
We whispered about the painting out of place, and a few minutes before the bell, Mrs. Putnam turned the canvas around to reveal ugly, blood red, block letters advising: “Do unto others then split.” It shocked, likely as the artist intended. She flipped it back over and said simply, “This is not acceptable.” She then walked us through the bumpy terrain of the nastiness of the message and why it offended her, to freedom of expression and our staunch commitment to protect it. She hung the canvas in the back corner of the room facing the wall for the rest of the year.
Point made.
The difference between her approach and the likely response today is striking and disturbing. Yes, I was schooled in a comfortable Atlanta suburb in a radically different era, and I do not know for certain what happened to the angry artist behind the scenes. But in 2014, he easily could have been expelled for threatening his classmates; referred to mandatory counseling, or medicated indefinitely as a precaution.
Now, in the name of safety and inclusion and diversity, many schools have abandoned their duty to protect freedom of expression for students. Not only is this a profound abdication of responsibility, but it is counterproductive and damaging to children.
Psychologists attribute acting out in young children, in part, to their inability to express themselves verbally. Learning how to communicate is critical to healthy development. Children need to be able to give a name to what they are feeling and thinking, the more specific the better. The role of adults is to help them develop maximum facility with language, and they learn by doing, which means tolerance of the missteps and the testing of boundaries. If we do our job, we teach them the power of speech, including how words can wound and offend, and the benefits of effective communication.
But we are not doing our jobs. Rather than developing language fluency, schools are increasingly limiting speech. We now have zero-tolerance policies stretched to include verbal expression, in a purported effort to maintain a safe learning environment.
They remain popular though the National Association of School Psychologists holds such polices are not only ineffective against school violence, but impact black, male and disabled students negatively and disproportionately. Building communication skills now, in many schools, consists of teaching students what not to say.
Well-intentioned advocates unfortunately compound the problem. Diversity programs impede the verbal development process by imposing “appropriate speech,” while an extreme anti-bullying campaign in Britain argues that any word or group of words can be bullying. So, in the face of draconian rules and penalties, kids nowadays have two safe choices: Say what they are told, or do not speak at all.
The damage we are doing is real. We are increasingly losing touch with children, particularly teenagers. With the advent of social media, they communicate in a shorthand that we struggle to keep up with. Further, the cyber world is where they freely express themselves as we fail to provide open public venues.
There, in the land of texts and posts with no adult moderator, they explore the limits and power of speech and, at times, viciously attack each other with lethal consequences. At this extreme we are enabling, “Do unto others then split.”
More subtly, limitations on speech engender disconnection, possibly helping fuel these attacks. Ethicist John Portmann claims that “Americans remain deeply invested in the notion of the authentic self.”
Notably, artists, psychologists and self-helpers describe this self-awareness as finding your voice. Pursuit of this ideal, essentially acting in accordance with your own values and beliefs, is not a fringe endeavor. School should be an environment where children develop their voice, connect with themselves and others, and are allowed to make mistakes in the process.
In an effort to combat violence, we should employ interventions shown to be effective and specifically designed to address the problem. Clearly, diversity and inclusion are important, but education to bring about a change in attitudes is distinct from imposed word choice. We need to re-commit to the principle of free speech as an education cornerstone, even if it makes teaching more difficult, and recognize it should not be sacrificed in pursuit of other goals.
