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from the new west blog: citizen rights

Protecting Teachers Who Protect Free Speech

By Jill Kuraitis, 10-13-08

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law last week which will protect journalism teachers against retaliation when they defend their students’ rights to free speech.

“While this law makes the workplace safer for teachers, the real beneficiaries are California’s students, who no longer must fear that honest reporting on school events will get their favorite teacher fired,” Student Press Law Center Executive Director Frank D. LoMonte said in a press release. “Governor Schwarzenegger and the California legislature should be commended for sending a message to school officials—in California and across the nation—that teachers are not to be used as pawns to intimidate kids into avoiding legitimate topics of discussion.”

No longer will public school or college instructors face possible firing, suspension, discipline, reassignment, transfer or other forms of retaliation when they defend a student’s right to report the news as freely as any reporter under the First Amendment.

“Teachers losing their jobs for refusing to censor their students’ news reporting is a real and pervasive problem, and it is going on all too commonly in America’s schools,” LoMonte said.

The bill was sponsored by state Sen. Leland Yee, who told of a school newspaper adviser fired from that post for refusing to kill an editorial criticizing random searches on campus. Yee said the teacher also lost his job as basketball coach and announcer for the football games. In Southern California’s conservative Orange County, a principal admitted that a newspaper advisor was reassigned because of student editorials.

Yee released this statement: “Allowing a school administration to censor in any way is contrary to the democratic process and the ability of a student newspaper to serve as the watchdog and bring sunshine to the actions of school administrators.”

20th century Sen. William E. Borah, “the lion of Idaho” famously said, “If the press is not free, if speech is not independent and untrammeled, if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live, you are a subject and not a citizen.”

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