Many Gen Z Students Afraid to Speak Their Truth in Classroom

Ideally, American public schools are settings where young Americans develop into citizens and become socialized to particular ideas, values, and civic norms. Attitudes toward democracy and disagreement are forged in these spaces.

In this context, the findings of the Knight Foundation’s just-released report on high schoolers’ attitudes toward free speech should worry us. The report, part of the Knight Foundation’s Future of the First Amendment project, finds that high school students censor themselves at levels currently seen on collegiate campuses.

There is some good news in the Knight report, however. The data powerfully illustrate that Gen Z high school students today are open to free speech and do not support cancel culture or the rampant censorship that threatens learning and viewpoint diversity.

While civics knowledge has been in decline for decades, a healthy majority of high school students—63%—say that they have taken classes that dealt with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The report also demonstrates a strong appreciation of and support for viewpoint diversity. When asked if people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions, 57% of students strongly agree with this statement, while another 32% mildly agree. This means that almost 9 in 10 high school students support freedom of expression: thus, young Americans are hardly in favor of censorship.

Moreover, the overwhelming majority of today’s high school students understand that a healthy democracy requires certain crucial conditions.

Ninety-two percent of students, for example, believe that it is important to protect the ability of different groups in society to be heard. Another 91% hold that it is important to create a robust exchange of ideas and views, and 93% say that it is important to have an inclusive society welcoming to diverse groups. This is all encouraging news.

But the data also show that high school students are censoring themselves in the classroom. Only 19% of students said that they were very comfortable voicing disagreement with ideas expressed by the instructor or by other students. Another 36% were somewhat comfortable, meaning that just over half (55%) of students were comfortable disagreeing with their teachers and fellow students.

These findings resemble those related to the state of free speech on college campuses. In the spring of 2021, FIRE and College Pulse surveyed over 37,000 college and university students about their levels of comfort in disagreeing with professors. Just 40% of college students surveyed reported that they would be very or somewhat comfortable publicly disagreeing with a professor about a controversial topic; only 51% stated that they would be very or somewhat comfortable expressing their views on a controversial political topic during a class discussion.

The Knight report reveals that the situation is even worse in high school.

Sadly, the findings from Knight also mirror earlier survey data that I collected with Next Gen Politics showing that a significant number of high school students are not comfortable sharing their thoughts in class.

Sixty percent of students surveyed said that they have felt they could not express their opinions on a subject because of how students, teachers, or the administration would respond—a proportion identical to that of college students who report self-censoring on campuses.

Further analysis of the Next Gen data showed that significant numbers of students have been self-censoring both inside and outside the classroom. High school students regularly report that they crave dissent in dialogue, yet they are uncomfortable expressing it themselves for fear of being shunned or canceled.

This repressive climate is toxic for our educational system, which is anchored on the classically liberal idea that people can disagree and still find common ground.

As many of these high school students will prepare for the workforce or collegiate settings, they are being conditioned to keep silent rather than dissent or question others, putting the vibrancy of our democracy at risk.

It is time for families, communities, and education professionals to demand better and embrace the debate and discourse that comes with real education.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/06/06/high-school-students-value-free-speech-but-feel-uncomfortable-speaking-up

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California Senate Aims to Make Schools More Dangerous

Two days after the mass murder of 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, the California Senate passed SB-1273 School safety: mandatory notifications. The measure, authored by state Sen. Steven Bradford, ends a requirement for schools to report violent threats from students to law enforcement. The measure also excludes from the notification requirement “a violation involving certain instruments, such as an instrument that expels metallic projectiles, a spot marker gun, a razor blade, or a box cutter.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, a supporter of the bill, claims “Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students, as well as students with disabilities, are disproportionately referred to law enforcement, cited, and arrested.” Eliminating mandatory reporting, according to the ACLU, “will protect students from unnecessary contact with the criminal legal system, decrease school related law enforcement referrals and arrests, and keep students in school.”

State Sen. Melissa Melendez contended that removing the reporting requirements “impedes law enforcement from being able to best protect our schools.” Melendez, who has children in school, recalled that in 2018, student Nicholas Cruz murdered 17 people at the Stoneman Douglas school in Florida. Supporters of SB-1273, Melendez said, “are asking for a repeat of Stoneman Douglas across the state of California.”

The California State Sheriff’s Association argues that “School officials and law enforcement should work collaboratively, especially when it comes to students whose behavior violates the law and jeopardizes school safety.” Removing reporting requirements “impedes law enforcement from being able to best protect our schools” and “will only reduce the level of student safety.”

With the removal of mandatory reports, writes Diego Hays of San Diego News Desk, “the schools leave themselves open to more school shootings or threats against the school itself. The removal makes schools way more unsafe to students and teachers and staff.” In the California Globe, Wenjuan Wu cites another potential problem with SB-1273.

“The rationale that not holding disruptive or violent students accountable will somehow create a safer school environment is mind-boggling,” Wu contends. “Withholding information that would otherwise help law enforcement identify potential threats of violence is also an obstruction of justice.”

Bradford’s measure now moves to a vote in the state Assembly.

https://blog.independent.org/2022/06/03/california-senate-aims-make-schools-more-dangerous-students/?omhide=true

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Save our kids from dismal education

Enough of terrifying our kids on a daily basis.

Climate Change activists have a lot to answer for in terms of the mental health of children of all ages around the world. Then came the lockdowns, which completely damaged their social and relationship skills, particularly for the very young. Now, they see kids in schools being gunned down.

The filter through which our children see the world has become the very opposite of what it should be.

I don’t want to get into a debate about how real Climate Change is, as the whole thing has become an accepted religion for too many people. All I want is to suggest that you do your own research into the predictions of Climate Change activists and check for yourself how many of those predictions have eventuated in the last twenty years.

In the meantime, a huge number of children have been led to believe the planet will cease to exist and that they are responsible. The number of related stress and psychological issues developed is astounding.

Adults have also been scared senseless, but my focus is on getting our kids back to being happy, healthy, carefree little Vegemites – globally.

We need an educational curriculum – not one that teachers are tasked with implementing in classrooms, but one that starts in schools and on social media. Even better if it spawns into live events that reconnects kids with the wonderful beings they really are.

Essentially this would be a movement that reinforces how special and loved they are. How they make a difference to the world, their family, community, and to individual others. A movement that encourages kindness to others and smiling. It would involve looking for and finding things they like and love in this world, regardless of their circumstances or environments.

The bullying, suicides, and discomfort children feel in their own skin can absolutely be helped by a program that I envision being created by experts like Tony Robbins, Esther Hicks, The Wiggles as well as people I know personally that have been working in this arena for many years.

Certainly, include educators and psychologists in the process, but this collaboration can start slowly and build on its successes. There are technologies available that can encourage participation and corporations should participate in providing products and services to enhance this movement.

Russia and China know full well that if you educate children from a young age, you have them for life. This insidious communist paradigm is what has created the destructive Woke culture we have today.

It took many years, but the regiment of Woke indoctrination took hold in perfect circumstances. Governments, universities, and even corporations exploded in a collaborative acceptance of destroying our history, implementing unacceptable language distortion, and officially agreeing that there are no longer two genders. I have every respect for anyone in a gender morphing crisis or distress, but that is a long way from teaching small children in schools about sexual orientations that adults struggle with.

How did we go from America having a two-term black President in Barrack Obama and African Americans holding offices at the highest level of every profession to believing in systemic racism?

Why didn’t the ‘privileged’ African Americans in those positions cry out to save our society from a radical race movement by denouncing the lie of systemic racism before it spilled out into the Western world?

Has Oprah gone into senility? I would love her to explain how she reached the heights she did within such a systemically racist country. Not to mention her friend Gail, the wonderful Tyler Perry, and others who jumped on the systemic racism bandwagon ignited by George Floyd.

How did all of this happen? We were groomed, folks…

We were groomed and the education started in our universities and crept all the way down to our kindergartens.

One of the few benefits of the Covid lockdown was that parents woke up to what their children were being indoctrinated within the school system. All of this did not happen by accident, but that is a subject for another article.

So, let’s take back our kids.

Let’s highlight the wonderful world they live in.

Every child should feel good about who and what they are. Every child should know how to smile and be kind to others. Every child should know they can do and have anything they want.

Let’s start a movement from kindergarten to high schools to take our children back to appreciating how good their country is, how good their community is, and how good life can be.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/06/our-kids-deserve-to-be-happy/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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