Freedom of speech in a classroom

Having always been profoundly driven to disputable and most arguable topics, and felt an almost voracious urge to state my opinion, sometimes, (I admit), just for the sake of stirring up discussion or maybe ticking off couple of brains, I found the tackling of the issue of freedom of speech in the classroom environment to be absolutely inevitable. Being a high school student for two years now, having encountered a great number of teachers as well as students who have different opinions on this issue, and taking into consideration my own ambivalence towards it, I had already known that writing this article might be an delicate and disobliging task.

However, I decided to go with the topic, thus did my homework and researched a bit on the internet, founding some basic info available. As every 12-year-old after his social science class would proudly tell you, freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely, without any censorship or limitation. This is a basic human right protected by the First Amendment, which, as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court, contains the idea that the government, and therefore any school, has no authority to restrict expression of thought because of its message, ideas, subject matter, or content. In addition to this the 16th article of the Macedonian Constitution states that:

”Се гарантира слободата на… и јавното изразување на мислата. Се гарантира слободата на говорот… Цензурата е забранета.”

The question is: To what extent does this apply in schools? What are the limitations of the freedom of expression of thought within a classroom? And most importantly: Are they justified and productive?

To begin with, there are many factors pointing towards why a limitation of the freedom of speech in a classroom, as a school policy, is widely accepted and implemented and proves effective and productive both for the school and some of the students. High schools strive to instill the values of human decency within the students; trying to help them develop as upright and benevolent persons; to be appreciated not merely for their academic success, but also for their manners and ways of expression of thought. Such a restriction of the use of obscene and scurrilous language, might lead in the development of other speaking skills, since students will be obliged to express even their anger in a more subtle way.
In addition, such an environment would be healthy and civilized, thus no other human rights would be endangered nor discrimination on whichever basis encouraged. What’s important for the high school is that such a policy would show that it cares for the civil rights and equal dignity of all persons. The high school in question would most certainly strengthen its integrity among the unfortunate plethora of those advocating similar ideas.

Nowadays, school policies, laws, ethical codices seem to be merely imposed and taken as such without any thought. An utter freedom of speech in a classroom would only stir up debates and discussions, wake up the sleepy faces in the back benches, enable a disrupted traffic of thought and make the classroom what the schools have long tried to make it, a sanctuary of unfettered exchange of ideas. Any regulation of speech disrupts the truth-seeking process, inhibits the sharing of knowledge and encroaches on academic freedom.

As for those fearing the use of hate speeches and verbal harassment, one should be made clear: any code of speech would not stop such practices. The name-callings are never done in the open, but are stealthy, and will continue to be. However, once a freedom of expression of thought is established the harassers will no longer have the impression of doing something sinister and secret and will gradually lose interest in those actions, since it is in human nature to always be drawn to the forbidden fruit. An absolute freedom of speech would by no means encourage such practices, quite the opposite, it will show that we all are humans and are aware of our ability of sympathy and ill-treatment, and will not permit harassment in neither in secret nor in the open.

Perhaps Soren Kirkegaard was right when he once said, that “people demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” However, it is on us, the young generations fueled with ideals to try to change the world we live in. Let us indeed think more, hoping to bring order to a ‘methodical chaos’, as I like to perceive the world.