If you’re looking for evidence that some high-school students handle conflict with authority more effectively than the anti-vax, anti-mask crowd, look no further than the ongoing story of disagreements between school administrators and students over the student-led school newspaper The Griffins’ Nest at Eric Hamber Secondary School in Vancouver.
Problems originally arose when school administrators sought to repress student stories critical of QAnon (which apparently one administrator feared might offend QAnon-sympathetic parents), opinion pieces that were critical of the shortcomings of the school’s quarterly timetable, and comments expressing dismay at the lack of student and teacher voices in school and school district decision-making processes.
There was a time, and I remember it well, when that kind of situation would have provoked a student walkout and placard-waving demonstrations decrying “censorship” outside the school. After all, isn’t that what adults do?
Maybe, but the Hamber students involved with the student newspaper did not waste time with the kind of futile street demonstrations some grownups seem to prefer.
Instead, the students involved with The Nest decided to express their dissatisfaction in more effective ways. They sought the advice of people like “X” University (formerly Ryerson) associate professor Lisa Taylor, a lawyer who specializes in media matters and who has 12 years of experience as a CBC reporter.
Taylor advised the budding journalists that the rights of high-school-student journalism are not covered by Section 2 (b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and, right now at least, there is no section in the charter that specifically looks at high-school-level journalism.
Rather than accepting that as the end of their efforts to right what they perceived as a wrong, the students, assisted by Taylor and Vancouver lawyer Susanna Allevato Quail, drafted “The Student Press Freedom Act,” which the kids designed to protect freedom of expression and freedom of the press in B.C. public schools.
The draft SPFA says there are limits to the creation or publication of student media, including content that is libellous or slanderous, violates a person’s privacy, is obscene, promotes the commission of unlawful acts, poses a threat to the safety or security of the school or harms the social, emotional or physical health of students.
So far, the draft act has been endorsed by the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, the Canadian Association of Journalists, Canadian University Press, the Student Press Law Center, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the B.C. Youth Council.
The proposed SPFA, the students say, is mainly intended to protect student journalists’ right to freedom of expression in their student newspaper, regardless of support from a school or board of education.
It’s now in the hands of B.C. Attorney General David Eby.
There is more to this story, including obvious questions about liability in the event that a student newspaper does defame or otherwise injure the reputation of a person or group, but that’s grist for another column.
Right now, let’s consider what might have prevented a storm in a teacup blowing up into a serious public relations disaster for the school and the school district.
The assignment of a teacher qualified and experienced in media matters to teach the B.C. curriculum’s Creative Writing 11 (Journalism) option would have been a good start, and could have introduced a “teachable moment” into what should have been an educational opportunity.
The Writing 11 (Journalism) option would also have provided administrators with the ability to offer a helping hand to budding journalists who are motivated but lack solid knowledge of the “do’s and don’ts” of developing a student newspaper.
The course includes teaching journalistic writing styles for different purposes (columns, features, captions, layout, reporting, interviews and reviews).
More importantly, the Grade 11 option also includes a consideration of the “real world” Canadian Association of Journalists Ethics Guidelines.
That requires that students learn about the principles of “truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness, and public accountability as these apply to the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent dissemination to the public.”
At a time when what passes as journalism in some quarters has descended into political party propaganda, what could be more appropriate than a senior high school course in the writing and ethics of journalism that provides a responsible lens through which students are able to view the world of the 21st century?
After all, as former Washington Post president and publisher Philip L. Graham said: “Journalism is the first rough draft of history.”
Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools who taught the Grade 11 Journalism option for several years.
