Ancillary: Supreme Court case facts
Supreme Court Case Facts
Tinker v. Des Moines (1969): http://www.oyez.org/cases/1960-1969/1968/1968_21/
Bethel v. Fraser (1986): http://www.oyez.org/cases/1980-1989/1985/1985_84_1667
Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1989): http://www.oyez.org/cases/1980-1989/1987/1987_86_836
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Ancillary: Teaching student First Amendment rights
Teaching Student First Amendment Rights
Determine the best method of teaching either Morse or all four major Supreme Court cases dealing with first amendment rights. The staff could create a handout, a website, a podcast, or an editorial or other feature for the publication itself. To determine the best medium, consider the following questions:
- Who is our intended audience?
- Administrators
- School board
- Legislators
- Judges
- The public
- Other students
- What is our purpose?
- Inform
- Persude
- What information is most important?
- Just Morse?
- All four Supreme Court cases?
- Which medium will best accomplish all these tasks?
The editor-in-chief of the publication should divide the class into groups. Each section editor could oversee one group. If the class decided to teach about all four cases, simply divide the groups by court case. If the class decided to teach about Morse, simply find a way of organizing the class into appropriate groups by task (research, design, writing, etc.).
The staff should work together in small groups to create whatever teaching model they chose. Ask the editor-in-chief to roam about the class helping groups in whatever capacity they require. Students should spend the vast majority of the class period properly researching and fact-checking (utilizing the SPLC and other reliable sources) as they create their assigned sections of the project in whatever medium they chose.
Come back together as a class and test the teaching model. Reiterate the original intentions set forth at the beginning of class:
- Intended audience
- Purpose
- Most important information
- Medium that best accomplishes the task
Ancillary: Articles for broadly interpreted cases
Articles for Broadly Interpreted Cases
Miller v. Penn Manor School District (2008)
- Case decision: http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions/08D1173P.pdf
- SPLC analysis:
Ponce v. Socorro Independent School District (2007)
- Case decision: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-5th-circuit/1146285.html
- SPLC analysis:
Nuxoll v. Indian Prairie School District #204 (2008)
- Case decision: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1317185.html
- SPLC analysis:
Boim v. Fulton County School District (2007)
- Case decision: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-11th-circuit/1181023.html
- SPLC analysis:
Ancillary: Limits on scholastic journalism
Limits on Scholastic Journalism
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District (1969)
The Tinker case stemmed from several students wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. The school suspended the students for violating the dress code, which had recently been changed to keep students from wearing armbands in protest. The Supreme Court ruled that students could legally protest the war under the First Amendment by wearing the armbands. Justice Abe Fortas stated in Tinker, “students nor teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” The Court denoted one major limitation to students’ First Amendment rights: teachers and administrators can censor any speech that could cause a serious disruption at school or invades the rights of others.
Bethel v. Fraser (1986)
Matthew Fraser delivered a speech for a friend who was running for student government. The speech was laced with innuendo and double meanings. Fraser was suspended, and he subsequently sued the school for having violated his First Amendment right to free speech. However, the Supreme Court decided against Fraser, ruling that, while students can advocate political and other controversial viewpoints, the school maintains the ability to censor vulgar or indecent speech. This case created the first of several exceptions to the Tinker decision: Under Bethel v. Fraser, vulgar or offensive speech inside the school building can be censored.
Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988)
The Hazelwood case began at Hazelwood East High School in Missouri. The student newspaper staff wrote articles about teen pregnancy and divorce, and the school’s principal decided to eliminate them from the publication. The students sued, but they lost their case at the Supreme Court level. The Court’s decision caused Knight (1988) to write that schools had regained control of publications created as part of a curriculum. Knight went on to explain that individual students’ rights still fell under the Tinker precedent, but that any and all “school-sponsored or even school-related” speech could now be regulated by the school. This decision created a second exception to the Tinker holding: in the words of Justice Brennan, “legitimate pedagogical concerns” can outweigh students’ First Amendment rights if the speech is school sponsored. Troublingly, several researchers pointed to the Hazelwood case’s wording, which invoked the schoolhouse gate passage in Tinker to defend its decision against student First Amendment rights.
Thus, after the monumental Tinker decision affirmed students’ First Amendment rights in school, the next two decades saw the Supreme Court use the wording of the Tinker decision to justify two further exceptions to student free expression rights. From 1988 until 2007, students could express themselves under the First Amendment, provided the speech was not seriously disruptive or invasive (Tinker), vulgar, (Bethel) or school-sponsored (Hazelwood).
Key note for teachers and students: Administrators (and courts) are not required to censor any type of unprotected student speech—they simply have the ability to. Just because they can censor a type of speech (including the type you’ll see in the Morse case) does not mean they have to.
Read MoreAncillary teaching materials
Use these materials to fill out the lessons.
• Limits on scholastic journalism
• Articles for broadly interpreted cases
• Teaching student First Amendment rights
• Supreme Court case facts
• Rubrics
• Role playing
• Morse persuasive letter
• Media manual statement
• Anticipation guide
• District & Appeals Court decisions citing Morse v. Frederick
Return to teaching units and home:
Read MoreA class activity to learn
both law AND ethics
by Candace Bowen
“The first lesson she asked me to teach is lawnethics,” the excited student teacher said, adding more slowly, “But now I’m not exactly sure what that is….”
Sadly, she wasn’t alone in a class of education majors who would soon be licensed to teach journalism in a large Midwestern state. In fact, ask some teachers already in the classroom, ask their principals, and, while they would know it’s not all one word, they might be hard pressed to explain the difference between LAW and ETHICS.
But not knowing the difference makes it difficult to teach these two concepts effectively. They are separate fields, though they do overlap in theory and practice, and plenty of journalistic situations require us to assess both legal and ethical components.
So let’s look at them carefully. The simplistic definition says, “Law tells us what we COULD do, and ethics helps us decide what we SHOULD do.” Other definitions point out laws are passed by governing bodies of a town, state or country and breaking a law has specified consequences. In other words, you can be punished for not following the rules.
Ethics, on the other hand, is more about an individual or team process to arrive at the best way to act for the situation. According to the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, “Ethical questions arise most typically in cases where there is genuine puzzlement about what should be done in various types of situations. There is usually some practical importance or urgency to such questions. Is it ethical for journalists to reveal their sources to the courts, despite their promises of confidentiality? Is it ethical of journalists to invade the privacy of politicians to investigate allegations of unethical conduct?”
It’s impossible to spell out all the ethical options because situations constantly change, and what works in one situation may be wrong in another that’s somewhat similar. Journalists need guidelines to help them make ethical decisions, but hard and fast rules won’t always work.
That’s why so many organizations have ethical guidelines that are flexible. Read the SPJ Code of Ethics: Seek Truth and Report It, Minimize Harm, Act Independently and Be Accountable and Transparent. It says nothing about firing a journalist for using an unnamed source or setting up an undercover sting, but the bullet points under each of these main tenets give the media some guidelines.
The Principals Guide to Scholastic Journalism also helps explain the difference between law and ethics and includes an extensive list of links to valuable resources.
Experienced journalism educators usually find it more effective to teach legal issues first, then ethical, because that’s the approach journalists take in the real world. What COULD we do? Would we be libeling someone if we printed that? If it’s illegal, go no further. But legal situations may have ethical implications. SHOULD we use the victim’s name? What about the accused? Both names? Neither name?
JEA’s law and ethics curriculum follows that same organization (for JEA members only). Even the three-week module handles the First Amendment, court cases, unprotected speech (libel, copyright, invasion of privacy), reporter’s privilege, FERPA, FOIA, before “Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should” and additional ethics approaches.
Copy shot provided by the artist
Hypotheticals are a one good way to get students to look at a situation’s legal and ethical issues, like this one about a piece of art and how the student newspaper could and should report it:
As an art class project, the teacher told her students to create a scratchboard drawing, either from imagination or using a photo as its basis. Tammy used a picture in a school board-approved book, The Family of Man, that depicted a woman balancing a basket on her head. The art teacher thought her finished product was wonderful and wanted to put it in a display case at the end of the art hallway, but she wasn’t sure she could — the woman was nude from the waist up. When the teacher asked the principal’s opinion, he said, no, don’t hang it in the hall. Tammy was furious and so were some of the newspaper staff when they heard the story. Would you cover this incident? How? As an editorial? A news story? Whom would you interview? Would you consider running a copy shot of the photo? What would the principal likely say? First, think about the legal issues — is it obscene? Is it a copyright violation? Any other possible laws you might break? If nothing is legally wrong, what about the ethics? What is your reason for running it? (Download the picture here)
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