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J-Ideas announces fund-raising campaign Warren Watson, director, announced today the creation of an annual fund-raising campaign to support J-Ideas, Ball State’s scholastic journalism and First Amendment institute. Parties are invited to give $25 or more to the J-Ideas Foundation to support future activities of the program. Donations are tax deductible. <more> FIRST VOICES Ignorance in Palin, Dowd free-speech remarks The grace period is over from the November presidential election. Now, it's time to review the latest cases of ignorance about the First Amendment and how it fits into our lives. <more> -Plainfield pays respect to First Amendment -Palin-tology -Protesters' rights fenced off -Bad year for traditional news gatherers -Baseball and the First Amendment -Principals and the First Amendment -Remembering a crusader More First Thoughts: journalism teacher Tom Gayda speaks out Student journalists scoop professional press
Mile high with the First Amendment... We were north of the Mile High City near the Rocky Mountains. The principals were voluntarily descending—not from the tall peaks but from their position abutting the summit of school hierarchy. When they reached level ground, we could see each other more clearly. And clear sight leads to insight. <more > |
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Review of Future of the First Amendment The Future of the First Amendment: The Digital Media, Civic Education and Free Expression Rights in America’s High Schools, by Ken Dautrich, David Yalof, with Mark Hugo Lopez. 2008: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. 202 pages. By Warren Watson
Ken Dautrich and David Yalof, professors at the University of Connecticut and backed by the Knight Foundation, have logged thousands of miles nationwide in developing a series of studies and followups about the First Amendment. Their message: our schools have failed to instill a proper appreciation for the bedrock principles of our Bill of Rights. Now, they have turned their four-year-old work with more than 130,000 high school students into a new book: “The Future of the First Amendment: The Digital Media, Civic Education and Free Expression Rights in America’s High Schools.” The book captures the complete research work based on a massive study of more than 100,000 high school students in 2004-05, and two subsequent study replications. Mark Hugo Lopez of the University of Maryland assisted with the book. The Connecticut researchers uncovered a dirty little secret when their first survey came out in January 2005: more than 75 percent of high school kids either do not know how they feel about the First Amendment or take its rights for granted. The study was greeted with much fanfare – a national rollout in suburban Washington, D.C.; reams of data; speeches at conventions, and supportive comments from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore and Dear Abby. Student journalism organizations fortified their training on the importance of the First Amendment in the schoolplace. Journalism educators pointed to the effectiveness of the research, but said more needed to be done nationally as Dautrich and Yalof plan a third replication later this year. “We need to exercise additional strategies to educate young people about the importance of the First Amendment because they obviously aren’t getting it in journalism classes or their government classes or other kinds of civic lessons,” said Calvin Hall, a scholastic journalism expert who teaches at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. George Daniels, a journalism instructor at the University of Alabama, believes that administrators have done a poor job in instilling an appreciation and awareness of the First Amendment: “I’m always puzzled that principals seem to think that the First Amendment is a disposable right.” He added, “I think there has been a decrease in support for the First Amendment. Administrators say that they are not responsible for instilling higher ideals. They say they are immediately responsible to parents, taxpayers, and citizens in their particular towns. Problem is: those citizens also lack an understanding of the importance of the First Amendment.” Gene Policinski, executive director of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University and someone who has worked with Dautrich and Yalof on similar surveys for more than 10 years with American adults, said the work as a whole provides a “yardstick” on the health of constitutional appreciation. “It has allowed us to draw a line in the sand,” said Policinski. Diana Hadley, the executive director of the Indiana High School Press Association (IHSPA), said that the Connecticut work has the potential to become a shared experience for students, teachers and administrators. She said it can result in a richer journalism experience and example of the First Amendment in action. “The study has helped shine a light on the importance of the First Amendment,” she said. “I’m convinced that administrators, publication advisers and student journalists are capable of working as a team.” The Connecticut researchers view themselves as a perfect team. “Ken’s an expert on public opinion,” said Yalof. “He takes the pulse. I’m a lawyer and attempt to interprete the pulse in the context of the law. Dautrich said the book is an important chapter in the effort to instill greater First Amendment awareness among our youth. “Lots of material has been out there. Now, it’s in a book, a package that will get researchers to take notice and build on the research. There is so much to be done.” Yalof said that media itself has evolved since mid-2004 when he and Dautrich first bagan collecting data with students. “Publishing has changed and the First Amendment has changed with it,” he said. “There is a broader free expression today with so much news moving online and the beginnings of blogs and other online forms.” He added, “This has resulted in a broadening of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.” Although some of the major findings of the Connecticut studies have gone largely unchanged in the three youth surveys so far, Dautrich and Yalof have uncovered an important nugget: kids who use online news have a greater appreciation of the First Amendment than those who use traditional print and broadcast news. Now, that bears more watching. (Warren Watson teaches journalism at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, and directs J-Ideas, the University’s First Amendment institute. J-Ideas is a part of the Knight Foundation team that has supported the Dautrich-Yalof studies. For more information, go to the www.jdeas.org web site, which houses the full body of the studies.)
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Two Connecticut researchers have become synonymous with the problem of poor First Amendment awareness in the nation’s high schools.