Teenage Pregnancy Censorship: Journalism Student Interviews
In these interviews I asked students who dealt firsthand with the issue of censorship of an article on teenage pregnancy what the experience was like, and whether they believe teenage pregnancy to be a "legitimate pedagogical concern." Here are the interviews I collected.
"I obviously don’t believe in the censorship of publications and coming from California, where public school publications have a lot more rights than those in other states, I was really shocked and angry when our school administration censored Highlights, our publication. The censoring of public high school newspapers is illegal in California, with some exceptions, for instance, if what is published can be proved as libel. However, our school administration sent out a staff wide email the day our staff distributed the publication and demanded all teachers and admin to take away all issues of Highlights and bring them to the principal’s office. I was editor in chief at the time as well as the writer of the article on teenage pregnancy, the article that caused the administration to censor the paper, and I was enraged when I found out. All the interviews I had were recorded with permission, everything was accurate, and the sophomore who I interviewed on her experiences with pregnancy had given be full and complete permission to write and publish the article WITH her name printed. I had spent months perfecting the article and all of a sudden, the administration illegally censored our paper without a reason as to why. So, for the next few weeks, my co editor in chief and I had meetings with administration which went as far as us threatening to go to the press and even sue if our paper wasn’t returned to us. It eventually was, about a month later, but this experience really taught me that publications need to stand up for their rights and to do that, they have to fully know their first amendment rights. By knowing our rights and even contacting the Student Press Association lawyer for back up, we as a publication got back our papers and hopefully prevented any further censorship of our high school paper for years to come." (Anonymous High School Student)
I think that teenage pregnancy is one topic that is extremely prevalent in high schools, so when I tried to publish an article on the subject that was censored I was shocked. "How could the school do this to me," was the first thing that came to my mind. I truly believed that the school had my best interest at heart, as well as my journalism teacher, but after the censorship I started to doubt all of that. I spent months working on this article, hoping that it would be one that I could later submit to select college journalism programs, and even send to journalism competitions, but when I was told that I could not publish the article my whole world seemed to shatter before my eyes. I had done everything right, and yet all I kept hearing was how the topic was just too "mature" for certain students. I just couldn't make sense of it, we were all high school students after all, it's not like we were oblivious to the pregnant high school girl walking around the halls. If anything I felt as though my article was informational to the students, it didn't promote or object anything, so why was it controversial? I really don't think that the topic of teenage pregnancy is one that should be considered a pedagogical concern, for it is one that is going to be brought up in high schools anyways. I think it is important for students to be familiar with the topic, and to be kept updated with what is going on in their schools. It's not like we can just ignore a pregnant student that we see walking around the halls everyday, so I'm not sure how writing an article on the topic is too mature, or controversial. In the end I still ended up submitting the article to select colleges, and received positive feedback from those schools. I think that high schools need to start realizing that we aren't oblivious, and that these topics are a part of our lives no matter what. I also think that censorship is just wrong, and that by enabling censorship schools are just stunting our growth as journalists. (Anonymous High School Student)
"I obviously don’t believe in the censorship of publications and coming from California, where public school publications have a lot more rights than those in other states, I was really shocked and angry when our school administration censored Highlights, our publication. The censoring of public high school newspapers is illegal in California, with some exceptions, for instance, if what is published can be proved as libel. However, our school administration sent out a staff wide email the day our staff distributed the publication and demanded all teachers and admin to take away all issues of Highlights and bring them to the principal’s office. I was editor in chief at the time as well as the writer of the article on teenage pregnancy, the article that caused the administration to censor the paper, and I was enraged when I found out. All the interviews I had were recorded with permission, everything was accurate, and the sophomore who I interviewed on her experiences with pregnancy had given be full and complete permission to write and publish the article WITH her name printed. I had spent months perfecting the article and all of a sudden, the administration illegally censored our paper without a reason as to why. So, for the next few weeks, my co editor in chief and I had meetings with administration which went as far as us threatening to go to the press and even sue if our paper wasn’t returned to us. It eventually was, about a month later, but this experience really taught me that publications need to stand up for their rights and to do that, they have to fully know their first amendment rights. By knowing our rights and even contacting the Student Press Association lawyer for back up, we as a publication got back our papers and hopefully prevented any further censorship of our high school paper for years to come." (Anonymous High School Student)
I think that teenage pregnancy is one topic that is extremely prevalent in high schools, so when I tried to publish an article on the subject that was censored I was shocked. "How could the school do this to me," was the first thing that came to my mind. I truly believed that the school had my best interest at heart, as well as my journalism teacher, but after the censorship I started to doubt all of that. I spent months working on this article, hoping that it would be one that I could later submit to select college journalism programs, and even send to journalism competitions, but when I was told that I could not publish the article my whole world seemed to shatter before my eyes. I had done everything right, and yet all I kept hearing was how the topic was just too "mature" for certain students. I just couldn't make sense of it, we were all high school students after all, it's not like we were oblivious to the pregnant high school girl walking around the halls. If anything I felt as though my article was informational to the students, it didn't promote or object anything, so why was it controversial? I really don't think that the topic of teenage pregnancy is one that should be considered a pedagogical concern, for it is one that is going to be brought up in high schools anyways. I think it is important for students to be familiar with the topic, and to be kept updated with what is going on in their schools. It's not like we can just ignore a pregnant student that we see walking around the halls everyday, so I'm not sure how writing an article on the topic is too mature, or controversial. In the end I still ended up submitting the article to select colleges, and received positive feedback from those schools. I think that high schools need to start realizing that we aren't oblivious, and that these topics are a part of our lives no matter what. I also think that censorship is just wrong, and that by enabling censorship schools are just stunting our growth as journalists. (Anonymous High School Student)