Schools battle students' self-censoring in classroom
-
Loading... - Genevieve Allard
- 08 Mar 2023
- 62 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
It’s never been easy to be a high schooler, but being one in such a divisive, finger-pointing culture is something most adults from the Myspace era and before never had to deal with.
"You have the, 'I don't want to say anything wrong' side, whether that be to the teacher or in front of the class, or making sure you don't say anything harmful in the halls or to other people," said William Rosen, a senior at Manhattan's Birch Wathen Lenox School, a K-12 college preparatory school.
Rosen says that he notices his peers are self-censoring or deliberately not sharing their thoughts and opinions in class because of fear of retribution.
It’s something that continues to be glaringly and painfully apparent to their headmaster, Bill Kuhn.
"People sort themselves into teams, red team, blue team, liberal, conservative, anti this, pro that," he said.
Kuhn was so moved by what he was witnessing in the halls and classes that he to wrote Washington Post op-ed about the topic.
"When controversial topics did arise, I noticed students were quiet. I noticed students did not express themselves when it came to a particular viewpoint," he said.
According to 2021 data from CollegePulse, 80% of college students said they self-censor some of the time and 21% said they do it often.
A recent Knight Foundation poll revealed that 19% of high schoolers feel very comfortable with sharing opinions in person. Read More…
