Standing Committee Against Censorship

Function: To solicit and receive reports of censorship incidents from NCTE members, constituent groups, and sources outside the Council; to serve as a resource on current patterns of censorship; supporting the anti-censorship service office at headquarters; to develop written guidelines for students' Right to Write, including advice for schools dealing with situations in which student writing is taken as threatening to the safety of other students, where freedom of expression must be weighed against individual or school security; to develop a written position on whether the narrowing of the curriculum that occurs in response to high-stakes testing can be understood as censorship.  Such a position may be related to your Right to Write work, but it may also warrant a separate statement; and to develop a written position on whether the restriction of student language to English may be an act of censorship, and whether schools in which students speak multiple languages but where only English is evident in print materials is an instance of censorship.

What major actions or projects have been completed by your group since July 1, 2005?

• Sponsored two sessions at the 2005 annual convention, one featuring a presentation by Lois Lowry, the other considering students’ rights to write, featuring committee members Bob Crafton and Elissa Kido along with Doug Hesse
• Submitted proposals for the 2006 annual convention, one featuring Nancy Garden, the other reserved for the winner of this year’s Intellectual Freedom Award
• Participated with members of SLATE in the selection of Senator Richard Durbin as the recipient of the 2005  NCTE/SLATE National Intellectual Freedom Award

What projects, initiatives, or studies are “in progress” at this time?

• • Revision of “Defining and Defending Instructional Methods”
• Developing a policy statement in response to the 2004 “Resolution on Students’ Rights of Expression”
• Participating in the selection of this year’s recipient of the NCTE/SLATE National Intellectual Freedom Award
• Review and selection of new committee members, increasing committee membership from 10 to 15 over the next three years
• Development of a committee listserv to facilitate communication and interaction among committee members

Strategic Governance: Over the past two years, the NCTE Executive Committee has established outcomes and priorities relating to these key topics in our field: Teacher Quality, Adolescent Literacy, Assessment, Writing, Multimodal Literacy and Technology, Research and Teaching, and English Language Learners. Currently, they are investigating the broad topic of professional development for literacy educators.

Does your group have research findings or suggestions to contribute that are relevant to on-going work on these strategic governance topics?

Given the numerous challenges we are seeing in our schools to students’ and teachers’ First Amendment rights—e.g. the frequency with which instructional materials and library holdings are being challenged and removed; the disciplining of students (and faculty) for student expression, both on and off campus, that the administration deems problematic—a refresher course (a primer?) in First Amendment law, especially as it pertains to student and faculty rights to free expression, seems in order.  Teachers, administrators, and school board members know too little about key court decisions (West Virginia v Barnette, Tinker v Des Moines, Island Trees v Pico, Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier, Texas v Johnson, In re George T., to name a few) or about key international agreements like the United Nations’ 1949 Universal Declaration of Human Rights which speak materially to student and faculty rights and which might, if more broadly known and understood, provide a foundation for responding, in general, to challenges to those rights.  Defining and defending these rights seems critical in the current climate and central to governance issues at a number of levels.

Robert Crafton, Chair