I write in the hopes of changing minds about politics.My entire professional career has been in education at the high school and higher education levels.Call my writings teachable moments. That being said, you can bet, as I speak, my many diehard liberal naysayers are having a meltdown without even hearing what I have to say.

Besides the issue of abortion there are umpteen other stand alone problems with Democrats to think about when voting such as socialism vs. capitalism, over spending, higher taxes, mediocre job creation, shredding our constitution, national insecurity, global warming scam, and many others.How can we forget the many scandals this administration has engaged in and that is the point of this writing.The scandals are endless, and just recently another whopper surfaces that most readers haven’t heard about.

Did you hear or read about MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber, a major architect of ObamaCare?Probably not because mainstream media treats it as a non story or media is late to the table with miniscule coverage on this whooper!It’s huge, and it proves, without a doubt of liberal mainstream media showing its bias as it tries, as usual, to protect the president.

Did you know that your tax money and mine made a multimillionaire out of con artist Gruber who admits on three or four different videos that, as one of the ObamaCare architects, it was his job to deceive the public about Obama’s signature healthcare law? The deception was mostly about how OC would be funded.To call the funding a tax would likely kill its passage, therefore, the architects vehemently denied it was a tax.The other thing that needed to be hidden was how younger and healthier people would pay the most to cover the older and less healthy people which wouldn’t fly either. The lies, the deception, were all over the place including you can keep your doctor, you can keep your same insurance, your premiums will go down by $2500, etc. Gruber’s videos show this man bragging about deceiving you and me and all of America.

Besides the $400,000 Gruber got up front his many speeches about OC in various states made him a multimillionaire – hold on to your seats – at American taxpayer expense!I’ve seen figures as high as six million the man made of taxpayer monies for lying!

Probably the biggest part of this story is that the government under Obama deliberately set out to lie to the public.Through Gruber the government admitted deliberate deception. The White House logs show Gruber visited there some 19 times and Gruber claims Obama was present at some meetings. Obama, as usual, as with most every scandal, denies knowing about Gruber as we have lie upon lie!

Adding salt to the wound, Gruber says we the public were too “stupid” to pick up on what was being proposed as legislation.The gall of this man is unconscionable.He also claims that “lack of transparency” was a real asset in getting this law passed.

Some people might have been stupid as Democrats passed this historic abomination without one single congressional Republican vote but many were not. I wrote about it a number of times.It was and still is an abomination.No matter what you hear from this administration and its allies, including mainstream media, ObamaCare to this day is a train wreck.Unfortunately, there isn’t space in this writing to spell out the damage OC has caused to our healthcare in this country.

House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi said it all back in 2010 – “let’s pass it Congress so we can see what’s in it.”Isn’t it stupid to say that and isn’t it stupid for all the Democrats to vote for it, not even knowing what’s in the 22,000 pages?” Yet Gruber calls you and me the stupid ones!

There are four things I would like for you to take away from this writing.One, is that there’s a whole lot more than abortion to vote against. This scandal alone is reason enough not to vote Democrat.Two, are we being deceived by mainstream media as it distorts the news and too often hides the Obama negatives?Third, the deception, the lies, the lack of transparency of our present government permeates every single thing it does!Last, but not least, some Americans need to wake up to the fact that liberals think the majority of us are stupid, and they, with big government, knows what is best for us. To heck with the liberty or freedom of making our own decisions!

Thank God for a new Congress and the awakening of a majority of Americans as shown in our recent election, nationally and statewide!

Les Knoll is from Victoria and Gilbert, Ariz.

Bill Cosby’s career has been deeply rooted in the possibilities and protections provided by freedom of speech.

The legendary comedian and actor’s career began with landmark comedy routines in which he tackled sensitive racial subjects. He was the first African American male with a starring role on TV, in the 1960s series “I Spy.”

The iconic late-1980s, early-1990s sitcom “The Cosby Show” featured an affluent, professional black family that countered decades of denigrating stereotypes. And, most recently, he’s made headlines and created a few critics as a public observer and candid counselor on matters involving race and fellow African Americans.

Claims have now come to light across various media that Cosby drugged and then sexually assaulted a number of young women, in incidents reaching back into the 1960s. Various news reports say no criminal charges are likely because of statutory time limits on prosecution.

The Cosby furor exploded in social media in recent days, starting with video of comedian Hannibal Buress inviting an audience to “Google Bill Cosby rape,” while riffing on what he said was Cosby’s current curmudgeonly posture.

In an ironic twist, Cosby himself helped call attention to those making the assault claims when his Twitter account asked fans to create memes — images intended to spread quickly throughout the Internet — about him. What likely was attended as a feel-good PR stunt backfired as the images contained comments about the assault claims.

Then, in a pre-taped National Public Radio interview aired on Nov. 15, in which Cosby and his wife, Camille, had been talking about their collection of African art, NPR host Scott Simon switched subjects: “This question gives me no pleasure, Mr. Cosby, but there have been serious allegations raised about you in recent days.” When Cosby did not speak, Simon continued, “You’re shaking your head ‘no.’ I’m in the news business. I have to ask the question. Do you have any response to those charges?” Still, silence from Cosby. So Simon ended the one-sided exchange by saying he had wanted to afford Cosby the chance to speak out.

In the days since, more women have come forward with graphic claims of sexual assault. Appearances on television and entertainment projects involving Cosby have been cancelled, and his lawyer says no response is forthcoming. But such actions that once would once have resulted in a low profile are being swept aside in an ongoing social media tide — Cosby’s critics continue to range across Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

We’ve seen such controversies play out in the news media in the past in very different ways.

A little less than 90 years ago, as movies surged into prominence, a beloved entertainer of that era also faced stunning allegations involving a claim of sexual assault. Newspaper accounts in 1921 raged around popular comedian “Fatty” Arbuckle following the alleged assault and subsequent death of 26-year-old Virginia Rappe. Ironically, the silent film star was forced to speak out to counter the media blitz. Two juries deadlocked, and the third jury voted for acquittal, but Arbuckle’s career never recovered. He died in 1933.

On the Time Warner website “Crime Library,” writer Denise Noe reports that “Newspapers, led by William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner, had a field day. Yellow journalism was at its peak and readers were regaled with stories about Arbuckle’s supposedly debauched private life and his alleged cruelty to (Rappe).”

Noe’s story also says that “Hearst once bragged … that the Examiner had ‘sold more newspapers because of the Arbuckle case than the sinking of the Lusitania.'” She also writes that Arbuckle “was bewildered by his dizzying fall from public grace. ‘I don’t understand it,’ he complained. ‘One minute I’m the guy everybody loved, the next I’m the guy everybody loves to hate.'”

In a much more contemporary example, filmaker Woody Allen used a guest column in The New York Times in February to respond to — and largely dampen a brief media frenzy over — the resurfacing of 21-year-old allegations that he had sexually abused an adopted daughter. Allen said at the time that “This piece will be my final word on this entire matter and no one will be responding on my behalf to any further comments.”

Traditional media, in Cosby’s case, already are being criticized for not jumping on the stories earlier. Cosby’s lawyer has rightly noted of the widespread claims against his client that “the fact that they are being repeated does not make them true.” And Cosby’s right of free speech certainly carries the right not to speak.

But in this news-and-information-saturated era, and with his accusers having ready access to social media to reach everywhere, Cosby’s approach of “silent until proven guilty” may not carry the day in terms of protecting his reputation and preserving his career.

Gene Policinski is chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute and senior vice president of the Institute’s First Amendment Center. [email protected]

By RON WILSON
Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development

Does your school have a lab? Maybe a laboratory for chemistry or biology? Today we’ll meet a school laboratory of a different sort. It is what’s called a Fab Lab. This Fab Lab is helping entrepreneurs develop new products. It even helped one little girl get a brand new right hand.  This is today’s Kansas Profile.

Last week we learned about Jim Correll, facilitator of the Successful Entrepreneur Program at Independence Community College in Independence, Kansas. Among other things, the entrepreneurship program has pioneered a new type of facility called a Fab Lab which is short for Fabrication Laboratory.

“The Fab Lab movement started at MIT back in 2000,” Jim Correll said. “A professor there found that he had lots of students who were smart but who couldn’t make anything. He started a Fabrication Lab where students could build things.” The lab made state-of-the-art technology for advanced manufacturing and digital fabrication tools available to those students.

The idea worked so well that the concept spread overseas and across the U.S. An International Fab Lab Network was created. One of the rules of the network is that the Fab Labs must be available to the public.

Jim Correll became interested in the idea. After lots of research and fundraising, Independence Community College opened its Fab Lab ICC in fall 2014. It is the first community college Fab Lab in Kansas that is available to the community. The Fab Lab is in a building which had formerly been utilized for training by Cessna.

One example of the high-tech equipment in the Fab Lab is a 3-D printer. These computer-controlled printers essentially squirt layers upon layers of liquid plastic into designs that create physical objects. Such technology can revolutionize manufacturing by creating custom designs on demand.

In July 2014, Jim met a man who was talking about a little girl in rural Kansas who had been born with a congenital abnormality: She only had tiny stubs of fingers on her right hand. Her community was having fundraisers to try to raise the funds to buy a 3-D printer to make a hand, as they had seen on the Internet.

Since Jim was in the process of acquiring a 3-D printer for the ICC Fab Lab, he told the man, “If you can get the plans, you can use our 3-D printer to produce it.”

The man eventually found plans for the artificial hand through a website called www.enablingthefuture.org. The design was called a Cyborg beast hand. With help from two engineering technology students at Independence Community College, the 3-D printer in the Fab Lab printed out the parts and they were assembled into a new hand for this little girl.

On Sept. 27, 2014, Kara Marr received her new artificial hand. Instead of purchasing a $40,000 prosthesis, this artificial hand was produced with a $3,000 machine and only $50 worth of materials.

This little girl and her family are very excited about her new hand. She lives near the rural community of Toronto, Kansas, population 307 people. Now, that’s rural.

“We would love to find three or four other families who would benefit from building an artificial hand like this,” Jim said. “Come for a weekend and go home with a new hand.”

The Fab Lab has many possible applications for students and the community.

“We are open to the public, located anywhere, through an annual membership system,” Jim said.  The Fab Lab is typically available for ICC classes in the morning and then open for public use in the afternoons and on Saturday.

The Fab Lab is not a contract job shop. “We want people to make their own designs,” Jim said.  “We don’t want to compete with manufacturers, we’re about helping other people.”

Does your school have a laboratory? Yes, but does it have a Fab Lab? We commend Jim Correll of Independence Community College for making a difference by making this technology available to students and the public. As one ICC student said after working on the hand for this little girl, “We can actually change lives with what we’re doing.” I think this lab is Fabulous.

Travel out to the fields of Kansas during November and you’ll see farmers wrapping up fall harvest. Combines chomp through fields of corn, milo, soybeans and sunflowers eager to dump the bountiful crops into waiting trucks and grain carts before Old Man Winter arrives with ice, snow and sleet.

Approximately 86 percent of the corn crop has been harvested, 72 percent of the soybean crop is in the bin, 52 percent of sorghum is out of the field and 57 percent of the sunflowers remain to be cut.

Today’s green, red and silver monsters move through the fields like tanks rolling through a war game. All across Kansas, farmers pilot these 12-ton behemoths as easily as the family car.

On gravel and blacktop roads tandem trucks and semis race back from the elevators so the machines can fill them up again. Fall harvest in Kansas marks that magical time of the year when the world’s best producers of food and fiber reap what they have sowed.

This bountiful production underscores the importance of farming and ranching in Kansas. Our Kansas farmers, and their contemporaries across this great land, continually risk all that is theirs for a successful harvest.

They work with the land, chemicals, computers and livestock. They must understand markets, people, soil, crops and climate. Their livelihood is largely dependent upon factors that are oftentimes completely out of their control.

Still, farmers farm to succeed. They farm to grow and harvest crops and produce livestock. Farmers see their vocation not only as a business, but also as a way of life to preserve in good times and bad. They have their feet planted firmly in their soil. They are dedicated to the land and providing us with the safest, most wholesome food on the planet.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the average person consumers approximately 194 pounds of cereal products annually. When you couple that with approximately 66 pounds of oils, 115 pounds of red meat and 63 pounds of poultry it’s readily apparent why Kansas harvest is an important time.

Today’s consumer has the option of using nearly 4,000 different corn products. These uses range from corn flakes to corn sweeteners. Corn and milo remain the top source of livestock feed.

Countless foods are made from today’s fall soybean crop. Some of these include crackers, cooking oils, salad dressings, sandwich spreads and shortenings. Soybeans are used extensively to feed livestock, poultry and fish.

Sunflowers from the Sunflower State can be used as an ingredient in everything from cooking to cosmetics and biodiesel cars. And as you probably already know, they’re a really tasty snack – and healthy too.

So if you have an opportunity to visit our state’s fertile fields this fall, think about the professionals who are busy providing the food we find on our tables each and every day. Tip your hat, raise an index finger above the steering wheel of your car or give a friendly wave to these producers of food and fiber who are dedicated to feeding you and the rest of the world.

John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.

That K-12 Student Performance and Efficiency Commission, which is supposed to suggest to the upcoming Kansas Legislature how to, well, make schools more efficient and produce brighter students, is reaching again.

That reach? Most simply, into whatever the commission’s most conservative members can find in the way of making sure that not one dime of taxpayer money goes into the operation of the state’s largest schoolteacher union, the Kansas National Education Association.

Last year, the Legislature sank school districts’ option to negotiate to allow schoolteachers to have part of their salary automatically deducted from their paychecks for contributions to the KNEA political action committee.

Just a way to make it more inconvenient for the union members to contribute to the political action committee.
And, this year, well, it won’t be part of that K-12 commission’s report to the Legislature, but at a recent meeting the group’s more conservative members were shocked—yes, shocked, or at least canny enough to look shocked—that some school districts pay KNEA officers either their full salary or some portion of their salary to attend to union business.

Again, that’s something that school boards and the union work out during contract negotiations with the attendant give-and-take but it briefly became a hot point for discussion.

Which means that when the Kansas Legislature goes into session next year it will have the “official” report of that study commission, which recommends a lot of basically businesslike management proposals. A handful of legislators will get some under-the radar suggestions to nickel-and-dime the teacher union, which would have to find a way to make sure that its leaders who get a paid leave from their school districts can still afford to serve.

Not a big deal, not a lot of money, but one of those little political issues that will spark battles in the Statehouse next year.

If the KNEA deal seems too specifically targeted, a survey of school districts turned up some other broader issues that can be combined into legislation—like whether teachers or any school district employees should be paid for unused sick leave when they retire.

That’s how these commissions work. There was a specific charge—just look at the name of the panel—and then there is the wandering-about that gets political.

Now, is anyone betting that there will be a lawmaker—or a majority of a quorum of some committee, or maybe even the entire Legislature—who will like the idea of prohibiting that little salary for union work deal? Insiders are betting that the House and the Senate, which as we recall all stand for reelection in just two years, may like that idea. If you are a conservative Republican you can make a whole brochure out of not a dime of state income taxpayers’ or local property taxpayers’ money going to keep up the car payments of a teacher union official.

Those little side issues that pop up either by surprise or by design are what make watching the Legislature interesting indoor work, and those issues also can become levers for action on broader, more far-ranging and probably more important bills for lawmakers to consider.

Say, you are a legislator and don’t really like a bill. It can be made more palatable if it carries a little amendment that you do like…maybe enough for you to hold your nose and vote “yes.” Or, say there’s a bill that you do like, but that one amendment spoils it for you because you know your next election opponent is going to dwell on it.

Wonder how that works? You could talk to Rep. Paul Davis, D-Lawrence, who in his run for governor was reminded often by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback about voting against the last school finance bill (which incidentally cut some property taxes levied by school districts) because of a little provision that eliminated due process hearings for schoolteachers.

We’ll see what pops up.

Syndicated by Hawver News Co. of Topeka, Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report. To learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit www.hawvernews.com.

More folks are walking around talking when no one is present. I watched a gentleman waiting in line for a flight. His earpiece and dangling cord with a microphone near his mouth revealed that he was speaking to someone on his smartphone. And while he was speaking Spanish, a language I do not speak, I understood much of what he was saying. His gestures gave away his enthusiasm. He exuberantly pointed to himself, outward to the listener, and aside when referring to others. His hands and fingers swirled as he made his points in spite of the fact that the person he was taking to could not see him.

He was one of those speakers where we might ask the question: “Could you talk if you had to sit on your hands?”

We all, more or less, converse with our hands and our eyes and our body posture. We understand people not only by what they say, but by how they say it.

These innate or unschooled gestures are “homesigns” as described by Professor Susan Goldin-Meadow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago. While working on her doctorate, she saw how a deaf child who had not learned sign language nevertheless used richly meaningful gestures that were natural and understandable. Goldin-Meadow is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. AAAS recently profiled her work that showed that deaf children naturally use these gestures even when they have never experienced any linguistic model.

Homesign gestures are nouns and verbs and possess the “universal properties of language.” Children use these gestures to try to communicate a word before they have mastered the ability to say the word. And after we master our language, we continue to supplement what we say with gestures.

What I was observing in the expressive man at the airport line was “co-speech gesturing” that he naturally provided even though his intended listener could not appreciate this added visual richness.

In a recent teaching evaluation, one of my students wrote: “When you are excited, we are excited.” This is the richness of face-to-face classroom communication. The excitement my students feel is transferred more by my gestures and body language than just by the words I say. And to really perceive the subtlety of these gestures, you have to be in the presence of the speaker.

But media dampens this perception, much as you feel the environment while riding on a motorcycle more then in a car with the windows rolled up.
Or look at the recent Veteran’s Day parades. Or compare sitting at a ball game amidst the enthusiastic cheering crowd versus watching on ESPN where the view is actually better but the atmosphere is not as electric. It is the high resolution gestures that we can read by “being there” that provides greater understanding and empathy and exultation.

Lack of resolution in co-speech gesturing is but one of many deficiencies of so-called online learning. This medium, whether it was the televised instruction fad of the 1960s or the hyped anytime-anywhere convenience “courses” of today fails to provide these subtle gestures that make speech a rich communication. We recognize our barren words in our e-mail and instant messaging and we attach inadequate smiley-face emoticons.

Our cell phone and computer screen images likewise fall flat. The next time you are in a meeting where the superiority of the online media is touted, just ask: “Then why are we sitting here?” The answer is clear to all present. It is not merely the logic in the situation, but also because of the richness of gestures that we used before we ever spoke. They will nod in recognition. It is the richness in gestures that makes face-to-face meetings so much more effective.

To get carried away in learning, students need to get off of the media and join the excitement of really being there. If you agree, you don’t have to say anything. Just give me a “thumbs up” or a “high five.” Yeah!

By RON WILSON
Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development

“Who Owns the Ice House?” That’s not a question one hears every day. This unusual question is the name of a book which has helped inspire the creation of an entrepreneurship program being utilized in Kansas and beyond.

Jim Correll is facilitator of the Successful Entrepreneur Program at Independence Community College in Independence, Kansas. He is utilizing a curriculum called the Ice House Entrepreneurship program.

Jim comes to this program with experience as an entrepreneur and businessman. He grew up at the rural southwest Kansas community of Satanta, population 1,222 people. Now, that’s rural.

After two years of community college at Garden City, Jim went into the photography business and worked in manufacturing for a time. Then, to be closer to his wife’s family, they moved to Coffeyville where he started a small business.

In 2006, Independence Community College was starting an entrepreneurship program. Jim took the job as facilitator and business coach. “ICC wasn’t looking for an academic program but one that is more hands-on,” Jim said. “A lot of business curriculums aren’t so much for people wanting to start businesses but rather to train people for middle management in a big company. We wanted something more nuts and bolts (for small businesses and startups).”

At the beginning, the program was targeted to people who were in business or who wanted to have their own business. Now more traditional community college students are joining the program.

ICC offers several entrepreneurship classes. One is called Entrepreneurial Mindset, which provides insights into the thinking and behaviours of successful entrepreneurs. The class uses a curriculum supported by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation called the Ice House Entrepreneurship Program.

The Ice House Entrepreneurship Program is a project of the Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative (ELI) using a text called “Who Owns the Ice House?” which was co-written by ELI founder Gary Schoeniger and Clifton Taulbert. Taulbert is a noted entrepreneur, Pulitzer-nominated author and international speaker based in Tulsa.

The book begins with a description of African-American Clifton Taulbert growing up poor in the segregated deep South and working long hours in the cotton fields. Clifton’s Uncle Cleve was also poor but he had used his last penny to buy the local ice house when it came up for sale.  During the steamy Mississippi summer days, Cleve cut 15 to 20 pounds of ice and delivered them to families in the community – both white families and African American.

As his business grew, Cleve hired Clifton Taulbert as his assistant. As they worked together, Cleve taught him about entrepreneurship, tenacity, focus, diligence and other valuable lessons.

Clifton enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. After his service, he graduated from Oral Roberts University and then SMU. He authored 13 books, one of which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Today he is president and CEO of a human capital company known as the Fairmount Corporation and of Roots Java Coffee, a national African-American coffee brand.

The Ice House Entrepreneurship Program was created to share and encourage this type of entrepreneurial mindset in others. In Independence, Kansas, Jim Correll chose to use this program for his entrepreneurship educational initiative.

Jim shows his classes the program’s video interviews with successful national entrepreneurs and then brings in local entrepreneurs as well. At the time that ICC adopted the Ice House Entrepreneurship Program, only ten other community colleges in the world were using it. Jim believes the entrepreneurial mindset is fundamental.

“Everyone should be a problem-solver, whether they are going out on their own or working for someone else,” Jim said. For more information, go to www.indycc.edu/entrepreneurship.

“Who Owns the Ice House?” That unusual question is the title of a book which has inspired an educational curriculum that is encouraging entrepreneurs across the country, including rural Kansas. We salute Jim Correll and Independence Community College for making a difference by encouraging entrepreneurs.

And there’s more. Jim’s educational efforts also included technological innovations which have the potential to revolutionize manufacturing. These innovations can even give new hope to a little girl who was born without fingers. We’ll learn about that next week.

After listening to high school journalists last week, I am simultaneously hopeful and worried about the future of the First Amendment in America.

The venue was the National High School Journalism Convention in Washington, D.C., an annual event sponsored by the Journalism Education Association and the National Scholastic Press Association.

On the up side, encountering so many bright, committed and insightful young journalists from high schools across the country inspires hope. But on the downside, hearing their stories of censorship and control by school officials is cause for worry, if not despair.

It was especially disturbing to hear students describe how school administrators misuse their power of “prior review” to keep any hint of controversy out of the school paper. Not surprisingly, what is considered off-limits varies from region to region.

In one community, for example, school officials ban coverage of student religious clubs while permitting coverage of all other student clubs. But in a very different community, administrators instruct students not to report on LGBT issues because a few parents once complained about a profile of a gay student in the school paper.

Under current law, school officials may review what goes into school publications (though they aren’t required by any law to do so). But they may not turn “prior review” into “prior restraint” with overly broad and vague restrictions on what student reporters may cover.

Unfortunately, many public school administrators are either unfamiliar with the First Amendment — or simply ignore it.

The stories of school censorship I heard at the convention are consistent with trends I have seen around the country. A growing number of public schools restrict school newspapers (or shut them down entirely) and, in other ways, limit student political and religious speech.

“It is both strange and troubling that in the “land of the free” so many school officials are afraid of freedom.

Here’s the irony: Schools that give students meaningful opportunities to exercise their First Amendment freedoms are safer, more successful learning environments than schools that treat students like prison inmates.

One such school is Federal Hocking High School in Stewart, Ohio, located in rural Appalachia where students learn about democracy and freedom by actually practicing democracy and freedom. This means, for example, Federal Hocking students serve on all school committees, participating in everything from revising the student handbook to hiring faculty. Students are also given full responsibility for all student events and various school programs. And a student serves on the local school board.

Administrators at Federal Hocking understand that when school officials choose between safety and freedom, they make a false and dangerous choice. Silencing student voice, installing metal detectors and other efforts to make schools “safe” are, at best, stopgap measures that paper over the root causes of student alienation and frustration — and send dissent underground.

If we are serious about creating better schools, places with fewer discipline problems and higher academic achievement, then students must have a meaningful voice in shaping the life of the school.

My advice to the student journalists at the conference is the same advice I would give to any student attending a public high school that ignores or censors student speech:

If your school newspaper is subject to prior review, start a campaign to end it. Prior review stifles freedom of the press and undermines the work of student journalists.

If your school district doesn’t protect First Amendment freedoms, petition the administration and the school board, organize rallies and speak out for policies that uphold religious liberty, freedom of speech, press, assembly and petition. Exercise your rights to make the case for freedom.

If students aren’t involved in decision-making at your school, seek student representation on school committees and the school board to ensure students are involved in decisions concerning school policies, culture and governance.

Go home, speak out, and stand up for freedom. Remind your administrators and school board members that a country committed to democracy and freedom needs schools committed to democracy and freedom.

In a free society that would remain free, schools must be our laboratories of freedom.

Charles C. Haynes is director of the Religious Freedom Center of the Washington-based Newseum Institute. [email protected]