ARS on Twitter
RSS
It’s about kids, it’s not about adults
Posted by Raven on April 1st, 2007
Over in Hampton NH a small scandal has erupted…over the local school newspaper. Like most schools, this paper is entirely written, edited and produced by the students. The school administration and parents have no say as to content or much else. This is a public school and the paper is given to all students in all grades.
The Paper is avaliable in PDF at the linked website below. Make sure you check it out…it’s actually humorous in that it is SO incorrect with much of it’s information about sex. Which isn’t really funny and should answer the question, partly, as to why our culture is going downward so fast.
HAMPTON - The “sex” edition of the Winnacunnet student newspaper raised the ire of some parents.
A photo of two women kissing, under the headline, “Why men love women who love women,” a true or false quiz featuring a question on anal sex, and an interview with an anonymous custodian, who said he found a pink, three-speed vibrator in the girls’ shower, particularly irked some parents.
Middle school kids. 5th grade through 8th. Write this stuff.
The Principal and Faculty advisor to the paper:
Principal Randy Zito said the Winnachronicle crossed the line of responsible reporting. “I did not feel all articles were appropriate for the school newspaper and I have addressed the issue,” he said.
Zito said he addressed the issue privately and pulled copies of the paper that would normally be sent to the middle schools. Faculty advisor for the newspaper Carol Downer defended the Winnachronicle editors and the edition.
Faculty advisor defends the kids:
“Let our kids voice these things … realize they have something to say. It’s about kids, it’s not about adults,” she said. “The kids wrote the articles and came up with the topic,” she said. “They didn’t go out to cause controversy, but the Winnachronicle is also not a PR piece for the high school. This is a place for students to express their view and talk about issues that are troubling the student body.”
The School Board:
The paper receives no prior review from Zito or other administrators, Downer said, before being published and there has been no new policy established since the February edition came out. The Winnacunnet Cooperative School Board has not discussed the issue in a public meeting.
“As board member I have heard nothing about this from the administration or from the superintendent,” Merrill said.
A Parent:
Parent Paula Wood of Seabrook wants it on the next agenda. The next Winnacunnet board meeting is Wednesday, April 11 at 6:30 p.m., at the high school.
“I was told by the principal it would have to be in non-public,” Wood said. “I put in a (telephone) request with the superintendent to have it in public session.”
The reason Zito gave her for allowing the topic in non-public only is because it might involve personnel, Wood said.
“I don’t want to discuss personnel,” she said. “I want to discuss the paper. I thought it was a vile, disgusting piece of pornography I wouldn’t want to be in front of children, let alone paid for by taxpayers.”
And finally, the paper Editors:
Winnachronicle editor in chief Katie McCay and managing editor Lisa McManus, both seniors from North Hampton, got the idea to devote an issue to sex after receiving another high school’s newspaper from Iowa City, Iowa, that ran 12 pages on the subject.
The intent was to inform and enlighten, they said, and the issue did that, particularly the true or false questionnaire.
“As we put the pages on the table, the staff said, “Oh my goodness, that’s false? I had no idea,’” McCay said. “This is definitely stuff kids didn’t know about.”In a 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Survey of Winnacunnet High School students, 47 percent said they had sexual intercourse, said McManus, making the topic relevant.
The editors, who have been on the newspaper’s staff for three years, said they were expecting a reaction. They said the paper’s staff got a lot of feedback on the lesbian article, especially with the picture.
“We thought it was an important topic to address,” McCay said. “Being in a high school, it’s something I’ve seen and something other kids have seen in the hallways.”
This has caused a small uproar in my quarters here in NH. In some towns the school boards have policy about what can and cannot be written about in these papers. Sexual content is never allowed because of the offense factor, and the fact young kids often get the papers. First graders on up. In my town parents get a copy sent to their mail boxes.
How does this resonate with readers? Are you all OK with this? If not, what bothers you about it? I personally think it’s entirely inappropriate. Firstly, the info in this edition was inaccurate. Secondly, I strongly oppose school resources being used in a manner to seek a reaction, rather than to educate. Third, the fact young children see this appalls me; and- frankly, I don’t believe it’s the school’s place to be teaching SEX anything.
Thoughts??
April 1st, 2007 at 7:06 pm
EVERTHING THAT HAS TO DO WITH SCHOOLS TODAY TAKE A BACK SEAT TO “MONEY”
MONEY IS THE ‘GOD’ TO THE HIGHER UPS…AND THE CHILDREN CAN DO WHAT EVER….THIS COUNTRY WILL NEVER SEE..READING,WRITING,MATH, AS # 1,WE ARE A COUNTRY THAT THINKS MORE ABOUT GAYS,LESBIANS,SEX,THEN WE DO ABOUT GETTING OUR SCHOOLS IN ORDER..UNTILL PARENTS GET OFF THEIR COUCH’S AND TAXPAYERS GET UP ENOUGH GUTS,NOTHING WILL GET DONE.
JOHANN DOHMANN
April 2nd, 2007 at 11:28 am
First of all; Johann, do something about your capslock key. Typing in all caps on the internet is akin to shouting at someone in real life. it’s inappropriate and makes you look like a ranting lunatic. You may have an excellent and insightful point, but when people see all caps they instinctively stop reading.
On to the topic at hand;
My feeling is that there was not enough responsible oversight here. While yes, some of these topics may and would be appropriate for a High School aged group, it would be only marginally appropriate for Middle schoolers (IE: would need heavy editing and redacting) and totally inappropriate for grade school children.
The fact that we have a High School paper that gets sent to middle schoolers and grade schoolers is bad enough (just asking for trouble there). But to the broach such a topic without thinking about the appropriateness of it for small children shows that there was little to no actual oversight going on.
My recommendation to the school would be to disband the paper, and then re-form it into a new paper with one edition for each grade level. This three-edition paper would then be managed with an editor’s oversight board made up of parents and teachers that approves each copy before press time. This would allow the local responsible parties to set what they think is an appropriate standard for their kids, and to keep this type of fiasco from happening.
April 2nd, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Wearyman pretty much sums up my views on this.
The thing that annoys me about it, is it comes off as a lot of hype trying to hide behind a call for reasoned discussion. Take, for example, the article titled “Why Men Love Women Who Love Women” doesn’t actually address that issue. It just states it as fact and bemoans that there’s no accurate homosexual relationships in the media.
It has also always bugged me that in sex education stuff, they always talk about giving information to help stop the spread of STDs…better informed population taking steps to stop the spread, if they only knew about safe sex practices the spread wouldn’t happen, and so on. It wasn’t that long ago that I was in high school, and our health classes were just about 1/2-3/4 sex ed stuff. Most people just sat through the classes, tuned out the teacher, and didn’t care, or they made it into a huge joke about the naughty bits. I’ll admit to both. Most just figured they were invincible or that it just happened to other people and didn’t take to the ’safety practices’ promoted. In this regard it’s probably a good thing that I’m a huge nerd, or I seriously doubt my outlook would have been different than most of my peers.
April 2nd, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Johann,
Wearyman is correct, all caps is shouting, and that has no place in our living room. I trust this behavior will not recur.
As far as the content of your comment, I really don’t see what this has to do with the place of money in our society, nor do I see how this incident says something about society supposedly placing sex etc. as a higher priority than education.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
However, I do this incident addressing an issued that we have posted on a number of times here before: that as parents, we need to be the adults and to set boundaries on our childrens’ behavior, which won’t make us popular in the short-term, but it’s an essential part of our job description.
And what is clear is that the school board, the school adminstration, and the faculty advisor abdicated their responsibilities by not setting boundaries and engaging in some kind of review – particularly if the distribution was beyond the high school population.
In this particular incidence, the students went too far with respect to sex, but something similar could have happened with regards to drugs or violence. Thus the basic issue isn’t talking about sex; the issue is a violation of responsible journalism.
In particular, we see several journalism principles that were violated – and this is both a failure of adult oversight as well as a teaching failure, since one of the purposes of a school newspaper is to teach journalism.
My review is limited by my being able to only download page 2.
The first violation was accuracy; articles need to be accurate.
Next violation is knowing your audience, and based on that, choosing appropriate topics and writing content appropriate for that audience. Both topic choice and content were inappropriate for the type of publication (i.e. school newspaper distributed involuntarily to a wide spectrum of the local population).
The third violation has to do with the lack of editorial review, as evidenced by the quality of the stories I could read. The lesbianism story was no more than a rant with no evidence of logical argumentation. The animal sex habits story at least regurgitated information from their biology textbook, but an editor would have insisted that the author tackle the question of how animal mating behavior relates to people’s behavior.
So in brief, I would advocate guidelines drawn up by school and community representatives both with respect to topic as well as editorial review policies. Plus we need school personnel who are willing to risk unpopularity by doing their adult and editorial responsibilties as faculty advisor and review board.
Self-expression pieces are for intramural literary publications distributed on a voluntary basis.
April 2nd, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Joanne, ditto to the others comments about the CAPS. It’s not cool.
You’re very right about it…we do give more importance and value to selected topics such as sex and gays and their lifestyle then we do with reading, writing and math…it shows too when the US is no longer considered a well educated country. Sad, really…
April 2nd, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Wearyman,
I don’t think the topics, presented as they were, are appropriate for any school setting. At all. If the kids are that interested (and I’m not really sure they are, to be honest) they would find ways to get info about it…from good sources, not questionable quizzes…
I’m not at all sorry for saying this (graphic):::
To have a topic such as WHY MEN LIKE LESBIANS SO MUCH- and to go on to describe men like watching two women sexually please one another, HAS nothing at all to do with Sex Ed; it has nothing to do with the real educational need for sexual issues. This was a form of erotic fantasy and porn- real lesbians of the world would have been very offended by that article. (I’m sure the true lesbians are offended).
Education on sex should involve STD prevention; pregnancy prevention and then options if a girl finds herself pregnant; a good program will see results with low pregnancy rates among the student body. Sex education should also include topics about cleanliness and getting health check ups and perhaps birth control education.
Sex Ed in the school setting should not be about lesbians and gays and the specific sexual activities they perform; sex ed should not be about specific skills needed in order to please a partner. Sex Ed should not be about porn. And should not include dumb quizzes that are designed to shock and awe vs. educate.
I agree the school board needs to reign in this news paper staff. Fire them all first. Then set some rules and guidelines and expectations. Make it more about journalism and writing skills, and insist it be school related and therefore community related. And safe for the community to read.