Another challenge to freedom of speech for high school kids. Connecticut high school drama students wrote a play--actually a reading from letters and emails from soldiers in Iraq. A freeper mole got in, passed around preliminary scripts to freeper parents, who first got the play changed to reflect more favorably on Bush, and then got it canceled altogether. Read the whole thing at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/24/nyregion/24drama.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=sloginThese paragraphs come from the end of the article:
In response to concerns that the script was too antiwar, Ms. Dickinson reworked it with the help of an English teacher. The revised version is more reflective and less angry, omitting graphic descriptions of killing, crude language and some things that reflect poorly on the Bush administration, like a comparison of how long it took various countries to get their troops bulletproof vests. A critical reference to Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, was cut, along with a line from Cpl. Sean Huze saying of soldiers: “Your purpose is to kill.”
On March 13, Mr. Canty met with the class. He told us “no matter what we do, it’s not happening,” said one of the students, Erin Clancy. That night, on a Facebook chat group called “Support the Troops in Iraq,” a poster named GabriellaAF, who several students said was their classmate Gabby, posted a celebratory note saying, “We got the show canceled!!” (Reached by telephone, Gabby’s mother, Barbara Alessi, said she had no knowledge of the play or her daughter’s involvement in it.) In classrooms, teenage centers and at dinner tables around town, the drama students entertained the idea of staging the show at a local church, or perhaps al fresco just outside the school grounds. One possibility was Wilton Presbyterian Church.
“I would want to read the script before having it performed here, but from what I understand from the students who wrote it, they didn’t have a political agenda,” said the Rev. Jane Field, the church’s youth minister.
snip
“The sad thing was this thing was a missed opportunity for growth from a school that I really have tremendous regard for,” said Emmalisa Lesica, whose son was in the play. Given the age of the performers and their peers who might have seen the show, she noted, “if we ended up in a further state of war, wouldn’t they be the next ones drafted or who choose to go to war? Why wouldn’t you let them know what this is about?” -boldface mine.
Wouldn't you say from this that the idea behind the "support the troops" groups is to leave kids in the dark about what's happening so that more will volunteer?