High school teacher Robert C. Mossman asserts that literary magazines reflect and elevate school communities' values. As adviser of his school literary magazine, Mossman encourages students to uphold certain standards for decency, while helping students learn to distinguish between original writing that is specific and thoughtful and writing that…

Reviews court decisions that have a bearing on students' rights to freedom of expression in school publications. (DD)

A statement on the ever-present need to fight for freedom of speech and against censorship. (RL)

The time has come for students to enjoy the right to write what they want without fear of school censorship. (JH)

Nonverbal communications share the same protections and limitations as verbal speech. (JH)

Presents a two-part debate on the criticism and review of children's books and textbooks by the Council on Interracial Books for Children. (RL)

The courts, while acknowledging in theory that public schools should provide students with a wide range of reading materials, are ruling against this in practice. The rationale in the latest court cases lies in determining the hierarchy of power, but the result comes dangerously close to legitimating censorship. (Author/RL)

English departments should develop policy statements dealing with the selection of books, films, and periodicals. (JH)

Summarizes court rulings on First Amendment protection for student newspapers and relates some of the issues raised by these decisions. (JL)

Discusses a court case involving a student's use of puns in an assembly speech, Shakespeare's use of puns, the relationship between banning offensive words and the censorship of ideas, and the difficulty with placing a ban on the expression of "indecent" puns and double entendre and of deciding what is "appropriate." (EL)

Presents four essays that discuss (1) the continued apathy of many English teachers toward censorship of textbooks, (2) the tenuous commitment of the general public to the First Amendment rights of speech and assembly, (3) feminists as censors, and (4) the tendency of conflicts between censors and anticensors to be dominated by the extremes. (RBW)

Certain rights inherently belong to students; they do not have to be earned and cannot be given or taken according to the whims of the administration. (JH)

"Teacher to Teacher" provides a forum for teachers to share ideas, materials, and activities. In this article, the first teacher describes the effects the well-known novel "Bleachers" (John Grisham, New York: Doubleday, 2003) had on a ninth-grade english class. The novel bought to life the high school culture that the students found challenging.…