The Freedom of Expression in Schools

Jiayu Zeng

Section A02

Reading Reflection 2

In response to: "Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Paving the Way for Campus Activism"

The success of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement was inspiring, and it helped develop the freedom of expression in colleges because it “demonstrated to student across the nation that effective protest movements could be built on campus”. It is hard to imagine if we cannot express our ideas and opinions freely on campus. From this article, I learned that free speech is essential because it liberates students to actively engage in schools’ issues and it provides awareness to colleges and is a proactive way to educate the students outside of the classrooms. The freedom of expression is necessary because college is an important transition in each student’s life because it is an age where students start making their own decisions. Students leave home for the first time and explore new ideas and establish their own opinions on different issues that surround them. Therefore, it is important that students are able to maintain the right to express so they can and inform the school to promote positive change.

            Question: Although today students are allowed to express their ideas and opinions on campus,   only some of the ideas on some of the issues will be accepted. What else can we do to gain more freedom of expression on various issues?