Why is ‘free speech’ so important to teach in schools?

In my view, we need to be spending more time teaching children the value of ‘free speech’ in schools.

Why is ‘free speech’ so important?

For the following reasons:

1.     It is necessary for self-expression;

2.     It necessary for me to describe myself and what it means to be me;

3.     It is essential for the listener as well as the speaker in any conversation;

4.     Without it, I don’t know ‘where you are coming from’;

5.     It is necessary for me to be able to evaluate and judge arguments and propositions (like school rules or government policies);

6.     It helps us all seek ‘truth’ and search for ‘knowledge’.[i]

The future of democracy is undermined and eroded if people – perhaps especially young people – do not feel they can speak their minds. Democracy cannot function at all unless people – perhaps especially young people – can learn to express deep and fundamental disagreement honestly and reasonably.  Their ‘locus of control’ – a behaviourist idea that expresses a sense of personal agency - depends on learning these things; ultimately, so does their health and flourishing.

A dominant discourse or a fashionable political trend can inhibit and constrain free speech, but there are also some concrete and specific threats to free speech that we need to educate children to guard against. They include:

1.     The assassin’s veto – this is the threat of violence calculated to curb free expression: ‘If you say that, I will kill you!’ (For example, the fatwa of the Ayatollah Khomeini against the novelist Salman Rushdie in 1989; the threats by the Mafia towards Italian journalists over many decades; the murders of investigative journalists Veronica Guerin in Ireland in 1996 and Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta in 2017 by organized criminal gangs; the murder of the Charlie Hebdo journalists by jihadists in Paris in 2015 - are all examples of this kind of attack on free speech.)

2.     The heckler’s veto – this is the disruption of meetings or events by demonstrators because they disagree with what is being said by the invited speaker or performer. (For example, Sikh protestors preventing the performance of the play ‘Behzti’ in Birmingham in 2004 because it featured sexual abuse in a gurdwara; radical feminists, LGBTQ activists and conservative Muslim protestors preventing speakers being heard at various UK universities by shouting them down.)

3.     The offensiveness veto – this is where people prevent others from speaking: ‘You can’t say that!’ - because they are offended by what is being or might be said. This is particularly effective when the person demonstrating claims to be speaking on behalf of a ‘victimized other’ or they say they are preventing the expression of ‘hate speech’ or the perpetration of ‘harm to others’.

4.     No platforming – this is where (usually well-known) speakers are dis-invited or blocked from public engagements because of their controversial views. This is particularly effective because of the inhibiting impact it then has on others who are denied the opportunity to assess the arguments for themselves; or the less famous who might self-censor or avoid confrontation. (Examples of this are the feminists Julie Bindel and Germaine Greer who have been regularly ‘no-platformed’ at UK universities and Jordan Peterson the Canadian academic, at Cambridge, US and Canadian universities, because of their views on transgender.)

US Vice-President JD Vance and businessman Elon Musk are advocates of 'free speech', controversially so.

As teachers, we have a responsibility to educate children to counter such phenomena by giving them the opportunity to acquire a language and vocabulary to do so (through forums like school debating societies) but also educating them to accept the moral principles that:

·      we neither make threats nor submit to intimidation;

·      we accept no taboos against truth and knowledge – truth can only be tested by alternative, false argument;

·      free speech should be limited only when it causes palpable and demonstrable harm – threats, abuse, incitement – not when ‘harm’ is conflated with ‘offence’;

·      the acknowledgment that no verbal insult, however extreme is ever equivalent to physical violence;

·      the acceptance that people have a right to hear extreme views – not be protected from them;

·      the acknowledgement that while we have a right to offend, we do not have a duty to offend;

·      the acknowledgement that privacy is a pre-condition of free speech and once privacy has been violated it cannot be restored;

·      the acknowledgement that we have a right to decide ‘what I share with you and what you share with me’ (except in legitimate areas of public interest, like criminality).

Discuss and reflect

·      Would you tolerate pupils at your school heckling, disrupting, vetoing or ‘no-platforming’ an invited guest?

The Prevent Strategy (in the UK) imposes on schools and universities ‘a duty to prevent pupils and students being drawn into extremism by the expression of radical views’.  This conflicts with the classical liberal view (by John Stuart Mill and others) that ‘controversial views should be tested, to destruction if necessary’.

What is your view?

[i] For more on ‘free speech’ listen to Timothy Garton Ash: ‘Analysis - Five Essays on Free Speech (2016) [podcast] BBC Sounds

This is an extract from my book: "Becoming a Teacher: the legal, ethical and moral implications of entering society's most fundamental profession" available on Amazon and in-store at Waterstones and Foyles.