Outside speakers can enhance the education that schools offer students. They also can lead to lawsuits, protests, and new school board policies.  

 

Ideally, classrooms are cauldrons of ideas where K-12 students encounter a vast mixture of thoughts, philosophies, and notions as they grow academically and expand their understanding of the world. Yet, exposing students to new concepts can be a hazardous journey. When teachers or administrators invite provocative speakers to address youngsters, a flare-up can easily ensue. Influential parents and community members who oppose a visitor’s views can generate outrage, which can swiftly pivot into a legal, policy, and public relations nightmare.  

Federal law does not address the subject of outside speakers in public schools — nor does state law in most places. As a result, districts must decide on their own when to insist on the educational value of an unwanted outside speaker and when to say “no.” 

Let me reveal my bias. I see little harm in letting controversial speakers share their thoughts with students. Law and policy — not to mention our history as a democracy — supports that view. 

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees free speech. Federal courts are particularly sensitive to attempts to suppress unpopular ideas. Certainly schools must consider age-appropriate issues and respect concerns that views are tastefully delivered, but free speech applies nonetheless. 

Often, the line of reasoning of people bucking outside speakers who challenge core values or embrace unusual views is this: They should be forbidden because their abhorrent opinions could corrupt impressionable minds. And politically it works both ways. Controversy can erupt around conservative or liberal views and discontent can combust with individuals of either political party.  

Parents and free speech  

Scholars say the answer to wrongheaded speech is not censorship, but more speech. Inevitably, the better ideas and societal consensus wins. In this case, parents are the counterweight. They must take responsibility to correct flawed musings planted by outside influences. But doing so requires conversation. It requires understanding what their child is learning. And it means stepping up to the role of moral compass by actively guiding young pupils or teens to good citizenship.    

Teachers and principals may summon knowledgeable people to enlighten, entertain, embolden, and energize the student body. 

Legally, schools are considered limited open forums. On street corners, parks, and public squares, free speech is boldly uninhibited. In a school, however, speakers must be invited. Teachers and principals may summon knowledgeable people to enlighten, entertain, embolden, and energize the student body. The job of an outside speaker is to bring a new voice and perhaps a new perspective. But, in so doing, conflict lurks around the corner:   

In April 2013, a speaker advocating sexual abstinence for high school students caused a fuss in Kanawha County, W. Va, schools. Pam Stenzel, founder of Enlighten Communications, delivered a faith-based message against premarital sex. Afterward, the student body vice president, an outspoken critic of Stenzel, sought a  court injunction against her principal. She said he threatened to communicate negative things about her character to the college that had granted her admission and a scholarship. The court denied the injunction. But the uproar prompted the Kanawha County Board of Education to pass a new policy requiring superintendent approval for all speakers who discuss sex, religion, or politics. 
 

The Hillsborough School District in Tampa, Fla., encountered a flurry of complaints from parents in 2012 when Hassan Shibly, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, spoke about Islam to an Advanced Placement world history class. Some parents accused Shibly, a lawyer and imam (spiritual leader), of ties to terrorists. The clash prompted the school board to discuss, but not pass, a policy that would require parental notice when controversial speakers are invited.  

In May 2012, the Tennessee legislature passed the nation’s first state law forbidding outside speakers (and teachers) from promoting or demonstrating “gateway” behaviors that lead to sexual activity. The law originated after Nashville parents recoiled against a speaker from an AIDS prevention group who used an anatomically correct model to demonstrate how to put on a condom. The classroom contained about 12 high school students who witnessed the display. The law allows parents to sue outside organizations, which can be fined up to $500 for violations if the court finds them liable.  

In 2009, at the beginning of his first term in office, President Barack Obama announced plans to deliver a back-to-school speech via the Internet and available to schools across the nation. There were three main themes: personal responsibility, staying in school, and hard work. It caused a hullabaloo. Political opponents accused the president of pursuing a partisan agenda, overlooking the fact that President George H.W. Bush addressed school children in 1991 and so had President Ronald Reagan in 1988. Protests from parents rained down on schools. The complaints forced schools to deliberately decide whether students could opt out of the speech, or even whether to accept the Internet feed at all.  

A policy solution? 

Faced with controversies, some school districts develop policies to guide educators on how to handle outside speakers. The Albuquerque, N.M., school district, for example, has a board policy designed “to foster dispassionate, unprejudiced, scientific studies of controversial issues in an atmosphere free from bias and prejudice.” 

The policy in Agwam School District in Feeding Hills, Mass., states that, “Teachers may invite visitors from outside the schools to give presentations on controversial issues when the visitors offer qualifications and resources not available in the schools . . . . Whenever possible, teachers who invite visitors to present one side of an issue will also invite visitors to present the other side(s).” 

Bismarck (N.D.) Public School District #1 makes academic considerations a key component in its outside speaker policy. “If [controversial speakers] are prohibited from speaking because of their points of view, academic freedom is endangered. Students need to study issues upon which there is disagreement and to practice analyzing problems, gathering and organizing facts, discriminating between facts and opinions, discussing differing viewpoints and drawing tentative conclusions.” Using the Constitution’s free speech clause as an anchor, the policy states, “the use of controversial speakers becomes an invaluable component in accomplishing the goals of citizenship education.”  

The Grafton, Mass., school policy empowers staff to interrupt if the presentation veers off track. “The teacher/sponsor responsible for inviting the resource person, or any member of the school administration, has the right and duty to interrupt or suspend any proceedings if the conduct of the resource person is judged to be in poor taste or endangering the health and safety of students and staff,” the policy says. 

The overarching questions include whether a policy of this sort strikes the right balance, whether it provides cover for bold teachers and principals who dare to step outside the box, and whether it provides clear guidelines that allow building-level decision makers to interpret the expectations of the board of education and the administration.  

Give ideas their freedom 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on school district censorship in the 1982 case Island Trees School District Board of Education v. Pico. The school board required junior and senior high school libraries to remove books deemed “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy.” On First Amendment free speech grounds, the Court overruled the board, hailing schools as centers of inquiry and scolding school officials for trying to squelch ideas with which they disagree. While not identical, one could argue that there is a strong parallel with outside speakers.  

When you heat a cauldron of ideas, one can never be sure exactly what will bubble to the top. 

Essentially the problem is this: When you heat a cauldron of ideas, one can never be sure exactly what will bubble to the top. Too often, the tolerance level of parents and influential community leaders ends when an invited speaker advocates a moral, ethical, political, religious, or sexual viewpoint that is diametrically opposed to theirs.  

Ultimately, words are only words. That is what free speech allows. As Americans, we trust that the best thoughts will prevail. In the end, the true measure of a quality public education is not the number of ideas a student is exposed to (or even temporarily embraces along the way), but rather what kind of citizen he or she becomes. 

 

Citation: Darden, E.C. (2013). Ed law: Outside speakers can arouse conflict. Phi Delta Kappan, 95 (1), 68-69.