A production of Spamalot planned for 2015 has recently been cancelled by the South Williamsport High School in Pennsylvania. Why? Made public in August as the result of Right-to-Know requests, internal emails sent by the school principal, Jesse Smith, clearly demonstrate that the homosexual themes of the play prompted the cancellation. The principal suggested in the communications that the show [...]
NCAC's Youth Free Expression Project sent a letter to the Newfound Area School District warning of the "constitutionally suspect" dissolution of a high school student film club. The official reason for disbanding the club was its supposed failure to advance "student performance in core academic subjects like reading and mathematics” or “complement their regular academic program.” But in conversation with [...]
Tomorrow is opening night for Trumbull High School students and for a performance of the musical Rent that almost wasn't.
The results are in! The winner of this year’s Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest, addressing the theme Video Games in the Crosshairs, is “Future Warfare III” by Ani Akpan of the Bronx, NY.
Justin Carter, 19, was jailed for a Facebook comment Have you ever lost your temper and said something in the heat of the moment you later came to regret? Did you end up waiting 5 months in jail for a trial because your family couldn’t make your half million dollar bail? That’s exactly what Justin Carter’s family and [...]
Books like "When the Leopard Lost His Spots" can be useful tools to help kids understand gender and identity Every parent wishes their child could be spared the worst of life. War, lingering sickness, hurt and hate: all of these are things most would rather keep far distant from the lives of their children. Yet, we are all called to [...]
Tattoos and the practice of tattooing have existed for centuries and across many cultures. In the U.S. 1 in 4 adults under 50 had a tattoo, According to a 2006 study by Northwestern University; a 2012 poll conducted by The Harris Poll found that 20 percent of adults of any age have at least one tattoo. The attitude toward tattoos in American culture has shifted considerably in the last twenty years: today, tattoos are second only to ear piercing as a mainstream body modification.
So far hundreds of students have been punished for their involvement in the making of one of thousands of videos in this most recent and pervasive Internet trend. • The Mound-Westonka community in Minnesota was angered and disappointed when students –including six hockey players– were suspended hours before a critical and ultimately season-ending game. • At least 30 students were [...]
Congratulations to the 2012 semifinalists of the YFEP Film Contest! You can check out their videos below or on YouTube. "Banned" by Matthew Dunbar "Wickedly Scholastic" by April Jackson "Textbook Censorship - a Modern Day Book Banning" by Nathan Waters "You're Reading What?!?!" by Daniel Boyle and Grace VanKan "You're Reading What?!? Controversial Books" by [...]
Apparently the attitudes of Beaufort weren't reserved to the fictional realm of "Footloose." Pretty hilarious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTEOkc2kZx0
In case you blinked and missed it – the Harlem Shake video meme has been sweeping the internet for the past month. Tens of thousands of versions of the Harlem Shake video have been made and millions of viewers have watched them on YouTube and beyond. Everyone appears to have jumped on the meme wagon, firefighters, people in offices, division [...]
NCAC issued a statement sharply criticizing school administrators across the country for levying suspensions on dozens of students for filming or participating in the popular “Harlem Shake” video meme. Do you think the suspensions are fair? Take our survey.
Matthew Dunbar's short film is one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner!
Often the books we find the most affecting, the most informative are the ones others want to ban or keep us from reading. Alexis Opper's statement of youth power is one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner!
Sarah Grabman and Evan Horowitz submitted their whimsical reflection on how the censoring impulse can even seep into your own head and self-perfection. This film is one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner!
Kids these days! Daniel Boyle and Grace vanKan tell a story of enlightenment for our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner!
Rebecca Onstott is one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner!
A world with no great books is a black and white dreary bore, says Eden Taylor Ames in her film. Eden encourages us to shed our blinders in one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest Semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner!
A person or group of people shouldn't limit what others can read and see, Naomi Clements expresses in her film. Naomi is one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner!
Sometimes those with authority are the ones telling you a book isn't appropriate, other times the voice of the censor is internalized. David Raygoza explores a battle over a good book in one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest Semifinalists. Click here and watch this year's semifinalist films and to learn more about our film contest. To [...]
Watch Nathan Water's video on textbook censorship, a book banning for the modern era. Nathan is one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest Semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner! To learn more about textbook censorship, check out NCAC.org
Watch this awesome video by Gio Garcia, a student in Tucson, and find out! Gio is one of our 2012 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest Semifinalists. Like what you see? "Like" this video on YouTube and it could become our 2012 People's Choice Award Winner! New reports out about the dissolution of MAS in Texas indicate that the program [...]
If you want to express your thoughts, your feelings, your grief, your pain, or your opinions through poetry or art, you best wait until you're old enough to vote. Click here to watch interview In December, a 16-year-old high school student in New Jersey was arrested and thrown in juvenile detention just days before Christmas because of a [...]
The First Amendment Center commented this week on an Ohio Appeals Court ruling that an adolescent girl was guilty of disorderly conduct. The girl was arrested for the words she spoke to police offers, following a fight among middle school students. With the ruling, the court denied the girl's claims that her arrest violated her First Amendment rights to free [...]
Lansdowne public librarian Abbe Klebanoff came to us last week, dismayed over Sony's censorship of a video she and her students had made to encourage teens to read. The video takes Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and transformed the song into "Read It", with a dance to boot. When the kids tried to upload the video to YouTube, Sony sent them [...]
Teen Free Speech Fighters! There's still time to enter the Youth Free Expression Project's annual film contest and potentially win $1,000 cash prize and a $5,000 scholarship to the New York Film Academy. We've extended the deadline to November 25, so get out your cameras and tell us a creative story about a time where an adult or other individual [...]
NCAC weighed in on the controversy surrounding Prague High School Valedicatorian Kaitlin Nootbaar's use of the word "hell" in her gradution speech. In a letter to the Superindendent of the Oklahoma School District, NCAC and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE), urged the district to give Nootbaar the diploma she rightfully earned.
The effort in New York State to combat bullying in schools is "deeply flawed", according to the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), which has urged New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo not to sign the recently passed S.7740/A.I0712 bill into law. In a letter sent after the announcement of the bill's passage, NCAC praised the goals of the bill but warned of language so vague and overbroad that it "will likely create more problems than it solves."
NCAC participating organization The Dramatists Guild protests the cancellation of a community theater production of The Rocky Horror Show in Carrollton Georgia.
Oakland Children's Museum incident the latest in a pattern of political interest groups silencing open critique and discourse on conflict in the Middle East.
Photo by Noah Berger for the San Francisco Chronicle
On Monday, June 13th 2011, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that two students who both created fake MySpace profiles parodying their school principals had been unfairly disciplined by their respective school districts. In both cases, the Court found that the schools had not shown that the students’ actions were sufficiently disruptive of school activities to justify disciplinary [...]
We are thrilled announce Aaron Dunbar's "Hare Tactics" as the 1st Place Winner of our 2010 Youth Film Contest. Sarah Phan and Lyndi Low took 2nd Place with "Malediction", and Evangeline Fachon and Lindsay Tomasetti's "Static" won 3rd Place. Watch the films now and join our winners for a March 26th Awards Screening at the New York Film Academy!
Censorship continues full front attacks on all the arts. Two weeks into 2011, we've already seen censorship of David Wojnarowicz at the National Portrait Gallery; a new edition of Mark Twain's Huckelberry Finn hit the bookstores, without the N-word; the arrest of Belarus theater director Nikolai Khalezin of Belarus Free Theatre and now the Waterbury Connecticut school district is attempting [...]
We write to express concern about the cancellation of the Flagler Palm Coast High School production of a To Kill a Mockingbird and to urge you to review that decision and allow students to go ahead with the production.
“I’m all for free speech, BUT…” We all believe in free speech, but does that mean anything goes? What about the speech that offends us, makes us cringe, and provokes our anger (and desire to censor)? Is there anything that should be outlawed in art, films, books, music, video games, TV, or online? Is free speech an all or nothing [...]
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the famous Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines when the court ruled in favor of students who had been suspended for protesting the Vietnam War. The Tinker case stated that students "do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." But 40 years later, students [...]
This year we received triple the amount of submissions than usual, and were very impressed! We usually choose 10 semi-finalists, but this time we simply had to make room for 13. We congratulate the semi-finalists and all our applicants for their hard work and excellent ideas! Jordan Allen Nathaniel Dueber Aaron Dunbar Taylor Dunlap and Caroline Dunaway Jovan Landry Lauren [...]
In the last two decades direct censorship of theater has waned. Arrests of actors and theater employees involved in allegedly “obscene” productions such as May West’s plays in the 1920s and Richard Schechner’s Dionysus in 69 or Kenneth Tynan’s Oh! Calcutta! in the 1960s and 70s are, for the most part, a distant memory. Yet, on the high school stage [...]
NCAC urges Superintendent to reverse his decision to ban student play On February 25, school board members in La Grande, OR voted to uphold Superintendent Larry Glaze’s decision to censor a student production of Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile”, ignoring spirited and articulate appeals from the High School principal and drama teacher. It was yet another disturbing [...]
On March 28, 2009, students from all over New York City gathered at the first annual Youth Voices Uncensored. This video, shot and edited by Kyle Graffam, captures highlights from the day as participants discussed the topic of this year's 2009 YFEN Film Contest: Free Speech in School (Does it Exist?) Apply online
