Young Americans deserve more credit

In last Friday's edition of The Spectrum, Sports Editor Daniel Gvertz penned a piece bemoaning the results of a recent survey conducted among approximately 120,000 high school students in the United States. The survey asked many questions about the freedom of speech laws in this country with special regard to the freedoms that the press has to report the news. Gvertz seemed very upset because 44 percent of the kids polled who actually knew something about the first amendment felt that the amendment might be too broad in the rights that it guarantees.

First of all, most high school kids have not had any reason to speak out against anything other than their parents and probably have not been kept from doing so. As such, they naturally take for granted the ability to speak out against authority of any kind. I can assure you, though, that these kids would not sit back silently and let the government rescind their right to speech. You might as well be concerned for the fact that most high school kids can't appreciate fixed-rate loans. They will eventually!

Secondly, the offending question was given in 'yes or no' format. There was no room for qualifying a 'yes' answer to the question "Do you feel that the First Amendment is too broad in the rights it protects?" This leaves a huge margin for error, and can be interpreted in many ways. Perhaps a young mind feels it is wrong to allow groups like the KKK to publicly denounce African American people. Or, and this is more likely the thing that frightened Daniel Gvertz, perhaps the kids are tired of watching irresponsible news agencies report bogus or highly dressed stories in order to increase viewership and readership.

So, is it all that frightening those young kids think that maybe there are too many freedoms in our first amendment? Not really. They are simply not old enough to understand the deeper philosophies of taking the good with the bad because the good is just that important. I for one would be all for an agency who checks the validity and importance of "BREAKING NEWS REPORTS" and fines networks and newspapers for inappropriate reporting.

Fear not, fellow citizens, our rights will be just fine in the hands of our youth.