Let's have fewer rules - schools and freedom of expression

Progressive, The, Dec, 1996 by Ruth Conniff

My alma mater, Madison East High School. made the national news recently. Perhaps you saw the story. It was about a painting in the school art gallery called "Madonna with Rat." The painting. by local artist Valerie Mangione, showed the Madonna suckling a large white rat. (Madonna as in the Blessed Mother, that is. not the pop star.)

The painting caused a lot of controversy. Helen Nicholson, chairwoman of the ominous-sounding Morality in Media committee of the Madison Catholic Women's Club. called the school to complain.

"I just don't want a rat nursing on a woman," she explained. "If that artist wanted to do that, that's her business. But I just don't like it.'

Persuaded by the vehemence--if not the logical force--of that argument, and under pressure from other members of the community who said the painting was "offensive to Catholics and women," East principal Milton McPike took it down.

It so happened that one of the girls I coach on the East cross-country team. Anna Shelton, was writing a story about the art gallery for the school paper when the Madonna with Rat" issue erupted. Anna said some of her teachers warned her that if her story was too controversial, the school might close down the whole art gallery once and for all.

Anna had a long time to think about that--the student paper doesn't come out very often--and it weighed heavily on her. But it turned out that she didn't have to take full responsibility for the controversy. Despite the best efforts of school officials and the Morality in Media committee to suppress it. the Madonna with Rat" story spread like a prairie fire.

First the Wisconsin State Journal ran a feature on the front page of the local news section, along with a large color photo of the painting. The State Journal quoted outrage:! citizens. as well as the artist, who, it turns out, is an ardent animalrights activist and a rat-lover. Her mission, she said. is to elevate the status of rats. "Maybe I relate to them so much because I feel misunderstood. she said.

The painting may not have cleared up any misunderstandings. but it certainly caught on. It must have been a slow news day when the State Journal piece went out over the wires. because Madonna with Rat" began showing up everywhere. USA Today ran it, then Newsweek picked it up. A week later, teenagers around the country got to see 'Madonna with Rat" featured on the "Weekend Update" segment of Saturday Night Live.

All of this provided an entertaining study of art and free expression for the students at East High School.

Finally, Anna's article came out in the Tower Times--a carefully researched, excruciatingly well-balanced story, in which she explored the legal history and philosophy behind policies affecting free speech in the public schools.

That's a lot more than can be said for the State Journal, which, after pumping up the "Madonna with Rat" story in the news section, printed a rabid editorial excoriating the school for displaying 'this derisive, satiric, age-inappropriate painting in the first p]ace."

The editors denied that they were advocating censorship: "Censorship is when the powers-that-be tell artists what they can or cannot create," the editors wrote. "Censorship is when those powers threaten artists with official punishment--fines or imprisonment, for example--if the artists violate the guidelines. Censorship is what happened during the bad old days of the Soviet Union, for instance, when artists could be sent to the gulag for producing anti-Soviet works."

That's a pretty pitiful standard of free speech for a newspaper to promote. But it seems to be a sign of the times. As a nation, we are increasingly tolerant of repression these days, especially in the schools.

The public schools have become more and more restrictive over the last decade, thanks to a series of court decisions that give school officials broad powers to search lockers, control the content of student newspapers, and generally curtail students' rights.

One absurd story after another has been appearing around the nation lately about school administrators cracking down on kids.

There was the girl in Texas, an honor student, who was suspended for carrying a bottle of Advil in her backpack. The Advil violated a zero-tolerance drug policy. School officials nabbed the girl by using drug-sniffing dogs to check lockers during gym class. The principal in that case, Steve Busch of Riverwood High, told The Washington Post that the girl's suspension was a moderate punishment considering the gravity of her crime. "We shouldn't trivialize this," Busch said. "There are so many risks. You want these kids to know they're not supposed to have any of this." (It's a slippery slope, apparently. from Advil to the hard stuff.)

Then there was the eleven-year-old in South Carolina who was suspended for carrying a dull-edged knife in her lunch box to cut a piece of chicken. When she asked her teacher if she could use the knife, the teacher turned her in. The local police showed up and arrested her at the schoolhouse door.