Assessment of Outcomes of Free Expression Courses.

Although freedom of expression is vital to a democratic society, American college students, including communication majors, seem to have little interest in protecting their First Amendment rights (Brock, 1996; McAdams & Beasley, 1994). Moreover, today's college freshmen indicate that their interest in political affairs is at an all-time low, and their willingness to discuss political matters -- presumably including freedom of expression issues - is even lower ("Political interest," 1998). Such apathy among future leaders and communication professionals suggests that education on freedom of speech and of the press is more important than ever before. This study seeks to examine the effects of teaching free expression to journalism and mass communication students. A 1997 Freedom Forum survey concluded that the majority of Americans do not believe in freedom of speech (Blumner, 1997). According to the survey, the censorial instinct cuts across the political and religious spectrum. Americans from all demographic groups "embrace a flaccid and utterly meaningless definition of ... expressive freedom [as] support [for] freedom of speech for only speech that I agree deserves freedom" (Blumner, p. 1D). Some believe education is the first and best response to a citizenry uninterested and uninvolved in protecting democratic values and processes. In 1967, the Supreme Court noted the importance of free expression in American universities: "No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth" (Whitehill v. Elkins). Thirty years later, in an analysis of the roles of media and education in the developing popular citizenship, Buckingham (1997) wrote that "educators must enable students to build connections between the personal and the political, and hence prepare them for a participatory form of citizenship which can function across a whole range of social domains." If a primary responsibility of a university is to encourage students to exercise their freedom of expression, then it would seem particularly vital for journalism and mass communication departments to instill in their students an appreciation of First Amendment rights to increase students' commitment to such values. This study attempts to assess the outcomes of instruction in three classes on free expression. Literature review Although scholarship examines theoretical and applied, individual and communal values of free expression (Baker, 1989; Dworkin, 1996; Levy, 1985), few scholars have scrutinized the means and outcomes of teaching free expression values to college students. Interestingly, a survey of communication faculty found that 39 percent of respondents thought that more class time should be devoted to free-expression issues (Scott, 1995). Merrill (1991) asserted that teaching free expression is "the highest calling of a communications or journalism professor." Merrill's article suggested a number of teaching strategies "to get students to think, to analyze, to challenge, and to come up with fresh and 'personal' answers to many of the difficult questions surrounding free expression." No attempt was made to measure the effectiveness of the teaching techniques. Herbeck (1991) focused on the difficulty of teaching freedom of expression to undergraduates. The subject is made complex by the inconsistent and evolving history of protection for free expression in America, Herbeck wrote, and consequently effective instruction in free expression should be future-oriented. Herbeck suggested that a class applying core principles of free expression rather than rigid legal rules to contemporary issues best enables students to understand the fluidity of free speech. Through a simple post-test measure, Geske (1991) examined the effectiveness of a "talk show" format to teach free expression in a large lecture course. The study asked "how students felt" about different teaching techniques and found that students enjoyed the roleplaying activity, which the author believed prompted students to move beyond rote memorization toward the higher orders of analysis and synthesis. …