DANIEL BANIN, PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA
While Piedmont students may sometimes refrain from sharing their opinions, the world and experience of students beyond Piedmont and the United States looks different. Some of my peers feel that
Sometimes they hold back on what they need to say because they feel that it won’t be accepted by those around them.
The perception of what people should say differs throughout the world.
At Eastern Mediterranean International School (EMIS) in Tel Aviv, Israel, the student body’s diversity cultivates a positive environment for student’s expression. Talking to students at a school in Israel, it soon became clear to me that they have a much wider acceptance of their peers’ opinions on any topic. They believe that the diversity of the student’s body plays a role in the reduced cancel culture at his their school. Compared to the large diversity overseas, Piedmont appears to be very different. According to Public School Review, a database for American public school analysis, 62% of the Piedmont High School student population is white - 40% above the national average. According to anonymous students from the Public School Review, 46.6% of Piedmont High School students feel the need to alter their language in some way due to a fear of being viewed as intolerant. or being ‘canceled’.The fear, however, does not come from administrative policies, rather from self-imposed student restrictions. Israeli students are not the only ones with more freedom of expression at their school Talking to friends in Italy they share that they
are very proud of their school for not having any restrictions on student freedom of expression.
They feel that debates about controversial topics are encouraged and even embraced.
Furthermore, in Italian public schools, politicians of all parties along with people of all ideologies are often invited to give speeches or talks on their policies to the high school students.
All of this serves a purpose in educating students for the assemblea (assembly). An Italian assemblea occurs once a month and is an opportunity for all students in the school to bring up something that they want to see changed or implemented. Those changes are directed to the fifth-year students (Italian high schools are five years) who discuss the changes, make a plan for them, and ultimately execute them. The students feel that this is one of our the biggest rights and the thing they are most proud of in their schools.
Indeed, according to World Population Review’s index of Freedom of Expression, European countries have a higher freedom of expression score than the United States. As “the land of the free,” the U.S. doesn’t even make the top 20.
As a high school student in the US, I wonder why we have less freedom of expression than our peers overseas and whether this is the result of the US being a big mix of cultures, religions and races, more than any other place in the world. Looking at my peers, I often feel they choose not to discuss issues at all, rather than adjusting their language to be more inclusive and respectful. This is not for laziness or disinterest in others opinion, but I feel it is just because of fear of making mistakes and ‘being canceled’.
Could it be that our being ‘too careful’ in what we say and in the way we address each other, is just causing an even bigger divide in our society?
