Your school is thinking of having a Wall of Freedom on which students can voice their opinions in writing. Write to your school newsletter discussing the advantages of allowing students freedom of expression, problems that are likely to arise, and rules that should be imposed. Sign your letter C. Wong.
Treasure your freedom
Recently, our school is thinking of having a Wall of Freedom on which all of us can write to voice our opinion. This is certainly a sign of being a liberal campus and is something to be glad of. However, freedom does not necessarily have only advantages. Rights always come with responsibilities.
The major advantage of allowing students freedom of expression is that better decisions could be made in various school policies. It is undeniable that most of the school policies cannot benefit every one of us. Some of them even fit in with only a small fraction of us. The vast amount of resources and time invested in those policies are hence wasted. Wouldn’t it be great if we can help to use those resources more wisely by voicing our opinion? With a Wall of Freedom, we can voice our opinions regarding the present school policies like the detention classes. Furthermore, we can even raise new ideas as means to aid our study. For instance, some students once thought of holding study groups of different subjects but didn’t make it. With a Wall of Freedom, we can put these creative ideas in discussion and hence find out possible ways to improve our study. Some other non-academic suggestions could also be made, such as improving the quality of food in the tuck shop or reporting poor smell in toilets. All of these are crucial to improve our school. We, students, are the members of the school. Our first hand opinions are valuable to create a better place for ourselves.
Another noticeable benefit of the policy is that it provides a good chance for our personal development. A great majority of secondary schools do not have a Wall of Freedom. Students are required to be obedient and take whatever the school gives them without telling the school what they truly want. By having a Wall of Freedom, not only could we voice our opinions to the school, we can also learn how to voice our opinions in a proper and polite manner, to respect each other’s different opinions and to deepen and draw closer our relationship with our school. Undoubtedly, this is going to be a great way of civic education to us.
Despite all these advantages, this policy may also give rise to some problems. For instance, some of us may abuse the use of the Wall of Freedom, such as writing jokes or disrespectful language on the wall to make fun. This could be very disturbing to other users and some may even feel embarrassed. Furthermore, it will not be rare to see some unreasonable and impractical suggestions being raised, such as holding a Christmas party with other schools or canceling all the compulsory homework. Some of these waste tremendous resources of the school and others do no good to us. Undeniably, maintaining a Wall of Freedom is not an easy task. We have to get prepared for the above upcoming problems.
To tackle and alleviate the possible problems mentioned above, the following rules should be imposed:
1.Respectful and polite language must be used. No foul language is allowed.
2. The person who voices the piece of opinion must sign his/her name on it. Otherwise, that particular opinion would be ignored and removed from the Wall.
3. For every suggestion of new policies (e.g. lengthening the opening time of classrooms ), only those which get over 50% of votes would be considered by the school. (The total voting population must be greater than one-third of the total number of students)
4. Irrelevant contents (contents not related to school affairs) will be removed from the Wall of Freedom.
I strongly believe that with the above regulations and a sense of individual responsibility, we can make use of the good side of this double-edged sword and it will lead the school and all of us to a brighter future.
C.Wong