My generation’s cold war experiences weren’t the pointless duck under a desk preparation for a nuclear missile attack. Schools had gotten more pragmatic then, and simply assigned reading material like On The Beach By Nevil Shute and Alas Babylon and reminded us that Communism was all about long lines, polluted environment, military focused economies, occupation of countries and a certain lack of freedom of expression. Funny how things turn out.

The New York Times reports on the decision of the Wilton High School Principal’s decision to shut down a student written and produced play. From the article:

For the spring semester, students in the advanced theater class took on a bigger challenge: creating an original play about the war in Iraq. They compiled reflections of soldiers and others involved, including a heartbreaking letter from a 2005 Wilton High graduate killed in Iraq last September at age 19, and quickly found their largely sheltered lives somewhat transformed.

So far so good. There’s a long history of young writers, from 19 year old Mary Shelley, 16 year old S.E. Hinton, and most recently Helen Oyeyemi, 18, who wrote the The Icarus Girl.

So why is the Wilton Principal so bent on preventing this play from performing? Again from the article:

The principal, Timothy H. Canty, who has tangled with students before over free speech, said in an interview he was worried the play might hurt Wilton families “who had lost loved ones or who had individuals serving as we speak,” and that there was not enough classroom and rehearsal time to ensure it would provide “a legitimate instructional experience for our students.”“It would be easy to look at this case on first glance and decide this is a question of censorship or academic freedom,” said Mr. Canty, who attended Wilton High himself in the 1970s and has been its principal for three years. “In some minds, I can see how they would react this way. But quite frankly, it’s a false argument.”

At least 10 students involved in the production, however, said that the principal had told them the material was too inflammatory, and that only someone who had actually served in the war could understand the experience. They said that Gabby Alessi-Friedlander, a Wilton junior whose brother is serving in Iraq, had complained about the play, and that the principal barred the class from performing it even after they changed the script to respond to concerns about balance.

“He told us the student body is unprepared to hear about the war from students, and we aren’t prepared to answer questions from the audience and it wasn’t our place to tell them what soldiers were thinking,” said Sarah Anderson, a 17-year-old senior who planned to play the role of a military policewoman.

Bonnie Dickinson, who has been teaching theater at the school for 13 years, said, “If I had just done ‘Grease,’ this would not be happening.”

Frustration over the inelegant finale has quickly spread across campus and through Wilton, and has led to protest online through Facebook and other Web sites.

Why oh why doesn’t the New York times link to what they write about online?

And yet in Hartford, there’s a bill to extend voting rights to those 17 years old and at the same time raise the smoking age to 21.

Have we really come to a point where the former Soviet Union has more freedom of expression?

Update: Here’s the link to the students site on the play.

source: NY Times, Play About Iraq War Divides a Connecticut School, By ALISON LEIGH COWAN, March 24, 2007