Teachers who don't agree with the Black Lives Matter movement should have left students' posters backing the cause alone if they didn't want to amplify the messages, an anti-censorship group has claimed.
Students at a number of schools this week have put up posters and flyers about the movement, which has gone global in the wake of the protests in the US, sparked by the death of George Floyd.
St Andrew's College in Christchurch is investigating claims a teacher verbally abused students; Marist College students have accused their teachers of "being racist... and trying to force their views on them"'; and Christchurch Girls' High School students had their posters removed, teachers saying the tape was damaging walls and reportedly telling pupils "all lives matter".
"All schools are a bit of a microcosm of society," Rachel Poulain of the Free Speech Coalition told The AM Show on Thursday.
"The students are the individuals and the teachers play the role of authority. In any situation where you've got an authority figure telling people what they can and can't say, what they can and can't question... I think the appropriate reaction is to be a bit of a rebel and stick it to the man."
Tearing down the posters might have had something of a Streisand effect on the students' messages, Poulain said.
"It's a complete overreaction. Like most attempts at censorship, it's had the complete opposite effect - if they'd just let the posters stay up... we wouldn't be talking about it now."
Named for the singer Barbra Streisand, the Streisand effect describes a situation where the attempt to obscure or censor a piece of information ends up making it more widely heard. It was coined in 2005 after Streisand sued a website which hosted thousands of aerial photographs of the California coastline - one of which contained her mansion. Before the lawsuit, the image had been viewed only four times - but hundreds of thousands of people logged in to see it when her lawsuit hit the headlines.
The Free Speech Coalition was formed in 2018 after white nationalists Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern were denied using council-owned venues to spread their views.
Poulain told The AM Show if one group at school is allowed to put up posters, you have to let everyone.
"If you do it for one group, you've got to do it for all - that's the whole point of freedom of speech. It's in the Bill of Rights that we have it. It doesn't go away because you're a student enrolled at a particular school, religious or not."
Asked if high school was an appropriate forum for the posters, Poulain said it was the "best place for that sort of thing".
"This is where they're forming their knowledge, this is where they're learning to think critically and independently and question things. School is the best place, the ideal place."
