Editor’s note

The “Guestwork” article on this page, “Free the student press,” by Randy Swikle, brings back memories of long-ago days as a high school editor, and some of the lessons learned. While Swikle is right to beseech school authorities not to be authoritarian when it comes to the student press, urging them to cultivate rather than control it, student editors could use some advice as well. I don’t know if it’s still true today, but in the 1960s I found out that the teacher who gave of her after-school time to sponsor the newspaper didn’t like to be surprised or embarrassed by what appeared in print. Once I learned to let her in on what I was up to, I could get away with a lot. –Fletcher Farrar, editor