Connecticut high schoolers get schooled about censorship. It is never too young to learn how our country works.

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.

Wow so these teens, who are constantly being labeled as selfish and ego-centric, are helping to bring the story of these young soldiers to their audience. Who could possibly argue with that?

But even as 15 student actors were polishing the script and perfecting their accents for a planned April performance, the school principal last week canceled the play, titled “Voices in Conflict,” citing questions of political balance and context.

Oh.

“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.

“To me, it was outrageous,’’ said Jim Anderson, Sarah’s father. “Here these kids are really trying to make a meaningful effort to educate, to illuminate their fellow students, and the administration, of all people, is shutting them down.”

So this institute of learning takes an opportunity to demonstrate how democratic our country is and pulls the plug on it. Good educating!

Of course with this administration in power, this principal may actually be demonstrating just how democratic our country currently is right now. Of course that is going to change very, very soon. Perhaps the principal of this school should change as well.