Highly respected art teacher takes her kids on an approved trip to the Dallas Museum of Art. Principal urged her to take the kids. Parents signed consent forms for all the kids who went. Some kids report seeing a (gasp) nude sculpture at an art museum. So what happens to the teacher? I’ll give you three guesses:
FRISCO, Texas — An award-winning Texas art teacher who was reprimanded after one of her fifth-grade students saw a nude sculpture during a trip to a museum has lost her job.
The school board in Frisco has voted not to renew Sydney McGee’s contract after 28 years. […]
The teacher took her students on an approved field trip to a Dallas museum, and now some parents are upset.
Update [2006-9-27 8:41:59 by Steven D]: Terra Incognita has an idea on how to reward the Frisco Independent School District for their “brave” stand on this issue.
Now, McGee, who was honored with a Star Teacher Award two years ago, is on paid administrative leave until her contract with the school district expires in March.
Other parents are worried about the future of the art program at the school, which they cite as a reason for moving into the neighborhood.
“Our main concern right now is what’s going to happen to the children and what’s going to happen to the art program at Fisher Elementary. It is the best art program. That’s the reason we moved to this neighborhood. It’s because of the teachers,” said Shannon Allen, a parent. “It was a principal-approved trip. What’s the big deal?”
What’s the big deal? Who cares if we fire an award winning teacher folks. Who cares if the parents all signed permission forms. Who cares if the principal approved the field trip. The teacher let her students see a sculpture of a nude human body!!
And that’s a big deal. Because, God forbid nude bodies should ever be seen. Isn’t that clear from the Garden of Eden story in Genesis? After eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve saw that they were naked as jaybirds, and for the first time they understood what that meant. It meant that their naughty parts (the ones respectable people never name out loud) might get aroused, and (double gasp!) Sex could happen! S-E-X! Which as we all know = The Worst Sin Ever in the Universe. Adam and Eve were rightly ashamed at what they saw and covered their naughty parts right quick.
And now some “art” teacher (for all we know she’s a lesbian nymphomaniac pedophile for God’s sake!) exposed her poor, innocent 5th graders to a sculpture that showed the naughty parts in all their vulgar glory! Parts I’m certain they’ve never seen before, the sight of which might very well have already started them down the road to degradation, perversion and perdition. For shame! I’m surprised those parents and that school board didn’t ride her out of town on a rail after tarring and feathering her ass. She should be thankful they are all such good, forgiving Christians. They exercised an abundance of mercy in only seeking such a minor punishment for her transgression.
Who needs art anyway? I’m sure we’d all be better off if people just burned all scurrilous, libidinous paintings depicting people as sexual in any way (take that Mona Lisa and your knowing smirk!) and busted up all the nude sculptures with sledge hammers. In fact, better to have no art museums at all. The only art our kids should see are the stained glass portraits of our beloved Jesus in their local churches.
That is, after all, what they really want, isn’t it?
Hitler’s war on Modern art—his “cleansing” of German culture—was the cornerstone of Nazi cultural policy.
Need I say more?
What? Didn’t they still have the drapes in place following the visit of our past Attorney General?
I have just sent an extended email to the Wilma Fisher Elementary School in care of their flak–below.
Shana McKay-Wortham
FISD Director of Communications
Email: mckays@friscoisd.org
Phone: (469) 633-6060
Fax: (469) 633-6050
(Since I surprised myself by being able to think at 6 am, I include my text in case it might spur some others to make similar (probably shorter) communications to this debacle. I’m hoping they’ll be looking for a way to reinstate after they realize how buffoonish and provincial this makes them seem, but I’m idealistic that way.)
Cheers:
Ladies and Gentlemen:
In the process of writing this I have noted your slogan at the school website:
“Never be anything less than everything you can be.â€
While this is a mouthful of a complex sentence for children, not to mention disturbingly
similar to the slogan for the Army, I assume that you mean for the students and
parents, as well as the faculty, to live into that motto.
I am horrified at the story of your art teacher, in the art department (the existence
of which is a tremendous asset to the school and district, by the way), who is on
leave and whose contract will not be renewed.
Any cursory examination, any lay person’s understanding, of art, necessarily
includes consideration of the human form (nudes), in all media. These works are
respresented in public and private museums, commercial galleries, and homes, and
well they should be. This subject of art is perhaps the most effective for exalted
expression and the transmission of the most subtle communication. Like stained
glass windows, works of art speak to the illiterate, and express what otherwise
is inexpressible. Michaelangelo and Rubens, Gaugin and the Hellenistic masters
all found the form to be essential to their craft to carry the truth of Western
expression, and a Western classial liberal education has been the means by which
to appreciate this fact.
Legitimate art, edifying and enlightening generations through art history from Giotto
to Cristophe, from Europe and Africa and the Americas, cannot speak for itself against
teapot tempests of a few ugly-minded and abysmally informed parents. It is up to
the educators of Frisco School to speak for art, culture, and perspective.
How unfortunate that you are putting Frisco, Texas on the map with such an asinine
instance, being bullied by a parent into abrogating your duty to teach your young
charges. By this sequence of actions, you have certainly taught your children that
the human form is to be giggled about and removed to the smoky brothels of Frisco
and its environs. Yes, one must really hide the human form (always female, I note)
in Maxim, Penthouse, and those other magazines fathers and brothers keep around
the house. You educators of impressionabe children are teaching them that their
own bodies are shameful, as are those of family members who may, in the course of
a lifetime, unwittingly reveal a thigh or a backside. When the boys from your school
get into the locker room, they will glance sideways to get their fill of the forbidden
sight, further confusing them as they go through puberty. Your actions may well
have contributed to the body dysmorphism visited on little girls as they become
young women.
Most importantly, however, you are proving that the people of Frisco have no interest
in learning about their own history and culture or that of others. Your youngsters
will be ill-equipped to walk in the greater world outside Frisco. Your graduates
will demonstrate an immature discomfort on gallery dates and during public functions,
and even just high school trips, when they have learned to recoil upon sighting
a nude. If they survive this current enslaught, it will only be because its educators
have torn down the scrim of “innocence” and exposed behind it the backwardness
of this attempt to edit out that which is most enduring about our cultural heritage.
What a shame. I certainly am ashamed for you.
[Terra Incognita]
September 27, 2006
Great idea. Added an update to link to your post.
I’m thinking of starting a fig leaf distribution company, anyone want to invest?
Cripe. Nekkidness will be the ruination of us all. If we start appreciating the beauty and power of the human body, how are we gonna justify blowing it to bits in video games, on the tellyvision or in armed conflict against our ever present enemies?
Good thing that the art nazis haven’t seen my naked Hudson.
I had to avert my eyes!
I hope they haven’t seen this or this.
Why am I reminded of the Taliban blowing up the giant statues of the Buddha? And that creepily wholesome underground community in “A Boy and His Dog?”
It starts with despising our own bodies, then circles outward into the animals around us and eventually all of nature. You do not preserve that in which you find nothing of intrinsic value.
I wish Jesus would hurry up and come back to rid us of his pestilent flock.
I’ll give you a 4 just for the reference to “A Boy and His Dog.” One of the better, though under-appreciated, sci-fi films of the 1970s.
By the way, if Jesus comes back to take his flock, those people are all going to be shocked when they’re left behind. No way he wants those idiots up in Heaven. Heck, he’s probably got a gift-shop souvenir replica of the statue of David on his nightstand.
A friend of mine who had a administrative position at University of Colorado/Colorado Springs was once chastized for having “pornography” in her office.
What did she have?
A magnetized image of Michelangelo’s David stuck on the side of her file cabinet. (magnetized clothing of various types also provided, designed to fit over the statue like dressing a paper doll.) It was an amusing little novelty item, maybe six or eight inches tall.
But if you took David’s magnetic clothing off, he was, of course… naked. She might have inadvertantly corrupted the tender innocence of some poor college student…
This is just so totally eff’n ridiculous. Yes, of COURSE fifth graders are going to get wide-eyed and giggly at the sight of a nude statue, especially if they’ve been “protected” from such shocking sights before. I’m sure they talked about it, joked about it, teased each other about it, all the way home on the bus — for the boys (assuming the statue was female — though even a male nude would get their attention) it was probably the HIT of their trip! They are, after all, fifth graders — at the age where potty humor and fart jokes will send them into hysterical fits of giggles, and mild not-quite-sexual humor (such as a character’s pants falling down, or a male character in female clothing) is standard fare in movies or cartoons aimed at that age group.
I don’t think there’s an art museum (or history museum, for that matter) in the country where you can AVOID seeing some kind of nude figure. The human figure has to be one of the most common artistic subjects of all time, both clothed and unclothed, even when the art is intended to be religious in nature.
But you know? Once the average, well-adjusted fifth grader has seen a dozen or more nude statues, he or she’s kinda seen ’em all. It’s no longer titillating or remarkable, or a topic of embarassed joking around in the back of the bus. It’s only when it’s a novelty (especially if they’ve been taught by family, church or teachers that naked is dirty or forbidden) that it attracts so much attention.
Sigh. All that fuss over a chunk of marble or whatever it was… not a WORD about the sexual undercurrents in marketing clothes, games, movies, or anything else to kids and pre-teens… (but that’s a rant for another time).
You know, it’s a really good thing these people didn’t employ my sixth-grade teacher. I remember seeing some National Geographic-style movie once in his class, and he prefaced it by telling us there might be some images of naked people. I forget how he worded the warning, but there was all of about six seconds of some African tribe dancing, including a couple of bare-breasted women.
But this guy had done a few years in the Marine Corps. He was fully capable of saying what he thought, and although it didn’t emerge in the classroom I’m sure he could have done so in fluent Jarhead. He didn’t take nothin’ from nobody.
You know, there is a great deal of difference between kids seeing a naked body in an anthropological or artistic context, and using The Joy Of Sex as a fifth-grade biology textbook. But such distinctions are lost on these people. You’re either for being ashamed of your body and thinking anything having to do with it — whether it’s disease, reproduction or simply the shape of it — is sinful, or you’re against it.
We’re marching proudly backwards to our future. For some reason, these folks think the 1950s were the high point of all of western civilization and that if we can only get back there everything will be OK. It’s so distressing.
There’s a good satire of all this, however, if you need a laugh. The Department of Homeland Decency: Decency Rules and Regulations Manual. Check it out at http://www.homelanddecency.com. It will make you laugh.
Used to consider Texas as BajaOklahoma. Guess now they’re both BajaKansas
More like Upper Puritanistan.
I think the Lone Star Republic folks are still taking donations. Can you spare a dime to help them fight for independence?
This is despicable on all fronts. Children don’t find anything remotely shameful, or even sexual for that matter, about the naked body until they are conditioned to do so by ignorant parents and our objectifying society. Most child psychologists I’ve read are quite stern in their view that children who grow up unashamed of their bodies and nakedness develop far healthier self-esteems and views of human sexuality – both of which a necessary to function in healthy adult relationship, not to mention make it through the puberty years without having some kind of personal crisis. I imagine most people reading this blog hear that and see it for the no-brainer it is. Why not in Frisco? A poor culture of body image is surely to blame. If any of the children reacted with some kind of shame or immature amusement at the statue, it was because they’ve already been corrupted into adopted a poor conception of body image – probably the parent’s fault – and not because it’s a natural reaction.
I once read a story about a fundamentalist Christian nudist camp somewhere in the south. I don’t remember the whole story behind it, but I just remember thinking that their views of how Hollywood objectifies and falsely sexualizes the human “temple” weren’t so terribly different from many of the feminist authors I’ve read on the subject, even if the foundation of those views was quite different. I wish I still had the article, I’d send it on down to Frisco.
That teacher, and others like her who expose children to this kind of art are doing them far more good than their parents who ignorantly try to shelter them from it – and that’s the saddest part. My hope is that this was by no means a big push from parents and just an overreaction by an out-of-touch board to a few blowhards, as most of these things tend to be.
The answer to the problem was not to fire the teacher. The answer to the problem is to remove the children of the complaining parents from their custody. Allowing idiots to idiotify another generation is terrorism.