Spineless administrators of our educational institutions, PART 1,202

Just another in a long list of examples of how our system is fucked.

Film clip gets teacher in hot water
A Fort Worth, Texas, elementary teacher has been disciplined after showing portions of the R-rated movie Amistad to fifth-grade students during a lesson on slavery.

On Jan. 25, Larue Washington, who has taught for 27 years, apparently showed parts of the movie depicting slaves en route to the Americas, including a scene in which a character was stabbed.

"The teacher in question did show a clip from the movie," said Barbara Griffith, a district spokeswoman. "It was 10 minutes long."

Letters were sent to parents this week explaining what happened, Griffith said.

"I deeply regret that this happened," Principal Sandra Garza wrote in the letter. "The appropriate measures have been taken to ensure that this will not happen again."

Washington failed to follow school board policy, which states that commercial movies or motion pictures must be reviewed and preapproved by the school principal.

Griffith said the policy also prohibits showing any portions of an R-rated movie "no matter what segment of the movie is being shown." She added that the principal would not have approved the movie.

Amistad, released in 1997, stars Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins and is a vivid portrayal of the physical and emotional horror of slaves' passage by ship in the 1800s.

Washington declined to comment.

Larry Shaw, executive director of the United Educators Association, defended Washington, saying she was trying to give the fifth-graders a sense of what life was like on a slave ship. The parts of the movie showed were directly related to history, Shaw added.

Shaw said a stabbing was depicted in the scenes Washington showed.

"Believe it or not, there were deaths in slavery," he said.
He said it's not uncommon for teachers nationwide to forget to submit movie clips for approval because they assume they are not showing a whole movie for entertainment.

"They use it to highlight -- to give a flavor of what they are talking about," Shaw said. "A lot of kids are visual learners. They have to see something before it strikes home."

Fort Worth schools Superintendent Melody Johnson disagreed with Shaw's assessment; saying it is a "broad overgeneralization" to assume all teachers commonly ignore or forget policies.

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God help us that we should dare to visually educate our children.

 

I dunno. If I was a parent of a fifth-grader who tries to keep him or her from watching violent or explicit television, send him to school and found out they watched someone get stabbed without my knowing about it, I might be a little pissed.

Edit: POSSED? POSSED? What in fuck is wrong with me?

 

Principals are scum of the earth. Not 100 percent of them, but a great deal of them. My wife's a teacher. Her principal is probably the dumbest broad in the building, and she bends to every parent at the expense of her teachers. It was the same way at her previous school. It's like a sports editor flipping out every time a parent complains about lack of prep swimming coverage and ordering up centerpieces that 99.9 percent of the readership could give a shit about.

 

Print;

Between this and your "Then and Now" e-mail forward-turned-post, I think we get it.

But I may suggest that you actually see "Amistad" if you haven't already.

There are some scenes, especially early, that are quite visceral.

Now, if we're talking high schoolers, then I'm all for it. Hell, the first time I saw it was via a high school class.

But we're still dealing with kids at this age, and kids can handle things to wildly varying degrees. And yes, whether it angers some or not, even the wussies deserve reasonable protection within the confines of a public school.

 

I've had a couple of friends who worked in secondary education with situations similar to Pringle's wife ... a clueless principal who don't think twice about throwing their teachers under the (school) bus kowtowing to parents. One's out of the profession, and the other wisely went to another school to get away from the scumbag (went from one friend's school to another in the county ... he's one of the superintendent's chosen ones).

Personally, I had a fifth-grade social studies teacher who was proactive enough to have us all take home permission slips to see the film "Roots" in parts over a few weeks. Super education experience ... she figured it would soak in more to see it than for her to try to explain it. While that was in a DoDDs school (Department of Defense school run in conjunction with the U.S. government) overseas, I'm not sure she could get permission today without getting caught in more administrative red tape than anyone should have to digest.

 

I need to know more about the clip first.

 

MIght have been more appropriate for 8th or 9th graders. Don't object to the technique but could've waited for more "mature" high schoolers.

But, this should just be a slap on the wrist. The intent was honorable if not the most intelligent. Should have gotten administration's approval first.

We live in an electronic age. Kids that age probably play or have seen buddies play graphic and violent video games. I hate fake outrage like kids these days have been sheltered completely.

 

printdust : educators :: DyePack : designers.

 

Ahem. My dad was a principal. So kindly go fuck yourself.

 

Oh, get over yourself. Read the rest of the paragraph. I've encouraged my wife to be one, just so she can be a good one and stand up for teachers. Too many principals didn't have enough classroom experience. They don't stand up for their workers. They're like any other boss, except most bosses aren't setting the agendas for America's future.

 

My principal for senior year was a band director with a Ph.D. so go ahead with the assumptions.

Anyway, kids aren't exposed to reality enough. If anything, kids are too sheltered. Shit, I was 7 when Die Hard came out and my mom took me. Big fucking deal. A generation of pussies on medication are being raised.

 

But we're not, like, generalizing or anything.

There's a boatload of folly in thinking that young children are going to take everything the same. Thanks to a complete absence of parenting, I grew up watching, reading and listening to whatever my little mind felt like. I look back now and I think, shit, I didn't need to be watching David Lynch movies and reading Stephen King novels before puberty set in. That's a little, you know, weird. But it all pretty much rolled off my back.

Other kids, not so much. And while we don't need to throw the entire education system into reverse for those housed at the other extreme (or the "pussies" as was so eloquently proffered : ), I think a little intelligence and discretion could do wonders. Just because a child or group of children may be more vulnerable to intense themes than others doesn't necessarily place them lower on the evolutionary ladder.

Ultimately, we're likely not going to move forward much as a society until we relinquish the urge to ridicule the sensitive and weak. These medicated pussies you scoff at, like it or not, are going to be inheriting our world. And as I look around at a world run by "manly men" for quite some time now, I have to wonder if being pussified is really all that much of a stigma.