Some parents in Georgia need a lesson in logic and reality. Take one Tina McCurley.
She’s the mother of a student at Westside Middle School in Georgia. Here’s what happened and why I say so.
Her daughter’s history class was shown the first five minutes of 300 as part of a history class. Five minutes. Got that?
Parents complained, as they tend to do about everything these days.
The executive director of assessment and accountability for the county’s schools looked into it. He said,
“I watched it with the principal (Stan Stewart). The clip had no profanity, no nudity, no violence,” he said. “It depicts a Spartan boy and the process he went through in attempting to attain manhood. We didn’t find it disturbing and thought it was appropriate to the lesson. There were no battle scenes. The clip starts with a boy as a baby and ends as he enters the army.”
Got that? Five minutes of the movie, no violence. (That’s better than most of the cartoons on TV these days — ever see Kim Possible?)
But Ms. McCurley weighed in thusly:
“From everything I’ve read, the previews and the trailer, I don’t feel the movie is appropriate for these students. If movie theaters can’t show rated-R movies without a parent present, how can they do this in the schools?”
Reminder: The movie wasn’t shown. Just five minutes of it. In fact, McCurley said (later in the article) that she saw “nothing wrong with the movie’s first five minutes.”
Still, she said, “I don’t care if it was one minute. ‘R’ movies have no place in our schools.”
So let’s look at her logic: Even though what the kids saw had “no profanity, no nudity, no violence,” because other parts of the movie had those things, the evil inherent in them must have seeped into those first five minutes even if you couldn’t see it.
Or, perhaps, having an R-rated DVD physically in the school building is dangerous.
That’s the only way to explain her comment.
The Fray
Steve M says:
This is why I don’t teach art anymore. I miss teaching, but I just can’t hold my tongue when people – in my experience, usually administrators petrified by fear or parents – lose track of reality.
gnomic says:
I’ve recently had a kid (he’s 6 months old now) and he’s like a membership card to a whole new world of people that I can’t believe were allowed to have kids. Some of these people shouldn’t be trusted with a burnt out match in a rainstorm, much less another sentient being. Some observations:
1. Yelling at the top of your lungs at a 2 year old serves only to identify the more quiet and intellegent person.
2. Letting your kid cry for an hour day after day because some book you read said to feed him on a schedule is not only cruel, it proves you should be alowed to own a pet, much less breed.
3. Its not just parents. Teaching (as one public 1st grade teached did in Railiegh, NC did last year) that red and white candy canes represent “the blood and body of Christ” is wrong on some many points that not only aren’t qualified to teach, you shouldn’t be around children or allowed to talk to them (unless your point it to scare them away from candy, I suppose).
I have no idea how I will survive when these people start talking to my kid. I’ll probably have to learn where the best places to hide the numerours bodies are.
Andrew says:
2. Letting your kid cry for an hour day after day because some book you read said to feed him on a schedule is not only cruel, it proves you should be alowed to own a pet, much less breed.
Ditto for the “let them cry themselves to sleep” crowd. When a baby cries, it means it needs something, and it’s turning to the one person who can provide it. Letting them “cry it out” is cruel, and begs the question: Cry what out?
It gets worse, sadly. Soon you will meet all the stereotypical parents. One woman we know saw the toddler-age cell phone that I had (sent to me by Verizon Wireless for review), thought it was my son’s, and had to run out and buy one for her four year old. [sigh]
Teaching (as one public 1st grade teached did in Railiegh, NC did last year) that red and white candy canes represent “the blood and body of Christ” is wrong on some many points…
Sadly, those same people probably think Yankees are snobs. Of course, when you read about something like that, you know it probably didn’t happen above the Mason-Dixon line. If you don’t want Northerners to think you’re idiots, at least read a few history books before you try to teach it.
Next topic: Schools suspending kids for drawing pictures of laser pistols!
lionemom says:
I agree with everyone else above about stupid parents and dumb people, etc.
But I’m not sure what movie they are talking about here. I have seen ‘300′ (and I now own the DVD)……there is NO part of that movie that does not contain “nudity” (all the men are shirtless the entire time, including the young boys) and violence (scenes of King Leonidas in the begining include him being taught to fight by his father and then taken away from his mother to undergo Spartan warrior training which included exposure to cold with minimal clothing, having to fight for your food and becoming inured to pain.)
So….I’m not sure what 5 minutes of the movie they showed the kids, but I can almost guarantee that it was not violence-free. Just sayin’…..
Steve M says:
I think they are separating ‘implied’ violence from … well, the rest of the movie! That is, shadows on a rock implying a boy is defending himself from a cartoonishly exaggerated wolf is different and about as violent as anything on TV.
Whether or not that’s still acceptable in a class is up to debate.
Actually, frankly, the reason this is up for ridicule isn’t what was shown, so much as the rationale for why the parent freaked. Like the parents who are certain that Harry Potter will convert all the Little Christians to goat-sacrificing heathens despite never reading the book, it’s not a mark of intellectual strength to freak out about something without ever having read/seen the material.
The teacher probably should have shown the clip in question to the parents. Definitely! But that’s beside the point – the parent needs to be measured and clear and above all, informed before attempting to crucify a teacher who wanted to get the kids excited about history.
Leland says:
Ignorance is bliss.