Posted on 06/17/2004 7:21:12 AM PDT by esryle
COVINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- When Covington schools Superintendent Jack Moreland saw an advertisement for a Chippendales show, he thought it would be a good morale booster for his female employees. So he shelled out $420 to send 20 female staff members to a Chippendales show to see buff men strip off most of their clothing.
It worked, but it also raised the ire of at least one person, who wrote an anonymous letter to the state Office of Education Accountability accusing Moreland of using school-district funds to pay for the strip show.
Moreland said he spent $420 of his own money for the show - and faxed his personal credit-card receipt to investigators.
"I did it in fun, and they went in fun, and I don't think there was any harm done," he said.
Bryan Jones, a lawyer for the Office of Education Accountability, said he couldn't confirm or deny whether his office looked into a complaint.
The women who attended the show said they enjoyed it.
"We just laughed and laughed and laughed," said Jena Meehan, the superintendent's secretary. "It was a spectacle, to be sure, and to have all of us there was even funnier."
Chippendales is a high-class male revue that became popular in the 1980s. Well-muscled young men wearing bow-ties and bare chests strip to scanty undies for female audiences.
Moreland is the former president of the Council for Better Education, the superintendents group that brought the historic lawsuit that resulted in the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 and its revolutionary reform of Kentucky's public schools.
Oh, a million apologies. Having never been to Chippendales, nor with any plans to attend in the future, I wouldn't know whether or not they actually get fully nude. Let me rephrase my rephrasing for your edification.
"The women went to Chippendales, a male revue where the dancers strip to their undergarments."
Whether or not the place is "classy" - on an absolute (or relative, as you seem to be fond of) basis is totally subjective and therefore irrelevant to the story. Additionally, it is sufficient to say that the dancers remove clothing down to their underwear. It is not necessary to provide descriptions of their bodies or how 'scanty' their underwear may or may not be. Those descriptions seem to be more for the edification of the author than the audience.
Nobody is mentioning the pressure on an employee when a boss endorses something they don't agree with.
Maybe the boss thinks you should go to a strip club. What if you don't? Aren't you a "team player?"
Maybe the boss thinks it's a good idea to work for a particular political candidate. What if you don't? Aren't you a "team player?"
Maybe the boss wants everyone to participate in an NCAA pool. What if you don't? Aren't you a "team player?"
This kind of activity is NOTHING that someone who has the power to hire and fire should do.
do you have no control over your own children that they would instantly do anything they see a teacher do? I personally relied on my parents MUCH more than my teacher to see what I should and shouldn't do in this world.
The presumption that you can't know something about someone w/out having access to their entire moral code is utterly ridiculous.
Oh, yeah, now I recall Jesus' famous words. Weren't they something to the effect of, "You shall know them only by understanding their entire moral code."
No, that wasn't it. What was it, now? Oh, oh, oh, yeah. Now, I remember:
"You shall know them by their fruit."
Oh, you mean like when we determine personhood? [abortion] Nice to know all about these "objective" laws.
"Where a woman has bad manners, it always has in it an element of vulgarity which is more painful than it could be in a man. The result will be a society hopelessly vulgarized...with no end but to sink in an ever deeper abyss of vulgarity." -- Thomas Nelson Page, 1911"
Ah the good old days, before women could vote. Men put women on a pedestal and insisted that they behave better than men themselves did. Womens lib has changed all that. Now women can and do act just like men.
Those times are gone forever. No sense in looking back.
The article explained that one person complained. We don't know if that one person was upset about the morality of the action OR if he/she was concerned about the possible use of public funds. An investigation into the funding was undertaken, and thus, the article.
Children are much more likely to smoke because their parents smoke or because of peer pressure. I've never heard anyone, anywhere say they began smoking because their kindergarten teacher did.
What if they're teaching sex ed? :-)
No, nor female strip clubs. I'm glad you're here to educate us morally innocent folks.
i have no interest in protecting adults from any social consequences. i do have an interest in keeping appropriate behavior from being defined by one or two people with particularly narrow views. As I said in another post - if enough parents at the school are upset, the teachers will face consequences, social or professional, or both. If not, they won't. But your moral outrage over something that happened nowhere near your or your children is unfounded and unfair. Perhaps we all need to spend a little more time taking care of the children we're responsible for and let other children's parents take care of their own. Maybe most of those parents think their children are rational and mature enough to see the difference between what their teachers did and wanton sexuality. Maybe those parents have more influence over their children than the teachers, and so don't really care if the teacher does something they may not want their children to do. Social sanctions are decided by the society the teachers are in - not by your definitions or morality and damage.
If so, whose best interest do you have in mind? Protecting the adult desires enacted in the public square, or protecting children?
you don't protect children by pretending these things don't exist in the world, you protect them by teaching them how to recognize right and wrong and how to behave in their own best interests. And one of those things you should teach them is that just because someone else does something doesn't mean you should. That's protecting children. Putting your fingers in their ears and hiding them in the closet doesn't do any good once they get out.
There is an irony here that many are missing. The problem is that children occasionally find out about this type of behavior. How are the children finding out? Because the busybody, gossiping moralizers, like those on this thread, apparently cannot contain themselves!
WHO is damaging children?
unless they brought pictures or slide shows, they kept it away from the children. also, going once is not frequenting. It's going once. so what the children know is that their teachers went one time to this show. unless you can show me evidence of the teachers telling their students lurid details, i don't see the harm.
The issue is one of integrity. It's been said, "You either have it or you don't." Now the truth is none of us are perfect. We wouldn't need Jesus if we were. But if you don't make good decisions outside of the classroom, if you haven't refined your value system, that will bleed into the classroom. In what way I can't predict, but it will happen. Maybe in the form of bad advice or whatever.
Let me give you an example. I hired a bunch of nurses. During orientation, I was discussing that we only had software licenses for a few of the computers in the office and they would have to take turns entering patient data on the ones that did. One nurse spoke up and said, "Can't you just copy the software."
I responded respectfully that "Yes I could, but technically that would be considered theft, it's also called software piracy". Is wasn't a month or two, until we noticed this nurse was turning in excessive overtime dispite the fact that she had a very very light patient load. And she wouldn't come into the office and help even when she didn't have patients, yet we were paying her a full-time salary. We tried to address it, but she didn't respond and we fired her. We learned later that she was working for another firm at the same time she was drawing a full-time salary from us. Which explains why she rarely came into the office after she saw her patients.
The point is that the same character flaw, the same lack of integrity that allowed this nurse to suggest we steal the software, allowed this nurse to steal from us.
If you don't have good values, it's going to show up in other ways.
If you want to be a really great teacher, spend some time examining your character and make it as Christlike as you can. You will have more positive influence on your kids than you will ever know in this lifetime.
What is it that you expect these teachers might do? Suddenly, because I went to Chippendales, I've become a moron who cannot remember that kindergarteners need phonics and do single number math?
I can agree with that.
Hey, it sounds to me like someone wrote a letter to folks at school, not to the public at large. Am I missing something? It was the AP + whatever local press which may have originally reported it who reported it to the public at large, including students.
So are you calling AP & the entire Press "busybody, gossiping moralizers"?
i'm Jewish, so I could be off here, but didn't he say something about juding people too? even if it wasn't him, it's good advice. Judge not, lest ye be judged. Oh, and this one I know is him - Let he who is without sin throw the first stone. you're sparkling clean then? Never a transgression? I'm all for religion, and I plan to raise religious kids, but you can't ask the world to live by your standards.
You know NOTHING about these women except what they did for one night out to cut back and relax. And you've judged them very very harshly. Seems pretty un-Christian to me.
actually, the AP article didn't seem to particularly have a problem with it, so I can't say they are moralizers. But busybodies and gossips - what ELSE would you call an article like this?
I used to see quite frequently license plates on the front of vehicles in Kentucky that said, "Fast women, pretty horses".
I think your office has it backwards.
A former resident.
And the funding wouldn't be an issue if this was a Christmas party would it?
"Children are much more likely to smoke because their parents smoke or because of peer pressure. I've never heard anyone, anywhere say they began smoking because their kindergarten teacher did."
Certainly the parents should be more of an influence than you, usually they will. My daughter absolutely loved her kindergarden teacher.
Don't assume they aren't looking to you as a role model. THEY ARE. You won't outweigh their parents. But some of your kids are going to come from broken homes and unfit parents. You are going to be one of the first major authorities in those kids lives outside of their parents. Certainly the first one that got to spend 5 days a week and 6-8 hours a day with them. That is a BIG influence. It's HUGH. Make sure it's the best influence you can give them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.