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.
I can agree that people who steal are likely to steal from anyone, if they think they can get away with it. Now, please tell me what people who go to Chippendales might do. Are you afraid they will interact sexually with students? Discuss sex in the classroom?
Please remember that there is a LOT that goes on with a person that you may not know. Is it MORAL to assume that I am depraved because I have been to a Chippendales show and fire me, while the teacher next door is carrying on an affair that you don't know about?
So, if I tell students, or respond affirmatively if asked by a student, that, yes, I enjoyed my fun time at Six Flags or @ some professional sporting event, of course, that would ne'er want that student to attend that same place of amusement & entertainment, now would it?
What? Do you always disconnect like this? Or don't you realize that some students emulate their beloved teachers re: their behavior both inside and outside the classroom?
Nice strawman.
I mean laws are formally created, recorded, and a formal system exists for determining compliance/non-compliance. Morals are based on subjective interpretations by individuals or groups of individuals. Second, laws are formally enforced, whereas morals are not.
In some parts of the world, the morals are the law (example the Taliban and Islam.) Be careful what you wish for.
No. We have agreed that a large problem with "immoral" behavior is that children may find out about it and thus be influenced. If I saw a teacher going into the Hustler store, I wouldn't think a thing about it, so why would I tell anyone?
It would only be those busybody gossiping moralizers who would then set about whispering about town that "Mrs. Dianna was in the Hustler store!!" It is they who are setting the stage for the children to find out. It is they who are setting up the children for damage.
In this particular case, there was at least some question that public funds were used. That may have triggered the article.
Can children not be told that there are some things appropriate for adults and not for children? That they will have to decide on their own when they are adults if they want to do those things or not? Or can they never be trusted to make judgements for themselves, or to see the distinction between adults and children, so we must always keep things hidden from them? Sounds like a bad way to raise a person capable of making their own determinations of right and wrong.
Who made you my moral judge? ("narrow views"). I thought you were broad-minded? I thought you were tolerant? I thought you were inclusive? And here you go around labeling views as "narrow." How tolerant is that?
So, you've made yourself the self-appointed gatekeeper who goes around to ensure that "appropriate behavior" isn't defined by "one or two people." Where did you get this absolute standard from? Why do you try to impose this standard on me? For someone who otherwise comes across and "live and Let live," you don't really live by even your own code on this, now do you?
Of course not. If people thought that public funds were being used to buy this guy a house, wouldn't it be an issue too?
"Sounds like a bad way to raise a person capable of making their own determinations of right and wrong."
Again...you are not looking at the pressure on the employee.
This boss was OBVIOUSLY thinking this was a good idea. What if you didn't think so, and was branded for it.
FREEPER lesson No. 1: Beware of loaded words. Allow me to unpack what Dianna means by this word. Her definition: A Dianna-defined busybody is anybody who views what someone else does in the public square and doesn't look the other way.
Are you assuming that any teacher would discuss Chippendales with her students?
A teacher who did discuss Chippendales in class should be fired. That is inappropriate. Amazing that such a flawed human being, like myself, could make that sort of judgement?
It is not to late. There are many today who are inspired to follow this verse:
Jeremiah 6:16 (ESV) Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.
I'm tolerating you, but you still have narrow views if you think that only your definition of moral behavior should be used as a litmus for teachers. That's just defining something I see, not being non-inclusive or intolerant. I do find you annoying, but I can tolerate that.
So, you've made yourself the self-appointed gatekeeper who goes around to ensure that "appropriate behavior" isn't defined by "one or two people." Where did you get this absolute standard from? Why do you try to impose this standard on me? For someone who otherwise comes across and "live and Let live," you don't really live by even your own code on this, now do you?
you have a funny definition of an absolute standard - I say i don't want appropriate behavior for everyone defined by just one or two people, and that's an absolute standard? sounds like a guideline to me. I'm not imposing anything on you, I'm saying that you don't get to impose it on them. My imposing it on you would be to say that you don't get to say what is ok for your own children, which I wouldn't do. Saying you can't personally impose it on a larger group is simply stating that you don't have the right to decide for everyone what is and isn't ok. Your arguments are getting somewhat shrill - I don't believe I have limited YOUR ability to live as you please, though you would limit these teachers' ability to do so because of what you think. "live and let live" doesn't mean let someone else walk all over other people's individual rights because they are personally outraged.
No, a busybody is someone who views what someone else does in the public square that has no impact on them and feels it is their right to pass this information in order to bring damage to this person. That's a busybody.
My standard that I live by on these questions is what Christ said:
"And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. 'Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come! (Matthew 18:5-7)
Christ agrees w/you partially. Children are going to see such things ("Such things must come"), but as He said, I don't want to be the one who introduces it to them.
An integral part of my definition is that the person not only NOT look away, but then, gossip about what he/she has seen.
There is, IMO, a difference between telling people that you saw the kindergarten teacher murder her neighbor and telling them that she was having dinner with someone who was NOT her husband!
Please report illegal activity. If a teacher's behavior isn't of your standard, remove your child and keep your mouth shut.
From a purely religious standpoint, nudity was God's initial intent. I'm not going to question his judgement.
Currently, my personal choice to wear clothes or not in public is mostly based on the terrible spectacle of my aging body. Back in the day, however, the choice was more often based primarily on the weather and personal comfort.
We will obviously have to agree to disagree on just how terrible the threat of public nudity is to our current civilization.
They might make inappropriate comments. They may discuss sex either in the classroom or with students outside the classroom and my concern there is the projection of values that aren't biblically based. They might introduce inappropriate materials.
They might do something as stupid as bringing bananas to class and having the students put condemns on them and then teaching the kids that pre-marital sex is normal and not wrong and that the condemn is sufficient protection.
"Is it MORAL to assume that I am depraved because I have been to a Chippendales show and fire me, while the teacher next door is carrying on an affair that you don't know about?"
Yes, because while you are both depraved, the teacher next door had the good sense to be discreet about it. Therefore you are fired because of your depravity AND your poor judgement. While the teacher next door is not.
Maybe that is not fair, but it is certainly MORAL to take action on what you do know about. And it is certainly MORAL to judge the character of the people teaching your kids, and insure that your kids are entrusted to appropriate role models.
The Office of Education Accountability
2. How did the press find out?
Possibly the Madame deFarge who made the complaint told them.
3. Why did the press think it was newsworthy?
The antics of the Purity Patrol are amusing and usually attract attention Carrie Nation, Anthony Comstock et. al.
4. Why does this thread even attract attention if it's so common?
a) See 3. and
b) Many people would consider this is a case where the Office of Education Accountability should butt out and MTOB.
I think there is a lot more oppostion to this than you are willing to admit.
And I think you realize your moral code is not as widely held as you would wish, which is why your are demanding THE AUTHORITIES should react to and enforce every annoymus tipsters complaint. JMO.
that goes to the relationship between the superintendent and the teachers, not the teachers and the students, which is what I have been debating. I'd have to know more about how the suggestion was made, the relationship between all parties, etc in order to make any call on whether he did something that could have blown up in his face. Either way, I still don't think the teachers did any terrible thing.
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