Posted on 09/26/2006 9:33:20 AM PDT by Abathar
Children Were On School-Approved Field Trip
FRISCO, Texas -- A 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. She has been on administrative leave.
The teacher took her students on an approved field trip to a Dallas museum, and now some parents are upset.
The Fisher Elementary school art teacher came under fire last April when she took 89 fifth graders on a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art. Parents raised concerns over the field trip after their children reported seeing a nude sculpture at the art museum.
The parents had signed permission slips allowing their children to take part in the field trip.
McGee's lawyer said the principal at Fisher Elementary School admonished her after a parent complained that a student had seen nude art.
McGee said the principal had urged her to take the students to the museum.
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, parent. "It was a principal approved trip. What's the big deal?"
Officials with the Frisco school district declined to comment on the matter.
"Where's your blog URL?"
Sorry. In the interest of attempting to maintain some anonymity here, I don't give that out on Free Republic. I also wouldn't pimp my blog here, or anywhere else that is a discussion forum.
Thanks for asking.
That's the way to handle it. When I was in the 8th grade, our art teacher (a very attractive woman BTW), showed us a series of slides of various art works. Some of the slides showed African carved wooden scuptures depicting women with elongated breasts. I remember being very disappointed at the boorish comments of my fellow male students.
I am sure you would find similar ignorance of scripture in most elite university and liberal arts college graduates. This state of affairs has been long in coming -- even the serious general education requirements those universities and colleges maintained through the 1960's bare scratched the surface of such things. And, after all, the general education courses were instituted to make up for the fact that students no longer learned such things at home, in church, and in high school. But, since around 1970 or so, most elite colleges and universities have so attenuated the breadth or core requirements that it is possible to graduate with a good "liberal arts"
degree without having had any sort of a traditional 'liberal education.' I currently have two children in college, one of whom was able to take advantage of an excellent "great ideas" two year set of core courses that provided exactly the sort of introduction to our intellectual heritage, from the Hebrew Bible on through the 19th and early 20th centuries. My other daughter's university has the usual smorgasbord approach, and she is having to pick and choose carefully - although it can be done. And, both of them had a good selection of rigorous AP courses in high school
I was looking for the scene from Young Frankenstein where Gene Wilder says "What knockers!"
The 'King James Bible' is of course a basic required text of anyone studying English.
I'm not interested in banning anything and everything that could qualify as art. But I'm quite opposed to taxpayers' money being used to fund art programs in schools where kids can't read or do math, or to fund public displays/performances of art. Worthwhile art doesn't emerge from "programs".
I'm a weekday resident of NYC, where hordes of adults are wasting their lives pursuing "art" of one sort of another. Few of them pay any significant taxes, because few of them have any significant income, and most are heavily dependent on taxpayers (and nearly all the rest are mooching off their families) -- yet they live in rent-controlled apartments, send their children to public schools that cost taxpayers over $20,000/year per student, rarely have private health insurance to cover their medical expenses, and vote for politicians who support endless handout programs. A few weeks ago, we had the annual political slugfest over what measly percentage increase will be allowed to landlords of rent-controlled apartments. The New York Times uncritically devoted column inches to the wailings of a middle-aged "musician" who just didn't see how he could make ends meet if his rock-bottom rent went up even a little bit. Hint: get a real job.
(Sorry if you are a Frisco resident --- but you know its true, just tell your neighbors you got a raise and see if they don't start a job search to find a job that pays more than your new raise. :) )
And Shakespeare didn't learn to write through a government-school program.
Where, exactly, is this article's "smoking gun?"
Being a musician is a real job. It's just not a guarantee of making a decent living. Few jobs are. Cutting out Arts programs in public schools means not teaching any fiction in English classes and cutting out music and film study programs as well. Study after study shows that kids who learn to play a musical instrument do better in every other subject. Music is very mathematical.
89 Fifth graders around very expensive art in a quiet setting, Double ick!
If you're talking about the utility of public education in general that's a different discussion entirely.
>>More elevation of "the right not to be offended."
Your post offends me, I am experiencing mental distress, I am experiencing the vapors because of your words, this is a material injuring and I demand redress.
Now, where do I get my check (The sad thing is that I know people who think like this)
P.S. Are sarcasm and Humor tags really needed?
Oops. Forgot the caption for the 2 pics. Left is "blown up" Thinker in front of Cleveland Museum of Art, right is normal Thinker.
However, the same school district probably wouldn't have any problem with bringing in a militant gay to talk to these students about gay sex or having these students demonstrate condom use on a banana. Good lord a fully nude statue of David (an exact bronze copy of Micheangelo's masterpiece) stands in a place of prominence in our fair city for all to see including women and children.
Yeah, rank on me because I left out a period. If that is my biggest mistake of the week, I'm doing great.
I love it! That's a hillarous image. "You may be a redneck if...you get your school's art teacher fired for showing your kid marble nudes in a museum."
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