You must not have ever worked in the education field.School administrators are always doing incredibly stupid things. That's nothing new. The system is broken, but the power for certain labor unions and various special interest groups prevent it from being ripped apart and fixed.
Don't you know we're supposed to use words like "wee-wee" to describe our private parts? Doesn't sound nearly as indecent as "vagina". What a dirty word.
My partner pointed this out to me, it was in today's Washington Post. I just simply copied and pasted the column. What the fuck were these so-called school administrators thinking? Keep in mind, this is high school honors students, not middle or elementary school...
Speaking of sophistry, this entire posting is a rhetorical argument with little relationship to reality, but these sentences strike me as bizarre. Drama teachers are routinely fired for this kind of stuff, and the faculty never goes on strike. Pretending like the poor principal is going to pay the price is ridiculous. His is as close to a free hand in censorship as can be found in current American society.So, if a price is going to be paid, it's the principal who's going to pay it. Everyone else is pretty safe. Nobody's going to can the drama teacher, for fear that the entire faculty will go on strike.
I appreciate seeing this, but I cannot agree that it is nuanced. It simply repeats the same twisted argument that standing up to arbitrary censorship is wrong, while trying hard to keep the arbitrary action itself out of the discussion. In effect, the school is arguing the "unchallengeable" standard for an "open mike" night is appropriateness for a pre-school audience, but the expectation that everything produced by a school will be suitable for small children is flawed. Shouldn't the responsibility fall the other way? Shouldn't parents have to determine that material is appropriate for small children before bringing them? If you advertised a children's theatre production and then produced "Vagina Monologues" you might be exceeding the bounds, but the belief that the whole world should be kept safe for second grade sensibilities is inately restrictive.In the interest of fairness, here is the message posted at the school's website. It does give a more nuanced perspective to the controversy. Particularly the notion that people know what to expect generally when they bring younger kids to a typical school production, but don't have a choice to opt out if the play excerpt with "mature" content is not advertised as such upfront.
Of course, you are right Lex, but all that is legally defensible is still not morally right. In this case, it seems clear that the reason for the censorship was primarily to prevent parents of small children from being offended, as if they were the primary parties. It may be legal, but it is a hell of a poor education.Censorship in schools is a VERY dicey issue. I have an entire school law textbook that deals with it.
Exactly right. The principal, according to his own standards, should have posted that there was mature content and that it was not appropriate for small children at the door, not forced the girls to make the production meet this threshold. On "closed mike" the audience has a right to expect that it will all be cleaned up in advance, but in this case he is putting the cart before the horse.Lex, my main issue is not that the fiat was defied by the girls, nor that they were punished for defying that fiat; it's that the fiat was issued in the first place.
C E N S O R S H I P
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Exactly right. The principal, according to his own standards, should have posted that there was mature content and that it was not appropriate for small children at the door, not forced the girls to make the production meet this threshold. On "closed mike" the audience has a right to expect that it will all be cleaned up in advance, but in this case he is putting the cart before the horse.
There is a vast difference between no standards, and "suitable for second graders." Especially on an open mike night, including a major work of contemporary literature with thousands of performances is far from using only my own standard. On the other hand, it seems to me that the principal is quite literally using his own personal standard.So do you propose no standards? Or just your own?
I'm pretty sure I could come up with examples of content you (or someone) would deem inappropriate and others would not.