Tuesday Stew

I’ve been off my soap box for a couple of weeks, but all I had to do was watch the news tonight, and a few stories got up my dander again.

Ban Art! Last April, a local fifth grade art teacher took a group of students on a school sanctioned field trip, for which parents signed permission slips. This field trip was to the Dallas Museum of Art. Evidently, one of the students made comment to their parents about a nude sculpture that they saw while walking through the museum, and now the parents are all in a tizzy!

People, this is a major metropolitan art museum. This is not your local community center that features the art of the students from the cultural arts project for the year. Museums feature classic sculpture, and some classic sculpture is not fully clothed. Musuems have field trips, and while I think it’s reasonable to expect that your child not be taken through an all-nude exhibit, I don’t think it’s reasonable that if you sign a permission slip for your child to attend a field trip at a museum that contains art, including classic sculpture, you don’t expect that your child might pass one of these.

Museum galleries are not rated like your evening TV lineup.  If you’re concerned what your child might see, do some of your own research about the exhibit before you sign the permission slip. Don’t whine about it afterward if you didn’t ask questions. And for goodness sake, don’t make it bigger than it has to be. Perhaps now would be a perfect time to actually discuss the physical human form and entreat your child to ask questions. Maybe this would be a great opportunity to create a dialog with your child that’s about to enter a new school in the near future, and a new, older class of students that are going to have a wider body of knowledge about the body.

And further, the school district has chosen to fire this art teacher. Yes, this woman has lost her job. She went through the proper channels, got all her forms signed, and this field trip was even at the suggestion of the school. Let’s just put on our blinders. La la la la la… (fingers stuck in ears and eyes closed). Parent accountability. Where is it? Let’s all put on our politically correct, don’t get our asses-sued hats, and bury our head in the sand like a bunch of deaf, dumb, blind ostriches.

Bad Samaritans? A man was driving down a local freeway and lost control of his car around a particularly sharp curve. After he crashed his car, he was briefly unconscious, and in this time, a crowd gathered around him. But rather than helping this man that was just injured in a car crash, these people robbed him! They picked his pockets! Stole his wallet! And then, while he’s being rescued by EMTs, these thieves ran over to Wal-Mart and some gas stations and used his credit cards! Unbelievable.

Text this! A local movie theater is under fire for tossing teens caught disrupting the movie while texting during the feature film. And people are mad that the kids got kicked out! Um, hello! It’s just as disruptive as a conversation. The glow of the screen and the obvious action is disruptive and distracting. At at $8.00+ for tickets, I don’t want to see green-blue-glowing screens all around the theater! Turn.It.Off! The world will live without you. You are not that important. Get over yourself.