Here’s an apparent offensive artwork done in 330 BC found on the museum’s website. Cover your eyes!
NBC10.com – Education – Art Teacher Loses Job After Kids See Nude Sculpture — This is an incredible development and shows you just how backwards they are becoming in Texas. If you’ve ever been to an art museum in Texas you’ll discover that they are incredibly barren and lacking much art. Now you know why.
FRISCO, Texas — An 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.
I’m sure the sculpture will be removed. Heaven forbid!
related link: Interesting shcool website
Principal Nancy Lawson, arbiter of taste
Dallas Museum of Art Website — The big exhibit this month is a lone painting by Van Gogh that the museum is borrowing. Seriously. It’s laughable.
link found by Jonathan X
Well duh, nudity makes kids feel OK about their bodies and form positive ideas about sexuality. We sure wouldn’t want that! Your bodies are dirty! Keep them covered!
it’s okay to let them watch all those killings on tv..
just don’t let little Johnny see those naked bodies.
It is sad but not unexpected. This country is full of closed minded sheep not free thinkers.
I don’t disagree with your sentament, but the comment about art museums in Texas is not fair as it is a broad generalization. Please comment about specific collections if you can or even know of them. There are more than three art museums in Houston and they are all very good. Having grown up in New York, gone to school in the region, and traveled the world, I have seen many art museums, and think I should know. One you should see in Houston is the Menil. It contains the art collection of John and Dominique de Menil. This private collection is open to the public and is free of charge. It contains more than 15,000 works, but is also one of the most extensive and notable collections of modern art. So next time you want to slam a place get the facts before you make a sweeping generalization.
Another sign that some Americans aren’t too different from Islamic fundamentalists. I’m sure everyone remembers John Ashcroft covering a statue in the DOJ in a burka.
Oh boy, I would be so ashamed if my kids attended that school. I am surprised that their school is a real building instead of a cave.
It’s just like that Simpsons episode where the town is protesting Michelangelo’s “David”.
Being from Houston, I can attest to the fact that we are doing our damnest to catch up to Kansas in our student-to-national mocking comment ratio. The next step of our plan is to quit teaching evolution and start teaching intelligent design.
Oh yeah…The Great Spaghetti Monster can go “F” himself…
I say penises in the faces of ten year olds is not such a great idea.
But that might just be me.
RBG
Our Motto: “Never be anything less than everything you can be.”
But wouldn’t neutering all these statues make them less than they can be?
What the hell do all these parents do when their kids take baths? “No honey, don’t look down there.” Maybe we should ban bathing. Most of the kids would like that, especially the boys. That would protect them from seeing penises.
I live in Frisco. We’re told the problem wasn’t that the students saw a nude work of art ; it was about how the teacher handled it. Apparently some students had some colorful comments about what they saw (naturally).
There were other incidents that contributed to her contract non-renewal.
The teacher had been paid to leave her last teaching job in a neighboring city for an undisclosed reason.
They should also ban showers after gym practice in schools…you know, with the weird coach standing around watching them all. You all know what I’m talking about. Why isn’t there any outcry for that? A bunch of boys getting naked and frolicking in the shower room while this older man stands around and watches? That’s ok I guess….but heaven forbid if those children see a piece of art that may show a penis.
Also, RBG, what would happen to those kids if they saw a piece of art that showed a penis? Would their heads explode? Will they all of a sudden think it’s ok to be naked and they all strip right there? Really, what would happen?
All people like that can say is “I don’t want my child seeing that”. Why? What’s the BIG FRICKEN DEAL? We’re not talking about seeing porn, but a sculpture. It’s not even a sculpture of people having sex! They’re just nude.
What do you expect it’s DUBA country.
Hell, it doesn’t have to make sense, it’s better if it dosn’t; just appease the collective Christians or lack there of any real Christianity. I would expect to hear next Witch burning, wouldn’t you. A state that has one of the highest over-turn in death row conviction because Juries are too lame to have any discernment about evidence or truth. What do you expect. I think there should be a fence around Texas to protect the rest of us.
Give it back to Mexico.
dude – its texas… nuf said.
12. Here’s what would happen: Kids would so focus on the genitalia that in their minds the statue transforms into one of genitalia with tiny little arms and legs. Would you commission a statue like that for kids to watch? Not me. The whole art thing is completely lost. And it becomes an exercise in sexual assault.
Kids are already hyper-bombarded with sexual images in our society. Why not give them a break until they at least become sexually mature. Which seems to be younger and younger all the time. Gee, I wonder what is causing that?
The message is: your not cool unless you’re scoring. Artists and advertisers use this to sell. Unfortunately the collateral damage happens to the kids. They’re growing up in a world with scary sexual diseases; abortion rates out of control. And still it’s all about the big score. How crazy is it that the consequences of reproduction – or even the topic of reproduction – doesn’t even enter into the discussion?
Thank-you but I’d rather my children gained their sexual knowledge from a competent sex educator than an art teacher or others desperate to justify their own sorry sexual behavior.
RBG
RBG – Give me a break! It kids see art as sexual its the society as a whole over-sexing everything that messes them up. Re-introducing nudity as art just might un-mess them.
That being said – can we please all agree no more assholes from Texas? BTW before anyone asks I’m an asshole from Ohio.
From experience in the education system, this may not be the only reason they chose not to renew a contract. There may have been other personnel matters in play. In fact the teacher may be waving this to distract from other areas. By law school boards can’t disclose personnel matters, but the disciplined individual can say what they wish. I have no idea what all this is about, but I do know the problems of rushing to judgements.
From Point 9 on their list of “essentials”
“We must uphold an image that shows we have our act together!”
I guess treating their teachers decently, setting an example on being tolerant, not being marble penis-phobic and not being a target of laughter for 99.8% of the planet, isn’t all that essential to “having your act together” in Frisco.
Or maybe they are actually very progressive, but just trying to keep their image positioned correctly in case Hollywood decides to do a remake of “Deliverance”.
#4 Greg, You actually make my point by showing that even private collections are better than any state or locally funded Museum in Texas. And since you’re from New York and this museum of yours is supposedly just as good (you say). Just do the math. The Met in NYC has over 2,000,000 pieces. Yours has 15,000. To you this compares?
Your gall is bigger than the museum.
If you zoom out and use the same line of thought as John just mentioned, European collections make those in the US look like a refrigerator Crayola gallery. To be fair Europe has been in the museum building and nurturing business for hundreds of years longer than us, but we haven’t broken a sweat yet trying to catch up. Other than in the modesty fig leaf collections sector, where we lead the world.
The Met compares favorably to anything in Europe. In fact the place packs in European tourists. There are also excellent collections in Chicago and Philadelphia. Our National Gallery is also a stunner in Washington, DC. We have a lot of good stuff. We ended up with a lot of things after WWII. Don;t forget that the Europeans were constantly looting each others museums during wars.That said some areas of the country have next to nothing. Dallas, Atlanta and even San Francisco suck insofar as art collections are concerned.
RGB: Gotta love those slippery slope arguments, eh? Why don’t you just take control of the situation and let your kids know what you think rather than ruining the cultural experience for everyone else? Heaven only knows we’d rather have the kids out on the streets involved with gangs and drugs rather than gaining an appreciation for art!
Thank-you but I’d rather my children gained their sexual knowledge from a competent sex educator than an art teacher or others desperate to justify their own sorry sexual behavior.
It spooks me that RGB said he wants his children instructed about sex from a sex educator, not by himself (the parent).
Eeep!
I agree the Met fairs well in comparison. But it is one of the few. It is tough to put support together public funds in a place like Atlanta when there are so many other issues on the tables. The poor and the wealthy find common ground fast when there is a suggestion to spend a million or two on what is probably on a minor work of a artist that only .5% or less of the population has even hear of. The link below is off topic somewhat, but it’s connects in two ways with the fired teacher in TX. It’s about Art and good deeds don’t always work out well. The second one is on a small city with a very good museum.
http://ngeorgia.com/feature/orly.html
http://www.ringling.org/
Children should not be able to liook at themselves naked. That’s where all the societal sexual problems start. They start to wonder, and we can’t have that. Mirrors and all reflective surfaces should be removed from any private areas that children have access to. They should not be allowed to touch themselves to discover or help imagine what their sexual parts look like. It is a horrid fate that we were born naked. The naked human body is ugly and indecent and we should be ashamed of it. Subjecting our children to such disgusting images does irreparable damage to their psyche.
Damn!. I was just walking along minding my own business when I slipped down a slippery slope. Can anyone up there throw me a rope?
24. And I have a zoology degree.
26. I think you have enough rope.
RBG
And that confirms my theory:
Christians are the most perverse people in the world because they see depravity in every nook and cranny.
RBG, whay did your parents do to you?
This is just hogwash. Art is art, and sure… kids might get a giggle from seeing a weiner in its natural state, but they’ll grow up with a more educated look on the human body. As for sex… Kids will get educated about sex from either:
1) Parents.
2) Teachers.
3) Peers.
4) Internet and other media.
5) Priests.
Feel free to rank these in the order you think is most common, and which ones that are more harmful than others.