It’s old news, since Tericka Dye lost her job last spring, but it’s a fitting counterpoint to Sydney McGee’s situation.

Dye is a popular, award-winning science teacher and volleyball coach at Reidland High School in McCracken County. When word got out that she had performed in adult films as Rikki Andersin 11 years ago, Dye got the old heave-ho. Despite legal and administrative efforts to regain her job, Dye remains unemployed as a teacher.

As Dye and her lawyer tell it, she was a broke 23-year-old with children to feed. She discovered, as many women have, that any halfway attractive female can make some big bucks quickly if she is willing to strip, move suggestively, and/or perform sex acts on camera. In Dye’s case, she worked as a stripper and was enticed to go to Los Angeles to film oral and anal sex scenes, which appeared in several XXX movies.

Unlike some adult film actresses, Dye did not stay in the business, despite a tidy $3,000 paycheck. She joined the army, went to college, got a degree and ended up as a science teacher in western Kentucky, land of God-fearing, forgiving Christian folk.

Despite shows of support from parents, students and local churches, and sympathetic coverage by Louisville’s The Southeast Outlook, the McCracken County school board decided that her previous occupation as an adult film actress would be “too distracting,” rendering her unfit to be a teacher.

September 30th, 2006 | Tags: Education & schools | Category: Commentary | Comments (1)

In yet another example of bluenoses running amuck in the heartland, a Dallas art teacher has lost her job after taking her fifth graders to the Dallas Museum of Art. One of the pieces of art the kids saw was this funerary figure of an athlete cut down in the prime of his youth, ca. 330 BCE.

You will note that, with the exception of his missing head and left arm, the boy is anatomically correct. The children saw other nudes at the museum, as well. Apparently, one of the children complained to a parent, who complained to Sydney McGee’s boss, who suspended her pending administrative review.

One doubts the parent or administrator took the time to actually view the piece in question, which has not been named.

McGee, 51, is an award-winning, popular teacher at her school, The Wilma Fisher Elementary School north of Dallas. While she has apparently had some minor run-ins with her principal, McGee seems to be a responsible, dedicated teacher who wants to expose (no pun intended!) her students to our rich cultural heritage.

It’s a heritage that includes accurate depictions of the nude human figure, which Greek sculptors celebrated in countless examples, and which Roman and Renaissance sculptors, among others, imitated.

According to this New York Times article, the children also saw Auguste Rodin’s tormented nude, Shade, at right, and Aristide Maillol’s alluring Flora, at left.

Here’s my re-creation of the conversation between parent and 10-year-old child that may have started this incredible story.

September 30th, 2006 | Tags: Education & schools | Category: Commentary | Comments (5)

but I wish I had done it earlier, when Muhammad was able to talk better.

So here is how the fateful meeting came about. One of our school’s alums is a veep at the Muhammad Ali Center, right here in Louisville, Kentucky, and he gave our head the news that The Champ was going to be at the Center for photo shoots around noon. Olivia, our fitness teacher and field hockey coach, told her 9th graders she would escort them there, telling them they had to ask permission of their teachers to miss class.

One of my 9th grade physics classes meets just before lunch on Fridays, so a couple of the kids asked me ahead of time if they could go. Several more asked just as class started, and, shoot, I wanted to go, too. So we all signed out to take the downtown trolley (actually, it’s a bus dressed up like a trolley) to the Ali Center.

Except I didn’t quite get out the door with the rest of the group. Besides being the physics teacher, I’m also the technology coordinator, and one of our teachers was having a serious problem with a computer that I had to coordinate — right now. So I told Olivia I would catch up with them after I fixed the computer issue.

September 16th, 2006 | Tags: Education & schools | Category: General stuff | Comments (1)

School here starts Wednesday, so I am in the midst of preparing for that very important first day of class. This year, for the first time, we will be teaching physics in the 9th grade as part of our new sequence of science courses (phys-chem-bio), so not only do I have to worry about the first day of school, but also the first day of high school science for a bunch of impressionable freshmen. I don’t want to blow it, in other words.

So, my presence here will be limited this week. I will pop in (as I hope you will) to the now-lengthy discussion about “gravity deniers” here. We are getting into the real nitty-gritty of physics — and science in general — so take a look and comment if you have something to say.

Wish me luck!

August 14th, 2006 | Tags: Education & schools | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Brittany McComb, the Henderson, Nevada, valedictorian whose graduation address was censored by school officials, told the Los Angeles Times that she agreed to school officials’ editing of her speech only because she felt intimidated by them.

She and her parents attempted to forestall the editing out of McComb’s religious references, but could not contact lawyers to seek a solution, she said. Her parents were out of town, so she gave in when a school official insisted that she not deviate from the edited speech.

Instead, McComb gave her original address, resulting in school officials pulling the plug on her microphone in the middle of the valedictory. She has since filed a discrimination suit in federal districty court, alleging her rights of free speech and equal protection under the law were infringed, and asking for $1 in damages.

The conservative legal organization, the Rutherford Institute, is representing McComb in her suit.

In her interview with LA Times reporter Richard Abowitz, McComb comes off as an idealistic young woman who wanted to resist what she saw as censorship of her valedictory, but who lacked the resolve to stand up to school officials on her own.

Yes. The actual situation was that the my assistant principal confronted me in the hallway and demanded to know what I was going to do. My parents were out of town. We still had not contacted the lawyer. Everything was chaotic, and I was like “What am I going to do?” I had no idea. So I had to say something and I was at my wits end. I was very intimidated. So I kind-of said, “yes” and I regret it. I wish I had stood up right then for myself.

August 8th, 2006 | Tags: Education & schools, The media | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

With the conservative Rutherford Institute representing her, high school valedictorian Brittany McComb (at right) has filed suit in federal court alleging that school officials infringed on her First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

Foothill High School (Henderson, Nev.) officials edited McComb’s valedictory before the June 15 graduation ceremony to eliminate what they judged to be overly religious references. McComb delivered her original speech instead, and school officials disconnected her mike just as she launched into a discussion how God and the suffering of Jesus on the cross had given meaning and focus to her life.

School officials said they were acting on the advice of the Nevada American Civil Liberties Union, and were trying to avoid running afoul of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause.

In her suit, filed in US District Court in Nevada, McComb names the principal, assistant principal and the school employee who allegedly pulled the plug. The suit claims her rights of free expression and equal protection under the law were violated when the mike was cut off.

The suit asks that the court declare that the officials infringed on those rights. (Details here.)

Don’t say I didn’t tell you a lawsuit would happen.

July 14th, 2006 | Tags: Education & schools | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The latest development in the continuing battle between free speech and the Establishment clause is a lawsuit brought by a high school senior against her school in Everett, Wash.

Kathryn Nurre, 18, contends in a suit filed last Monday in U.S. District Court that the superintendent of her school district violated her free speech rights when he vetoed her wind ensemble’s graduation musical selection.

Nurre, a sax player, and the other 16 members of the ensemble had chosen an instrumental arrangement of Ave Maria. The Everett School District superintendent,  Dr. Carol Whitehead,  believed the selection had too overt a religious theme, despite having no lyrics. She changed the graduation piece to one by Gustav Holst.

Nurre claims she and her fellow musicians had no intention of making a religious statement. They chose the arrangement, which the ensemble had already performed in 2004, on its musical merits.

Ave Maria, for the Latin-challenged, is “Hail Mary,” the beginning of the annunciation in Luke 1, in which the Angel Gabriel informs Mary of her unique position among women. It is a traditional Catholic prayer, taken from the Latin Vulgate Bible. Scores of musicians have set the text to music since the early Renaissance.

Even assuming the audience at Nurre’s graduation was aware of the history behind the piece, the performance of an instrumental version is hardly a violation of the separation of church and state.  Merely playing music inspired by a composer’s faith does not constitute imposing a particular faith (Catholicism?) on the audience.

July 2nd, 2006 | Tags: Education & schools | Category: Commentary | Leave a comment