Wheat-dogg's World

Ninth graders can learn physics.

Let me say that again. Ninth graders can learn physics. In fact, I bet sixth, seventh and eighth graders can, too. So why do we numb their brains in middle school with rote learning and endless fill-in-blank worksheets? Because many “educators” think middle school students cannot learn “hard stuff” like physics, algebra and chemistry, because they do not have the right developmental skills.

Bullcookies.

If that were true, how is it that students in Europe, Japan, the Middle East and elsewhere manage these subjects from the sixth grade on? They cannot all be on the college track.

This school year, our school chucked out its science sequence of courses for the newly encouraged “physics first” sequence: conceptually based physics, then chemistry, then biology (P-C-B). After teaching physics to 10th, 11th and 12th graders for two decades, I have to admit that I began this school year with considerable trepidation. My plan was to hold essentially to the same conceptually based approach I had been using for years, with some modifications. It is not an easy syllabus. I don’t spoonfeed the material. Our school’s mission is to prepare students for college — all of our students — so we expect them right from the get-go to take an active part in their education. They have to work!

My kids are doing a terrific job. Not all are getting A’s and B’s, but they are all tackling this most difficult of subjects with tenacity and seriousness of purpose. I am really proud of them, and really glad we decided to make the curriculum change.

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.

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.