‘I Need a New Butt’ book gets assistant principal fired at Mississippi elementary school

What was the quote by Justice Stewart "I know it when I see it", when defining obscenity? This book seems to walk up to that line and stop short for some, but others it seems to have crossed it. I guess it probably is controversial because the subject matter is a child and the intended audience are children. For me I personally would have erred on the side of caution, but I wouldn't suspend or fire the individual over it.
 
Renzatic said:
It's strange. As a society, we're perfectly okay with a 90% exposed boob. Take it to a full 100% though, and it's suddenly a much bigger deal.
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Then there's how filming of guys goes. HBO is just now trying to normalize male full frontal nudity for American television viewers.

Remember when it was such a huge deal on TV for NYPD series viewers just to see Sipowicz's bare behind?

Not to mention when Archie Bunker's TV grandson appeared without a nappy on? Geez.

All in the Family shattered another taboo in 1976 when full frontal male nudity was shown for the first time on American network primetime television. Of course, the male in question was three-week old baby Joey Stivic, and the nudity was both tastefully filmed and germane to the plot. Later that same year, Ideal released an official Archie Bunker’s Grandson Joey Stivic doll that was “physically correct.”
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www.mentalfloss.com

16 Cutting-Edge Facts About <em>All in the Family</em>

Norman Lear’s classic sitcom didn’t just push the envelope, it sealed and stamped it as well.
www.mentalfloss.com www.mentalfloss.com
 
Arkitect said:
I never get why Americans are so uptight about all the things they keep well hidden in their trousers/skirts.
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Some are for sure. But for many, they just think that they as parents should be discussing this subject with their kids, not other adults doing it.
 
Herdfan said:
Some are for sure. But for many, they just think that they as parents should be discussing this subject with their kids, not other adults doing it.
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I get that, but carried to absurd extremes then some kids can still end up believing that babies hatch out of a stork's nest or a cabbage patch, and so no connection to whatever went on awhile earlier in the back seat of a car.

Anyway this wasn't a sex ed class, just a gig over a library book. I dunno. I should shut up bc when you live on a farm as a kid then you've seen it all by the time you have barn chores, and you get stuck with some of those as soon as you can walk and carry a bucket of grain. You're bound to discover that whoever says babies are born out of a mama's tummy has never seen a kitten or a calf arrive on the planet. Questions might ensue about how they got in there to begin with, but usually that's already been answered by an early ask of "why are they doing that?"
 
God forbid a biology teacher would teach kids about human reproduction. And the teacher, with a degree in their field, just MIGHT know slightly more than random parents.
 
Parents can certainly be stupid have a tendency to overreact to everything, so let’s put them entirely in charge of schools, and everything they panic about should result in firings and other disciplinary action. That’s the outcome the right wants. Unfortunately a 1980s-style moral panic about educators and the school system is rampant right now and I don’t think it’s going to pass any time soon. Whether it’s critical race theory, LGBT kids, or a freak-out over a children’s book, public schools are under attack.
 
TBL said:
Parents can certainly be stupid have a tendency to overreact to everything, so let’s put them entirely in charge of schools, and everything they panic about should result in firings and other disciplinary action. That’s the outcome the right wants. Unfortunately a 1980s-style moral panic about educators and the school system is rampant right now and I don’t think it’s going to pass any time soon. Whether it’s critical race theory, LGBT kids, or a freak-out over a children’s book, public schools are under attack.
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Good teachers are getting tired of it all and retiring early in droves... and that was already happening to some extent due to perceived stress, low pay, long hours and sometimes bad working environment even before covid accelerated the pace. Some of the stress can understandably arise from oversteering efforts on curricula and school settings, thanks to actions taken by parents and by the school boards that the taxpayers elect.

Pretty soon it may be the left electing to homeschool their kids because of the rightward tilt of the school boards in recent years. The Dems are still not known for meaningful support of candidates for office at local levels. Where all that will leave public schools is a real question.

Dunno if there's a good solution. The default solution will be assorted forms of ignorance, which is free on demand but, like anything else that appears to be free, the true costs of ignorance are usually obscured until it's too late to try to backtrack without incurring yet more losses.
 
TBL said:
and everything they panic about should result in firings and other disciplinary action.
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as the husband of a public school teacher, I agree 100% on this. It seems that they throw teachers under the bus like nothing, just to then complain that they can’t find teachers.

One of the horror stories that my wife said: one of her colleagues in a previous school (elementary but I don’t remember the grade, I’d say 1 to 3) was reprimanded, and had a formal written complaint against her because on an English grammar test of some kind she marked Spanish sentences and words in red. (Something like write a sentence with the verb open and word door and the kid wrote “Abro the puerta today”). Parents complained up to the superintendent and all hell broke lose apparently. I believe the teacher left a few months later. My wife also lived through a few parental horror stories which I better not share.
 
lizkat said:
Good teachers are getting tired of it all and retiring early in droves... and that was already happening to some extent due to perceived stress, low pay, long hours and sometimes bad working environment even before covid accelerated the pace. Some of the stress can understandably arise from oversteering efforts on curricula and school settings, thanks to actions taken by parents and by the school boards that the taxpayers elect.

Pretty soon it may be the left electing to homeschool their kids because of the rightward tilt of the school boards in recent years. The Dems are still not known for meaningful support of candidates for office at local levels. Where all that will leave public schools is a real question.

Dunno if there's a good solution. The default solution will be assorted forms of ignorance, which is free on demand but, like anything else that appears to be free, the true costs of ignorance are usually obscured until it's too late to try to backtrack without incurring yet more losses.
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While I am glad that parents actually check what happens in school, there is an American tendency to fucking over parent. I can’t stand it. PTA’s, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, sports. Parents are fucking everywhere and never let kids be kids. It’s maddening to me.

Seriously it’s rare to see random kids (esp 5+) playing soccer or baseball or football or whatever by themselves, with kids they don’t even know and without adults cheering or organizing. No, parents here need to fucking organize everything and do everything with their kids. Sometime when it’s Girls Scout Cookie season you see tables with 3 adult women and one girl. And God forbid something happens, maybe a kids pushes another kid or some play controversy, and you have the parental fight.
 
Another awful tale about parenting. Those damn pinewood derby with the Scouts. Had almost my kid join. I found out about the pinewood derby and was excited, just to find out that most of it is done by parents. And even more - this is horrible - there was a group of parents that worked for an aerospace company: they had CAD designs and even went to wind chambers and labs of some sort. Basically a fun creative game for kids became a scientific exercise for parents to show off.

I later found out about a Southpark episode on the very same topic.
 
yaxomoxay said:
Another awful tale about parenting. Those damn pinewood derby with the Scouts. Had almost my kid join. I found out about the pinewood derby and was excited, just to find out that most of it is done by parents. And even more - this is horrible - there was a group of parents that worked for an aerospace company: they had CAD designs and even went to wind chambers and labs of some sort. Basically a fun creative game for kids became a scientific exercise for parents to show off.

I later found out about a Southpark episode on the very same topic.
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Yeah I keep wondering if kids get to have fun any more or it's more like "You're in the army now and you WILL enjoy yourself at this drill." The over-protectiveness and the competitiveness of parents nowadays make me appreciate the freedom I had as a kid to discover the world differently. There were maybe more risks and certainly a lot of mistakes. But we learned things for ourselves at younger ages and --as a blessing-- possibly also failed to learn to be reflexively suspicious, reflexively anxious, reflexively unable to enjoy process unless the end is a WIN.

Also, It's sort of scary to read the directions on packaged foods that all say stuff like "Caution, bag may be hot!" -- at first I thought that was mostly the corporate counsel's doing, to reduce liability in case someone got steam burns from grabbing heat-and-eat out of a microwave oven. But later on I began to realize that some people are just dumbed down by not having had to figure anything out for themselves until they go away to college!
 
lizkat said:
Good teachers are getting tired of it all and retiring early in droves... and that was already happening to some extent due to perceived stress, low pay, long hours and sometimes bad working environment even before covid accelerated the pace. Some of the stress can understandably arise from oversteering efforts on curricula and school settings, thanks to actions taken by parents and by the school boards that the taxpayers elect.

Pretty soon it may be the left electing to homeschool their kids because of the rightward tilt of the school boards in recent years. The Dems are still not known for meaningful support of candidates for office at local levels. Where all that will leave public schools is a real question.

Dunno if there's a good solution. The default solution will be assorted forms of ignorance, which is free on demand but, like anything else that appears to be free, the true costs of ignorance are usually obscured until it's too late to try to backtrack without incurring yet more losses.
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The current right-wing rallying cry seems to be:

Parents know what to teach kids better than the teachers do! Parent’s Rights!

Unless, of course, you are a gay couple (can’t say gay in school) or your kid is transgender. In that case, the Republican-led government will accuse you of child abuse and take your child away for re-education.

It’s not about parental rights at all. It’s about forcing a backwards culture of hate down everybody’s throat, no matter what.
 
yaxomoxay said:
Seriously it’s rare to see random kids (esp 5+) playing soccer or baseball or football or whatever by themselves, with kids they don’t even know and without adults cheering or organizing. No, parents here need to fucking organize everything and do everything with their kids.
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One of my pet peeves. If a kid shows any talent in a particular sport, they are immersed in that sport and are discouraged from other sports. So that kid who has a great arm is pushed to be a pitcher (especially if left-handed) at the exclusion of all other sports. So when they get to HS and junk their arm or shoulder, they can't go play soccer because they never played it as a kid.

Are there 3 sport athletes anymore?
 
Herdfan said:
One of my pet peeves. If a kid shows any talent in a particular sport, they are immersed in that sport and are discouraged from other sports. So that kid who has a great arm is pushed to be a pitcher (especially if left-handed) at the exclusion of all other sports. So when they get to HS and junk their arm or shoulder, they can't go play soccer because they never played it as a kid.

Are there 3 sport athletes anymore?
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The question might almost be whether it's the kids that matter any more. What chance does a kid even have to discover personal interests when parents are looking for vicarious triumphs and high schools are looking for ace players in their varsity leagues (yeah schools send scouts around to middle schools and try to recruit them for HS).

The pressure nowadays is not only in sports, either. I knew some kids downstate who had shown some natural talent for music, and their parents pushed them them to choose oboe instead of clarinet, and viola instead of fiddle, all because the parents figured oh my kids are going to be professional musicians someday, and these are the slots with less competition in both high school and professional orchestras.

Kinda takes all the joy out of it if the drift from your parents is that your interest in music has only one purpose and that's to score high on the potential career ladder. Maybe you only wanted to play clarinet because your pal Joey picked that instrument and it looked cooler to play that than to play the piano you started out with just because it was there in the living room. Maybe by time you're 9 years old you'd rather be playing soccer than learning how to split cane for the reeds of an oboe...
 
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