But in contradiction to your theories, your teacher was teaching what she considered to be perversion, by her own words and definition. To the children. Though she did follow it up with ha ha ha. Or maybe that was hoohah hoohah. Anyway, here’s what she said that got her canned.Hobbes' Choice wrote:It seems to me that kids of all ages have a personal interest in the ability to name the various parts of their own bodies. Calling a vagina a tootoo or some other ridiculous euphemism is absurdly prurient.SpheresOfBalance wrote:Maybe not today in this screwed up rendition of the USA, but once you could use proper 'clinical' terms to describe the human reproductive system. At least they did in my high school. But then the early 70's were 'the' days! Not to slight the 60's by any means! Times, they are a changing, and not necessarily for the better! Whenever the 'facts' of life are avoided, it makes at least some of Freud's ideas absolutely correct! When mankind is ashamed of/denies the facts of his existence, he has a very serious problem.
The piece of art in question is, even for 8th graders, obvious an image of a vulva or vagina. And the eighth grades is a really good time for kids to understand the sexualised world in preparation for the time when they themselves face puberty. If this does not happen the result is ignorance and sexual repression which makes kids more vulnerable to abuse from adults. Knowledge is power and all kids need to know what it means when uncle Ernie takes them behind the garden shed and shows them his willy-winky.
Ignorance is not bliss but an impediment to safety.
“Imagine walking into a gallery when [O’Keeffe] was first showing her pieces, and thinking, ‘Am I actually seeing vaginas here, am I a pervert? I’m either a pervert or this woman was a pervert,’” Wint recalls saying, as the Detroit Free Press reports. The class of 25 students laughed, of course.