Another Texas outrage
Imagine this. You are a veteran and respected art teacher with nothing but good job evaluations from your superiors. You take fifth graders from a suburban school district on a principal- approved field trip to a major downtown art museum. You have signed permission slips from all parents. During the trip, one of the children observes a nude statue and tells Mommy. Mommy freaks out, complains to the school, and you are fired.
That, in a nutshell, is the fate so far of Sydney McGee, a teacher for 28 years in Frisco, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. The story took on a new, national prominence today when it appeared in the New York Times, but it was first "brought north" earlier this week by Raw Story, a website which aggregates news stories it suspects will appeal to its liberal readership, just as the Drudge Report does for conservatives. The Frisco school board's assertion that her dismissal had nothing to do with the field trip and was related to other, unspecified "performance concerns" is dismissed as so much hogwash by Ms. McGee and her lawyer.
Who was the puritanical parent who stuck the knife in Ms. McGee's back? We don't know, of course. That likely won't come out until the almost-certain lawsuit. If I had to guess, I would say it was fundamentalist Christian parents unhappy about having to send their child to the "Godless" public schools but unable or unwilling to "home school" them or pay private school tuition. No one has yet raised the specter of this being yet another assault on our freedoms by the Christian right, but then, stealth is their watchword these days.
And what about the school board? As we have seen here in central Pennsylvania with the former Dover Area School Board and their reckless attempt to foist "Intelligent Design" on biology classes in the district that was slapped down by the Federal courts, rightwing religious fervor can lead to incredibly stupid and costly decisions. I would not be at all surprised if we find out eventually that some members of the school board had long wanted Ms. McGee axed for her lifestyle, whatever that might be. Controlling female sexuality is a sinister obsession with the fundamentalists. I always like to say there's no intelligence test for getting on a school board. All you need are more votes from your fellow know-nothings than the other guy gets.
An unintentionally revealing look at how far we have fallen during the six years of Texan George W. Bush can be observed in these stories about Sydney McGee from a Dallas TV station. In one of the two stories, the TV station showed footage from the Dallas Museum of Art, but placed black blocks over the breasts and genitals of some of the classical art. They are no doubt concerned, and rightly so, about the increasingly censorious Federal Communications Commission and the prospect of a huge, crippling fine if one viewer happened to take offense at seeing nude art. That's all it takes in Bush's America.
A few people have written to the Dallas Morning News to condemn the school district's surrender to puritanism. But you can be sure there are just as many in that state expressing quiet satisfaction at one more blow against the modern world.