Student: Teacher Called Flag Pic Offensive

Student: Teacher Called Flag Pic Offensive
Obama Pic Praised, Parents Say

SALINAS, Calif. --
A simple art project has turned controversial in Salinas after a student said her drawing of the American flag was deemed offensive, while another student's picture of President Obama was praised.

Tracy Hathaway said her art teacher at Gavilan View Middle School told her daughter she couldn't draw the American flag, calling the picture offensive.

Hathaway said they were floored when they heard the news and met with the teacher and principal at Gavilan View Middle School. When asked what she thought was offensive about drawing an American flag, the teacher didn't answer, Hathaway said.

The Hathaways now want an apology.

http://www.ksbw.com/news/23512008/detail.html?treets=mty&tid=26510299719813&tml=mty_12pm&tmi=mty_12pm_1_02000105112010&ts=H

short a few colors.

the notion that a picture drawn by a 7th grader is not an affront to the Constitution just because it has the word God in it, and in fact the teachers behavior is an affront to the rights of free speech.

It's called "Freedom of Expression." (Please spare me the "KKK" and "Nazi" alleged counter-argument.)

Sorry, but you are way, way off. Classic literature (e.g., Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton) cannot be taught without mention of their Biblical, mythic, and other similar allusions/meanings. American History cannot be taught without mention of God, nor can European.

Those being the phrases plastered all over the drawn flag.

The meaning behind that drawing is clear. If you are not religious then you are not a good American.

that 7th grade girl's evil intentions are abundantly clear!

Seriously, DU can be absolutely ludicrous sometimes. If the art teacher found it offensive, than she is incredibly sensitive, and she should've just kept her mouth shut regardless. Lots of art is offensive. It's not the art teacher's job to force her own moral sensitivities onto children and deem what art is or is not "offensive". Especially middle schoolers.

How is a kid expressing her own opinion a violation of the state-church wall?

How is this inappropriate in any way other than the fact that you personally don't like the message she expressed?

Are you really that thick?

Her daughter could probably very well draw the flag. It is more likely the words written on it that was the problem. But the other version sells better.

But that aside it seems like the teacher should maybe reserve her philosophical/political objections for an another crowd than a young kid drawing a flag.
(Though it strikes me that the art teacher might have been less blunt with the kid, and the word "offensive" was used in a conversation with the parents - and if the pictures were to be displayed the teachers objection might have been for objective reasons, rather than her personal feeling about it.)

From an art perspective it is offensive though. :evilgrin:

as there usually are, when someone wishes to accuse someone else of bias.

then again, the account could be substantively accurate, in which case the teacher is an ass. But there are many other possibilities.

the student asked the teacher why she thought it was offensive, and the teacher didn't answer and walked away.

Proof? Or is this just another RWer & kid interviewing for a job at Faux?

You raise a good point: the teacher might have said a number of things in interacting with the child, which gives the parents a bunch of things to choose from to decide how they're gonna spin this. I strongly suspect there's been some conflict in the past with either the kid or the parents against the teacher. These sorts of blow ups don't happen in a vacuum.

But that said, I don't get how an art teacher can, if in fact she did, express even the slightest disapproval of this picture--tagging the flag, maybe? It's ineloquent, but it clearly doesn't come from a shallow viewpoint.

the incident is being investigated ...

I had a debate with a guy who watched the "spitting" video (and, ironically, one of his earliest statements before I jumped in on one of his claims of "the police took no action" said that the "spitter" would be accused of "juicy speak" - in other words, spitting ...) who ran up and down about how there wasn't any clear evidence that the guy spit on the congressman.

You have the "word" of the student.

I'd like to see the artwork (of Obama) which was "praised" ... I saw the picture of the flag "art" ... it seems a bit more childishly drawn, but it's been a while since I was in middle school. Could it be that the "Obama" artwork was so above this kids artistry level? Could there be jealousy?

All we have is some vocal, "pissed off" parents ... who may or may not be enjoying their moment in the RW limelight ... and may have their "agenda". It seems to me that someone very vocal about "In God We Trust" would probably not look favorably on "teachers unions" in the first place, and the kid is more than happy to please "Daddy" in bringing down a teechur ...

Not a lot of useful details in that article there ...

and i don't remember ever being told something was bad or inappropriate. a flag! wtf. i mean why would a flag be offensive?

Which is typical of a kid this age expressing herself. Regardless of how much this is being spun by the parents, the teacher sounds like a douche. When the principal doesn't back up the teacher in a case like this, I suspect (1) the teacher made an error and (2) that the kid and the teacher had some history of conflict going on before the incident.

The art is entirely unoffensive. I guess we'll be hearing about this from Limbaugh & Beck for a long while.

when shit like this happens.

This happened because the teacher is an idiot.

This is a common tactic: find an example of extreme stupidity, and claim it is descriptive of liberals everywhere. This goes on in the other direction, too. I think we sometimes need to answer: no, that's not liberalism or conservatism. That's just stupid.

And giving them high profile.

An outraged parent contacts the media and they stop what they are doing to interview the parent. Then poutrage breaks out all over the internet, especially here on DU.

Meanwhile, the school refuses to comment.

It's a tired old game.

(1) Zero Tolerance,

(2) The Lower Merion webcam fiasco,

(3) Just on Monday we have this: School district may require parents to volunteer 30 hours per year

"San Jose's Alum Rock Union School District, where a committee is crafting a proposal to require families of all 13,000 students to volunteer at least 30 hours a year at school."

Does the term "involuntary servitude" ring a bell? (pun intended)

School teachers, admins, and personnel all need to quit being idiots and you won't have your "tired old game".

You wonder why people hate teachers and their unions? Things like this are why.

I'm truly glad I'm not a parent in this day and age.

and you would have a point.

Until you can do that, this slam of yours is a FAIL.

Teachers are paid employees of the school districts that's why. They enforce policy, including ZT. ;;I

don't see teachers marching, or speaking out, to end Zero Tolerance. Do teachers in your district go before the state legislature, and opposZTZT? If not, why not? IZTZT is such a hindrance to teaching, they should be before the legislature at every opportunity.

If a cop enforces an unjust law, is he blameless? As in the cops in AZ enforcing the new immigration law? If you enforce an unjust policy your are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Quit trying to pawn it all off on the politicians and admins. Don't try that "I was just following orders" crap.

LMSDSD... I didn't see any teachers speaking out about the spying, did you? And it WAS spying. According to reports one teacher asked a tech to turn on a webcam because that teacher "suspected a student of improper behavior", not a stolen or missing laptop. And there ARE pictures of the Robbins kid in a webcam shot holding the Mike and Ike's candy aka drugs, the media has seen them and described them. So that crap about the Assistant Principal denying she every said anything to Blake Robbins about drugs is a flat out lie. How else did the kid know about picture in question if webcam hadn't taken the shot?

And we are on the front line still speaking out against them. Your beef lies with state representatives who make such policies law, not with school employees.

We also risk losing our jobs if we fail to enforce ZT policies.

So no, it's not the teachers fault we have these policies.

As for the web cam deal in PA, I've heard so many different versions of how, why and who is responsible for that I've decided to let the court settle it before I offer my opinion.

:wtf:

Not at all uncommon.

it's not "volunteering" if it's "required".

It's a very common practice. Parents pay X dollars in tuition AND X hours volunteering at the school.

should not have told her parents about it. *IF* true that is also a serious issue for me.

Students should be taught to obey without question or any critical thought instead, and show no creativity. The XBox is calling her name.




:sarcasm:

I'm a total support-the-teacher-over-the-kid fanatic. But I'm telling you, I just don't see how you can justify what she did or said. Even if it's taken out of context (which it almost certainly is), the teacher seems to have said the wrong thing to the wrong kid.

That's simply not right. However, given that students have a tendency to exaggerate, even outright lie in matters like these, and given the outrageous nature of this accusation, I would like to hear the full story of what happened before passing judgment.

A minor controversy broke out in some school somewhere!

listeners to call in with tales of liberal-academic-elite professors and teachers persecuting conservative students.

http://www.thecalifornian.com/article/20100512/NEWS01/5120308/1002/Salinas-schoolroom-flag-flap-may-be-baseless

As for the boys wearing the flags last week, I read the best comment somewhere (maybe here, I don't remember) that went something like this:

Those boys didn't wear those flag shirts to express pride in their country. They wore them to taunt Hispanic kids who were celebrating Cinco de Mayo. They're lucky they didn't get suspended for being assholes.

And the teabaggers are lapping up the story about the Morgan Hill high school kids. My mom says she saw a report that those 5 kids were honored at a local teaklan rally. I'm still looking for a link. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this parent seems to have been looking for her 15 minutes.

Couldn't read the article because that site crashes my browser for some reason. But the trope is already visible in the headline.

http://twitter.com/tiggerlover75

Yeah, they seem so oppressed. :sarcasm:

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roflcopter.

lol

Who in their right mind would believe a statement like that from a seventh grader?

that this 'art' piece was drawn by a middle schooler and not someone in 3rd/4th grade, LOL.

Go figure. Who'd have thunk it.

Not writing on a flag that you are sending to soldiers is probably a pretty good reason for not letting this through.

NAH, let's just go with "the teacher's an idiot."

and that's a big IF, then it goes to show you that every profession has idiots. Again, IF this is true, then it looks like the school has done the right thing and the problem is being addressed. Seems the school system isn't broken at all.

Thought IF it isn't true, I expect that the media will not cover that as extensively and there won't be anybody from this thread issuing any mea culpas.

That has nothing to do with the "banning" issue, but it does make me think this is even crappier art.

Like Georges Seurat:




It does not look like Taryn followed any of the directions for the project either. As an art teacher I don't like judging kids too harshly on their art, but listening and following directions usually leads to better results in any classroom. :D

I'm just an English teacher so the art thing doesn't always land. That picture you put in there was exactly what I pictured when I heard pointilism.

Though maybe doing pointilism is different with crayons :evilgrin:

It probably takes a longer to do, since crayons are so hard. The teacher was probably counting on the project taking a good amount of classroom time to produce. Imagine her delight when Ms. Hathaway whipped up her masterpiece in 15 minutes (I'm eyeballing). I'm sure there's a lot to this story we're not getting from Mom. ;)

Does the kid have witnesses that corroborate the story?

in high school, and nobody said a word of protest. Of course, this was back in the more enlightened 70s when expression - especially controversial expression - was encouraged in the students.

What thin skinned little wincing worms we've become.

Too dumb for the job.

The teacher should be reprimanded, if (big 'IF') the story captures the gist of the incident. I'm guessing it doesn't--there was almost certainly more going on there than what we get in this tiny article. That said, as a teacher I know there's certain things you just don't tell a kid. One of those is that you don't tell a child that her ideas about God & the flag as expressed in art class are inappropriate or offensive. There's no gray areas there. Her opinions are her opinions.

But then, so are the teacher's. An adult employee should police her own professional feedback to her students more maturely, but this is far far from a firing offense. It's what we in the profession call "a learning moment."

One way or another, give it a year or so she will change schools, districts, or leave the profession. Its hard to recover after such public attacks.