February 24, 2004
Education Quagmire

A sixth-grader in Belpre, Ohio has been suspended for bringing the Sports-Illustrated swimsuit issue to school, on the grounds that it violated the

school's policy on nonverbal harassment and possession of lewd or suggestive material, Superintendent Tim Swarr said
Swarr added that "he had never seen SI's swimsuit edition before".

Superintendent Swarr's other reading material doesn't look all that exciting, so I'd be willing to bet that he'll be tempted to take a peek at the SI swimsuit issue again sometime.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 24, 2004 12:19 PM
Comments

Ah, they should have just locked Justin in a classroom for an hour with a teacher who minored in Women's Studies in college. The resulting lecture on objectification would have been punishment enough. :)

Posted by: Kimberly on February 24, 2004 01:09 PM

If they haven't already, they'd better rush to the downtown library and purge it of all the 'fine arts' books which are obviously porn masquerading as stimuli for discussion by snooty intellectuals. Can't have sixth-graders finding THAT just lying around unsupervised.

Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on February 24, 2004 01:41 PM

The quagmire that is choking our schools and other public institutions is the embrace of endless games of legalisms and due process applied to more and more human interactions. In the interest of unachievable "fairness," we waste countless resources. The unintended consequences of this mindless pursuit is the inability to devote these resources to actually educating students.

What to do when a student brings the SI swimsuit issue to school? Throw it in the trash and get him back in class. End of story. The multiplication of these stories is truly sad.

Posted by: Gary B on February 24, 2004 01:54 PM
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