But what about my needs?!

A bunch of people have emailed me about this story out of Texas, in which an elementary school art teacher lost her job because her fifth-grade students saw a nude art sculpture on an approved field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art. (I first saw the story at Konagod’s place on Sunday, and I’ve been meaning to write something about it, but hadn’t gotten around to it.)

The scariest thing about this is that this woman, who had been teaching for nearly three decades and won a teaching award, had her contract discontinued because one parent complained—a parent who, by the way, signed a permission slip for the trip, which was encouraged by the school principal. And that doesn’t even begin to address the wholesale absurdity of objecting to the naked human form in art.

Meanwhile, Blogenfreude emailed me this story out of Virginia, in which the school superintendent has ordered a display of books banned throughout history (in conjunction with Banned Books Week) be removed from the high school library, because “would encourage students to read banned books because they are on a controversial list and not because of their content.”

Books like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Fahrenheit 451, The Diary of Anne Frank, and The Bible.

Aside from the stupid suggestion that there’s no association between banned books and their content, which is precisely what got them on a “controversial list” in the first place, who the hell is this knob-end to decide that it’s a bad thing if kids want to read a book specifically because it was banned at one time? Quite frankly, those are the books which are most informative about our history and culture—they should be read.

One parent ends a teacher’s career. One school official halts a school from participating in a nationally recognized annual tradition at his whim. It’s all about me.

Well, fuck you.