Figure-Drawing Stupidity Continues... ('Disciplinary' Hearing Being Held)

This is really, really stupid as shit. I posted about this back in March and DUer's responded with many signatures for the petition. Probably want to shoot off some more LTTE's in support of Panse, now. The fact that this news article asks the faux-equivalence question "Is it art or is it just lewd?" shows what this poor guy is up against. The link to my original post is below the article.

http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2006/05/10/news-dcpanse10-05-10.html

May 10, 2006

Nude-figure drawing: Is it art or is it just lewd? School seeks answers
Disciplinary hearing opens on Middletown teacher



By Dianna Cahn
Times Herald-Record
dcahn@th-record.com
Middletown

- snip -

In Middletown yesterday, opening salvos were fired in a disciplinary hearing that looks like just such a showdown, pitting a well-rounded art education against sexuality in the classroom. When Middletown High School art teacher Peter Panse offered his students a nude-figure drawing course out of school, he said it was necessary for any art college applicant. He called it art.

- snip -

"Discussions of viewing a nude model injects sexuality into a conversation with a 14- or 15-year-old," Berlin said.

Panse's lawyer Jonathan Lovett called the district leaders "pilgrim-like" and prudish and said the case showed "where this school district leadership is: in a Cro-Magnon state."

The hearing started contentiously when Berlin challenged Friday's ruling by hearing officer Joel Douglas, who denied a district request to close the public hearing when students testify. It violated student privacy laws, Berlin said. Douglas wasn't buying it. As long as parents and students consented, it was not a problem, he said, seemingly annoyed.

- snip -

Panse is also accused of violating a condition of a 1997 memo admonishing him about making "comments that students could construe as being of a personal or sexual nature." Lovett mocked the memo, noting it was authored by former Superintendent Robert Sigler, who was later convicted of molesting a teen male student.

MORE


ORIGINAL POST FROM MARCH: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=638134


LETTERS TO THE EDITOR FROM JANUARY:

http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2006/01/24/opinion-24opedletterstues-01-24.html

Readers comment on art teacher's suspension



* * *



MORE

what a mess.

Think of what could happen if our teens find out what is under their clothes! :sarcasm:

Devout Mormons do shower with their undergarments on.

Mormons! How many children (not to mention wives) to a family do they have? Not two-point-something like the rest of us. How do they keep their naughty bits fresh for all that breeding if they shower with their clothes on?

in their sacred undergarments.

I think I have some of those panties in my u-wear drawer. I didn't know they were for showering!

to consider restricting students interested in studying medicine from observing and volunteering in hospitals and operating rooms. They might encounter nudity there or see breasts and/or sexual organs and have sexual thoughts.

Edit: What a repressed society. Don't they realize that what you hide becomes far more titillating?

My So. Baptist cousins were never allowed to dance or go swimming (mixed bathing). They were allowed to go to summer camp, however, and most of them came back from church camp at the end of the summer knocked up.

:rofl:

I think it's a 47.

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

:rofl:

My country has lost its fucking collective mind.

I grew up in a college town that had a cooperative arrangement with the local high school. I took the class at the college, like many of my other students from the high school who took classes of various types. Never thought twice about it. Figure drawing really is one of the fundamental skills necessary to learning to draw well.

And, I got into a very good art school.

and it is NOT SEXY. i saw (& drew)... things... that i never want to see again.

even when we drew a hot chick it wasn't sexy. it really was WORK.

i suppose i'm scarred in some way - but it sure didn't turn me gay.