The issue for me is not about nudity. I think that I will let others deal with that. I do not object to my 16 year old daughter seeing a painting or a sculture of a nude, but that is just a personal thing. Ponrographic movies would obviously be another matter of course.
For me, this is an issue about intimidating teachers and creating an environment in which it is impossible to teach without fear.
It is simply awful that it is potentially career-threatening to teach anything beyond "the standards." As long as we confine ourselves to teaching subject-verb agreement and the sqaure root of 25, we will be okay. The minute we go much beyond that, things get murky. I am starting to hate the standards, by the way...
Two years ago, a social studies teacher in my school received permission to show a movie in her class. I do not remember what it was, but it was nothing very controversial. She showed the first part in class without incident. She began showing the second part of the movie the next day when an assistant principal came to her door and ordered her to stop showing the movie. One parent had called to complain and that was that. The teacher had to just turn off the movie and find something else to do with her kids. She was humiliated.
A few years prior to that, one of my middle school colleagues in Sumter, South Carolina was reading a novel with his TaG (taleted and gifted) students. The novel dealt with the supernatural. A girl brought in a Ouiji board to show the class and the students played with it and some tried to contact some dead person. That Sunday, the teacher was publicly denounced by name in at least one church. On Monday, a school board member came into his room and reprimanded him in front of his students and his principal told that class that they were done reading about the occult. They never finished the novel and my pal Larry was told that his job was on the line if he stirred up any more trouble.
I routinely do not use songs in my German class that I know my students would like because I do not want the headaches that might go along with it. They would love Männer sind Schweine by the Ärtze, I am sure, but I like to pick my battles. It is just not worth the potential grief when there are so many other good, but less offensive songs around. (Taking students abroad for exchanges and homestays is another matter. The dangers of doing so are, indeed, worth it to my wife and to me.)
And I will probably give up teaching my Internet Applications course after this year because we have blocked at least half the sites I want to use and I am tired of struggling to get them unblocked. I am talking about wikipedia.org, for example.
I could give you a dozen examples of this sort of thing and we could discuss why it is wrong on many levels, but all I really have to say is that I do not know how real education is supposed to take place when teachers have to fear public humiliation and the possible loss of their livlihoods when one parent objects to what they are doing.
I am not so sure that we have progressed very far beyond the Salem with trials sometimes.
And think about this: I almost did not post this because this forum is open to Google.
-- Art