Apr 30th, 2016: Vagina Flower

[xoxoxoBruce]

Georgia O'Keeffe, as an artist/painter trained in photography, she not only had an eye for detail, she could recognize what details were important. Being on the cutting edge of modernism, she was a controversial painter, who the art critics hashed ad infinitum. One of the discussions was O'Keeffe's huge close up flowers and their sexual meaning.

In 1943, O'Keeffe finally responded: Well - I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flowers you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't. ”

That settled the argument, however that twenty year long argument is, and will remain, part of art history.

Enter Allison Wint, a 24-year-old substitute art teacher, who was fired from Harper Creek Middle School in Battle Creek, Mich., for using the word vagina in the classroom discussion. In this case "substitute" is slightly misleading. The former teacher had retired a couple moths ago and Ms Wint had cleaned, reorganized, and restocked with her own money, the classroom she thought she would take over. But was given one hour to get the fuck out.



Photo on the left, WAPO, and Detroit Free Press. Photo on the right, M(Michigan)Live

Allison Wint, a substitute teacher at a middle school in Battle Creek, Mich., told the Detroit Free Press that she was hoping to provoke a thoughtful dialogue about historical interpretations of O’Keeffe’s work on Friday when she used the word “vagina” during a discussion with eighth graders.

Now, Wint claims that the verbal reference to female anatomy — a word she freely admits to having used — has cost her a job at Harper Creek Middle School. “Yes, I did say that word; however, I was saying it in the context of art history,” she told CBS affiliate WWMT. “I wasn’t being vulgar.”

What? Vagina is vulgar? The school didn't say she was vulgar, no, it was a catch 22.

The school's 44-part online Bylaws and Policies page include sections on controversial issues and on reproductive health.

The controversial issue section states that: "The Board recognizes that a course of study or certain instructional materials may contain content and/or activities that some parents find objectionable. If after careful, personal review of the program lessons and/or materials, a parent indicates to the school that either content or activities conflicts with his/her religious beliefs or value system, the school will honor a written request for his/her child to be excused from particular classes for specified reasons."

It says nothing about the teacher's responsibilities.

Wint acknowledges that she knows now that she was wrong in not advising administrators ahead of time of the potentially controversial nature of the lesson plan, but said that she had never been required to submit lesson plans. In fact, when she was hired on, she said, she was told that they were "looking for someone who could work independently."

Nor was she advised, nor did it occur to her, that use of the word vagina would kick her lesson into the category of reproductive health, which the school's website on policy says "shall be defined as that state of an individual's well-being which involves the reproductive system and its physiological, psychological, and endocrinological functions."

She said that as far as she knows, no parent objected to her lesson, nor did any students approach her to complain of feeling offended.

And as always, the default position of public education is don't give even the morons a reason to howl.
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