A couple of months ago Crystal Lake’s Prairie Ridge High School Health teacher Jacqulyn Levin decided that the best way to teach her co-ed class of sophomore students the parts of the female reproductive anatomy was to use something she called the “Vagina Dance.” To the tune of the Hokey Pokey, Levin led her class in a puerile dance that involved pointing to and singing about reproductive body parts while prancing about the classroom.

Her selection of this inappropriate instructional activity demonstrated a lack of empathy for those who may have a degree of modesty and self-respect that Levin does not possess. Did she consider that some students might feel uncomfortable participating in or even watching this dance and that they might fear being ridiculed if they chose to opt-out?

Her decision to use this dance as a teaching tool also reveals that she has no commitment to fostering modesty (please don’t be deceived by the attempt of “progressives” to conflate essential modesty with some kind of priggish, neurotic prudery). The very fact that a teacher would consider such an activity reflects how debased and immodest a culture we have. And it reveals that she has no regard for the values of all the families who have entrusted their children to her tutelage.

When a father complained about the dance, she defended it as a “kinesthetic” device to help students memorize body parts. The “kinesthetic” argument is simply a rationalization, an obvious and foolish attempt to conceal the inappropriateness and silliness of the activity with a patina of pedagogical legitimacy. Somehow few teachers in math, science, literature, or social studies feel the need to employ “kinesthetic” activities to facilitate memorization. If ever there was a subject in which “kinesthetic” activities would be inappropriate, it would be seem to be female sexual anatomy in a coed class.

Sounding a wee bit like Professor Irwin Corey, Principal Paul Humpa wrote the following non-sense to the concerned father:

I made a commitment to speak to Ms. Loeding, the PE department chairman, and Ms. Levin, your son’s Health teacher, about alternative strategies to teach the female reproductive system….My request of Ms. Loeding and Ms. Levin was to investigate a variety of alternative instructional strategies to be used to present the female reproductive system in lieu of the Vagina Dance. Through their efforts, I expect that thorough research of effective instructional strategies and activities designed to address different learning styles will be conducted. These strategies would certainly not exclude the potential use of kinesthetic methodologies.

So, Humpa is going to talk about alternative strategies, investigate a variety of strategies, and expect that thorough research of strategies would be conducted. Concerned District 155 parents must feel better knowing that Humpa is going to talk, investigate, and expect research to be conducted.

This is the kind of rhetorical runaround conservative parents regularly experience when challenging inappropriate activities and resources.

Principal Humpa also made the same irrelevant comment to this father that so many administrators tell parents who question the appropriateness of an activity or resource. Humpa told him that he hadn’t received any other complaints. It’s a common strategy on the parts of administrators to say with feigned wide-eyed incredulity: “By golly, Mrs. Smith, yours is the only complaint I’ve received.” It’s an administrative attempt to marginalize and embarrass parents into silence.

It’s irrelevant how few the number of complaints, and here are some reasons why it’s irrelevant:

• Many teens don’t share with their parents what takes place in their classes, so it could be that very few parents know about the “Vagina Dance.”
• Some parents lack the discernment to know which activities and resources should be challenged.
• Some lack the courage to challenge inappropriate activities and resources. Many parents are afraid to address problems because they don’t want to be labeled as puritanical or prudish.Conservatives all too often will not speak truth unless they’re guaranteed that doing so will be cost-free.
• And many parents are afraid to address problems because they fear their children will suffer repercussions from teachers.

Parents often rationalize their silence by saying that an offensive activity, or scene in a film, or passage in book is too trivial to address. They fail to realize that cultural change rarely happens through dramatic single events but rather through the slow accretion of little occurrences we ignore or dismiss.

It’s also important to understand that sometimes an administrator’s claim that he or she has received no complaints is a bald-faced lie as was the case with District 113 Superintendent George Fornero several years ago.

A controversy blew up in Deerfield over the teaching of a wildly obscene, homosexuality-affirming play entitled Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. At least three different mothers called Fornero to express their opposition to the teaching of the play, and he told each mother that her complaint was the first he had received.

Perhaps Ms. Levin should make a video of herself and her class performing the “Vagina Dance,” which she could show on Parent Night each Fall. Then she, a paid public servant, could post it on YouTube–all in the service of transparency and accountability.

I wonder what public school teachers would do differently if all of their classes were taped and posted on local access television just like school board meetings. I suspect that many of their resources, activities and classroom commentary would change significantly.

There once was a time when teachers were mature, wise, modest, discreet, respectful, intelligent, dignified, and apolitical enough to deserve the kind of autonomy they enjoy, but no more. So many public school teachers demonstrate such a lack of maturity, wisdom, modesty, discretion, intelligence, dignity, political neutrality, and respect for the values of parents as to warrant greater community oversight.

“Progressive” teachers whose moral compasses have gone awry and who hubristically view themselves as “agents of change,” count on their nearly absolute autonomy, public ignorance, and conservatives’ fear of ridicule. These “educators” must lose all three.

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