February is Black History Month, and there’s a movie that is about the black fighter pilots of WWII. And the Dallas Independent School District had some money to spend for low-income students. So it’s field trip time to a movie theater.
The problem is, the theater didn’t have enough room to accommodate all the students in the grade, only about half of the students could go at a time. So, only the boys went. The girls had to stay at school, and some of them were allowed to watch a different movie, about a girl in a spelling bee.
The rationale was that boys would enjoy the movie more…or at least, that’s what the spokesman is claiming. I don’t buy this as a reason, or as an excuse. If the school had given out this field trip as a reward for exceptional history students, that would be one thing, but the last time I checked, we’ve been in the 21st century for over a decade now.
I very nearly put this in the Pit. And it might very well need to be moved there, sooner or later. Really, though, is this sort of thing even LEGAL?
That is weird. If it’s not a matter of money, why not send all the kids, but just at different times? And why just one theater? That’s crazy.
When I was in high school, all the high school students in the city were taken to see Shindler’s List, at no cost. Somehow the schools were able to coordinate this massive undertaking without slighting any group.
That’s outrageous. The girls should have been given sewing lessons, or they could have spent the time cleaning the classroom so it would be nice and tidy when the boys returned.
And oh yeah, if I had been sent to the gym to watch “Akeelah and the Bee”, I would have been WTF? again. It is a fictional film that has nothing to do with history. They couldn’t have found a film that was at least loosely based on real events?
Plus, if I’ve seen it a million times on TV, I know a little kid has got to have seen it just as many times, if not more.
Yeah, it’s a bit old school. Were the girls offered the chance to go on a separate field trip to see a different movie? If so, I suppose that makes some sort of sense. If not, then it’s pretty unfair, even taking the excuse at face value.
No, the girls didn’t get to go on a field trip. The principals at various schools (this was apparently district-wide) had the OPTION of offering to show the spelling bee movie.
That’s pretty ridiculous then, to be sure (sorry I didn’t read the article…posting this from my iPad while waiting for a train). I have no idea how legal it was, but I’d say that having this come out is going to bust some chops and get some folks into hot water, at the very least. Deservedly so.
(BTW, who still thinks that girls don’t like to go see war movies like the one in the OP?? My daughters certainly seem to enjoy them, at least this sort)
Well this just sounds like a great idea. Next time, let’s send the Jewish kids to Ocean’s Eleven, that’s about money, they’ll like that. And we’ll send the black kids to watch Precious so they’ll know what not to do. And it would be better if all the white girls just watch The Help, it might teach them about cleaning. All the other groups could just stay and watch Jerry Springer, as they probably still need to learn about our culture.
Definitely. If they only had funding for half the student population then the right thing to do would have been to draw lots in some sort of lottery for this event and then note who went and taken the folks left behind to the next event.
Where is the Oprah/Lucas giving the girls a car thingy coming from, btw?
If they only had money for half the students to go, they should have found something that was 50% less per student, and sent all the students. A lottery is almost as bad as this.
There are plenty of movies on DVD that are every bit as good and have the same message as the movie they took the boys to.
No idea what this visit with a group of female mentors is all about. I hope it’s a bit more exciting than it sounds.
I could argue it sounds more educational than a war movie for the boys.
Oprah is known for doing things like giving everyone in the audience a free car or something. She’ll build a school for girls at the drop of a hat. Not that there is anything wrong with that, since she’ll do it in places like Africa where it really, really sucks being a girl.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
If they only had money for half the students to go, they should have found something that was 50% less per student, and sent all the students. A lottery is almost as bad as this.
There are plenty of movies on DVD that are every bit as good and have the same message as the movie they took the boys to.
[/QUOTE]
Well, I’m trying to avoid the part about spending over $50k on movie tickets (I think the money could have been more wisely spent to give the kids a treat), but if they WERE going to do a movie with the money then I think the lottery would have been the optimal way to go, with the kids that didn’t get to go getting the next treat. I don’t know about you, but I always thought it was lame when my teachers used to show those old 8mm projection movies in class as a ‘treat’ (DVDs or even video tape were a bit after my time), and I don’t imagine the kids would have enjoyed that very much. YMMV of course.
Why the hell couldn’t they just rent The Tuskegee Airmen and show it in the gym or something? It’s the same damn movie - even has Cuba Gooding, Jr. in it.
That’s sort of my point. The boys got to go on a field trip to see a movie. The girls meet with “female mentors”, which is almost certainly rather boring, and also almost certainly not nearly as expensive.
This is a case of separate and not equal.
And what Oprah does has just about zero relevance in this case. Oprah is a private citizen. You might question her effectiveness, but she’s spending her own money to give out cars or to start up a school. But what I’m talking about is the public school system, using federal money to discriminate based on sex.
I also have to wonder if someone at the theater complex is related in some way to a DISD decision maker. That’s a pretty big audience, even if they gave a group/student discount for the mob. SOMEBODY’S cash register was ringing.
The thing is, 5,000 students were entertained for about an hour and a half. The movie isn’t very educational (if it’s educational at all), and the money was spent on something that was very fleeting. For that amount of money, they could have hired another teacher for a full year AND had plenty of money to spend on additional resource materials.
