Well, they are seriously lacking morals if they think that is appropriate viewing for fifth graders.
What strange morals you have.
Disclaimer : No child was hurt or damaged in the making of this trip. Museum art will not harm kids.
Went on a zoo trip when I was a kid. Masterbatting monkeys happened. Embarrasing but harmless.
Grow up people its not the event ,its the parental reaction. If the parent pittipatted the kid on the head and said its art dont worry .It would have completely dissapeared.The parents will do the damage not the art.
No, YOU are, if you think that fifth graders seeing nude bodies is harmful.
Daniel
Would you care to explain exactly what is immoral or inappropriate about it?
What’s immoral is firing a 35 year veteran teacher over nothing.
I’m not making the connection; an artist’s depiction of the human body as art is immoral to you? Or you believe it is immoral for a 10 year old to see (leaving aside the obvious fact that most of them have seen a hundred times worse on the internet by this time)?
And you’re absolutely right, gonzo. The kids probably didn’t think anything of what they saw, until they mentioned it at supper and their parents went nutty.
Man, you ever been on a field trip to the zoo? It’s all sex! There’s masturbating monkeys and all sorts of animals with enormous testicles just bouncing around there, and there’s apes with pink asses… The local zoo has an older male baboon with diabetes, and they did a video for local diabetic kids that showed him getting his shots and all. My boyfriend had the job of blurring out his very obvious floppity exposed penis. From every frame. He said the worst part is that you get desensitized to the thing. 
(Normally, I wouldn’t support blurring out a baboon’s penis, but this thing was kind of distracting, I must admit.)
Well, in Unregistered Bull’s defence, images of nudity could lead to images of dancing…
The Frisco incident seems to be fairly minor to me. Lefthands’ museum example contained items weren’t appropriate for young children to see IMO. The thing about art is that is subjective. What is appropriate for high shcool art class isn’t necessarily appropriate for a fifth grade class.
A bullfight is great art to me. A good one is a beautiful thing to me. It is a thing of grace and beauty. And in Spain, it is the art pages that report on bullfights in newspapers. It is cultural art form.
Now, at the same time, I have a serious feeling that many parents of fifth graders, probably wouldn’t want their kids exposed to this. I think that boobies and weenies, even in a clearly artistic setting, is apt to not be acceptable a few parents as well.
I’d like to add that this urbane, hip Dopester lives in South Freaking Carolina, and our art museum has plenty of Renaissance Virgin Mary boobies and Baby Jesus weenies and suchlike. Thousands of kids go through it every month. I am not aware of any complaints (I used to work there as a librarian but was not really a part of the corporate culture, so it’s entirely possible there were complaints of which I was unaware.) Frankly, I suspect any parent who would object to the nudity would probably not allow the trip in the first place, or most field trips for that matter.
A huge photograph of woman’s pubic area is not appropriate viewing for fifth graders even in an art museum. Send out a permission slip that includes telling parents that the kids will view huge picture of woman’s pubic area and see how many folks sign it.
Or some teacher getting fired. And bunch folks saying, oh “how unfair.” And person saying she should have expected it. And that if explicit enough, some nude art images, aren’t appropriate for fifth graders.
Well I find “Fun With Dick And Jane” to be insipid and boring and it therefore offends my moral views. I demand any teacher using it to teach my child to read be sumarilly dismissed. Do you agree?
No.
Could you possibly elucidate what, exactly, it is about seeing nude forms that so harms children? You’ve repeatedly asserted that seeing things like nude statuary from Classical Greece is inappropriate for children. Why is it inappropriate? Explain the basis for this moral judgement you’re making. Merely asserting it over and over isn’t going to aid anyone baffled by your position here in understanding what you’re on about.
Great. And in Spain, a teacher asks the principal, and is granted permission, to take the students to an art museum. In the museum is a painting depicting a bullfight. An animal-rights parent is infuriated that his child was exposed to this image and complains. The principal fires the teacher.
Analyze.
Daniel
Soooo…they should have expected the school board to cave to a single complaint about a field trip they they signed off on from a person who’s apparently had their head up their own ass for their entire life and therefor missed the fact that art - including some of the most important pieces of Christian religious art - frequently has nudity?
Do you REALLY think ANY part of that is reasonable, or are you simply playing Devil’s advocate.
I agree. I have four kids, once of which was in the 5th grade last year and I would have fully expected that on a field trip to an ART museum she might see some art where statues or paintings featured fully or partially nude bodies. I have seen nude art in almost every art exihibit I’ve ever been to. For God’s sake, don’t take the kids to the Louvre! I saw more bare-chested paintings of women there than on “Girls Gone Wild” videos.
And I think the fact that these parents are upset is ridiculous. They should sit down with their children sometimes and watch the TV shows their kids are likely watching on TBS or some other regular show when they aren’t home or paying attention. If it was erotic art, I’d be on the side of the parents, but it wasn’t.
And having had children that age, if they said anything when they saw that art it was “ewww” and giggles behind their hands to their girlfriends or buds. I don’t think old paintings and statues of naked people is lewd or immoral and the prudish type of attitude it seems we are seeing displayed here is what makes things difficult for American youths when they get older and start discovering their bodies and feel embarrassed and ashamed, opening themselves up for ridicule by their classmates.
I took museum field trips in elementary school and saw lots of nude statues. Doesn’t everybody? 
They signed permission slips. Is that not parental permission?? If they were concerned about what was in the art museum, they should have declined permission. If they didn’t KNOW what was in the art museum and were concerned, I’m certain they had time to check it out. I don’t think it’s EVERYONE else in this thread who isn’t living in the real world, I think it’s you.
I don’t think even my great-grandmother, who is from a backwoods town in Louisiana and a devout Pentecostal lady would even be upset about this.