The school board is Hudson, Ohio, will not resign despite an ultimatum from the city’s mayor, who erupted in fury at a school board meeting after he saw a book that teachers passed out to high school kids.
Either quit, Mayor Craig Shubert warned during a school board meeting on September 13, or face kiddie porn charges. Used in a writing class, the text contained sexual and other inappropriate material for young pupils, parents said. The mayor agreed.
Though the mayor’s threat did not persuade the board members to quit, the school superintendent said the books were not reviewed properly. That raises the obvious rejoinder that one or more school employees should resign, or be fired, for not doing their jobs.
The book
In question is 642 Things To Write About, a text for the college-level course, Writing in the Liberal Arts II. Students who take the course receive college-level credit, the Akron Beacon-Journal reported.
But they also receive something else: The chance to write pornography, some of it based on Disney stories.
Angry mom Monica Havens, a teacher herself, pulled the covers back on the book to expose just what the adolescent scholars in Hudson were reading, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer reported. Among the topics the book suggested kids write about were these:
- Choose how you will die.
- Write a scene that begins: “It was the first time I killed a man.”
- Describe your favorite part of a man’s body using only verbs.
- You have a dream that you’ve murdered someone. Who is it, how and why did the murder happen, and what happens afterward?
- You are a serial killer. What TV shows are on your DVR list? Why?
- The kill fee.
- Write a sex scene you wouldn’t show your mom.
- Rewrite the sex scene from above into one that you’d let your mom read.
- You have just been caught in bed by a jealous spouse. How will you talk your way out of this?
- Write a sermon for a beloved preacher who has been caught in a sex scandal.
- Describe a time when you wanted to orgasm but couldn’t.
- Ten euphemisms for sex.
- You are a brand-new suicide-hotline counselor. Describe how you feel during the course of your first call.
- Write a letter from the point of view of a drug addict.
- Drink a beer. Write about the taste.
- Write an X-rated Disney scenario.
- A roomful of people who want to sleep together.
- The first time you had sex.
Coming from the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, the book’s obsession with kinky sex is unsurprising. Nor is it surprising that Havens was furious after she found out about the book — and that her daughter was reading it.
“I can’t even wrap my brain around a teacher, I don’t care if it’s for college credit, these are minors,” Havens said, the Plain-Dealer reported.
Mayor: Quit, Or Face Charges
Neither could the mayor, who called the material “child pornography.”
“It has come to my attention that your educators are distributing essentially what is child pornography in the classroom,” Shubert told the board:
I’ve spoken to a judge this evening. She’s already confirmed that. So I’m going to give you a simple choice: You either choose to resign from this board of education or you will be charged.
The audience applauded wildly. The school board said forget it, the Beacon-Journal reported.
“No Board of Education member has indicated any intention to resign,” board president David Zuro said.
Which didn’t mean board members were unconcerned about the book, which school bureaucrats quickly gathered up.
Another board members, James Field, agreed:
I don’t think there is another perspective on it that would’ve said that ‘oh yeah, that book was OK or that made sense. That was definitely one that we want to make sure we understand that we’re doing the proper policies and reviews … to prevent that.
The school superintendent, Phil Herman, confessed that his administrators failed in its duty to taxpayers … and parents and kids, the Beacon Journal reported.
“It is clear that as a district we did not properly review this resource, and for that, we sincerely apologize,” he said:
We take great pride in the instructional experience of our students and take very seriously anything that negatively impacts our mission to provide an educational program that provides for the development of each child in a safe, nurturing environment.
As with most of these cases, a “review” is underway.
One parent, a cop in nearby Stow, has a solution, the Plain-Dealer reported. Cameras in the classroom.
“Police officers wear body cameras to monitor their behavior, and they have brief interactions with the public,” Eric Dirker said. “You guys have our kids all day and we don’t know what’s going on in the classrooms.”
