Has anyone ever heard of the middle gound?

[cinema_babe]

I read this on Yahoo and and thought what the hell ever happened to the middle ground.

Many operas deal with topics that are gory and adult in nature (murder, deception, rape, adultery and suicide to rattle off a few) Honestly I don't know that I would want to expose my 6 year old first grader to Faust (or Carmen or Tosca, for that matter) There are a lot of operas that *are* more suitable for the younger kids like Peter and the Wolfe or Gianni Schichi(sp). I agree that the teacher showed a small to middling error in judgment even if she was in a progressive locale like New York or Los Angeles.

If you're going to work with children across a variety of are groups, you've got to be conscience of picking materials that are a bit more age appropriate. The parents might think it's fine to take the kids to so blood spattered R rated movie, but *you* need to walk a much finer line.

However, people need to calm down!

There are a lot of things that might lead you to believe that someone worships Satan, last time I checked, showing kids something about the opera Faust ain't one of them. To make this woman send a letter of apology to every parent in the elementary school is a bit much. From the sound of things, she's lucky they didn't pull her out of her house at night, tie her up and burn her at the stake. These people are acting like Chicken Littles. Kids will be exposed to stuff that is too rough for them all the time; no child has died from it. The worst part is that this is probably for naught. A lot of the time, heinous stuff goes over little kids heads because they have no frame of reference to process it.

These kinds if things remind me of something that happened to when I was about 11. My mother and 2 of her friends inadvertently took a bunch of us kids to an R rated movie. It began with a naked man and woman in bed and just went on from there. The women were horrified, to say the least. The next day I said to my mother, "Mom, what does 'screw' mean?" Did I mention that we were on the way to church?

My mom may have screwed a lot of things up but I will always give her credit for the way she handled this. She didn't panic, didn't yell or get up set. She simply told me that it was a slang word for having sex but that it was a rough word and not one that we used in our house. That was a more than adequate answer for an 11 year old and no one was hurt in the making of that film. (and I can't believe that I'm saying this but...) I wish more parents would adopt my mother's attitude. Morality is not something that is taught by keeping ideas and images away from children but rather by allowing them in and discussing them. Children will do as you do not as you say.

Comments

[savethewave.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing this. Don Giovanni by Mozart and Faust share the same story, from "The Tragedy of Dr. Faustus" by Kit Marlowe.

I love that many of these parents doubtless let their kids play violent video games and watch inappropriate material on TV.

It is not about the parents being genuinely offended. It is about the parents wanting to show everyone else what good parents they are to the other parents.

I lost a teaching job because I refused to apologize to parents for teaching the comic book "Maus" which is about the Holocaust. I even sent out disclaimers, and offered alternate assignments, but no one responded until after the fact.

Naturally, the ones who protested the most had never even seen the book, which features cartoon mice as Jews and cartoon cats as Nazis.

[cinema-babe.livejournal.com]

Of course they had never read it, it seems that ignorance is a requires before one protests about something.

I'm very familiar with Maus, even met Art Speigel at some fol de rol or another years ago. I'm not sure how old the kids were you were teaching but if they're studying the Holocaust, they are certainly old enough to handle Maus.

My two cents, I think you did the right thing not apologizing for doing your job.

It is amazing how frightened people are of what they don't know. We have become a society of "female genitalia". Present company excepted, of course.

[savethewave.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha!

Art's "in the Shadow of No Towers" is great, and came out last year.

One of the freedoms we must allow is the freedom to be ignorant.

Sigh.

[onecrazymother.livejournal.com]

we've dealt with this at our house too. Once in a while I watch a PG-13 or R rated movie with the kids around... usually they show no interest, but occaionally they watch some of it. I've explained that just like we let them watch movies where kids speak rudely ( I despise the phrase "shut up" and all that whining kids do in media), we sometimes watch movies where grown-ups speak in rude ways that we do not.

now, um, the truth of the matter is that I'm a bit of a social chameleon, and the language I use depends a lot on the company, but I think parents not cussing around their kids is good practice, and likewise the other way around.