Posted by
Warner Todd Huston on Tuesday, January 18, 2011 11:41:35 AM
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-By Warner Todd Huston
It isn't just national issues that the Old Media misreports.
As we focus on the "big" stories of the day, we often overlook the
local scene and the left-wing excuse for "reporting," therefrom. This
is a perfect example of that.
Imagine you are a sophomore in high school and your sex ed
teacher forces you to prance about your classroom singing and dancing to
"The Vagina Dance" in a puerile attempt to teach the parts and
functions of the female sex organ. Worse, imagine you are a male student in a
classroom of such an unhinged teacher? Well, we don't have to imagine it too
hard because this exact situation has happened in a classroom in the Chicago,
Illinois suburbs. But don't worry. Chicago's Old Media is all about reporting
this incident honestly. Well, if honestly means to ignore relevant facts and
shore up support for the out of control teacher and smooth things over for the
school, that is.
Early this month, parent Robert King, whose son goes to
Crystal Lake's Prairie Ridge High School, complained to school authorities over
the inappropriate teaching methods of health teacher Jacqulyn Levin. As a
teaching tool Levin used "The Vagina Dance," a song replete with
dance steps and arm movements, and required her entire co-ed class to
participate in it – all to the tune of The Hokey Pokey, no
less. As it happens King's son was uncomfortable being required to prance about
the room, arms emulating fallopian tubes, and singing about vaginas, so the
parents complained.
In response the teacher claimed that her song was nothing
but a harmless "kinesthetic device" meant to help the kids learn
through "fun." The
Illinois Family Institute, however, begs to differ and called the
claim, "a rationalization, an obvious and foolish attempt to conceal the
inappropriateness and silliness of the activity with a patina of pedagogical
legitimacy" (I love how they used edu-speak against the teacher, too.
Kudos to that.)
Fittingly, McHenry County's Northwest Herald Newspaper
dutifully reported
on this incident. Unsurprisingly, the paper ignored relevant facts and merely
took the word of the school district as fact as the school circled its wagons
to protect itself and its teacher. The paper made matters worse by publishing
an editorial
by Cyndi Wyss, the paper's Community Editor, that downplayed the father's
concerns and further supported the school. Wyss also ignored relevant facts.
The paper held that "The Vagina Dance" was not
really a dance and was not really called
"The Vagina Dance." The paper also did not reveal that other teachers
in the past had used this as a vehicle for teaching the female anatomy and had
been doing so for several years.
For her part, Wyss proclaimed the whole incident overblown
and said that the teacher was "using an educationally appropriate,
ease-the-tension tool in her teaching repertoire."
It is clear that the Northwest Herald took sides in this
debate.
But parent Robert King disagrees with the Herald's position
and excoriated its penchant to ignore relevant facts.
The paper says that no one calls the song "The Vagina
Dance" except the kids, insisting that the teachers and officials have
never called it that. Yet, in emails back and forth between Mr. King and the
school's representatives, the thing was, indeed, called "The Vagina
Dance," and no effort to dissuade anyone form considering it thus was
attempted. In fact, the IFI reprinted one of Principal Paul Humpa's replies and
in it he calls it that himself.
Not only that, but the paper also tried to make this song
seem isolated to this one teacher's efforts to find an "ease-the-tension
tool" in her class, but King asserts that several teachers have used this
"song" and have been doing so for several years -- all of them
calling it "The Vagina Dance," by the way.
King's reply to the skewed editorial can be seen at the
Illinois
Review.
The issue here is, of course, one of modesty. It is
outlandish to force teenagers to dance around pretending to be vaginas, whether
they are boys or girls. It is a lack of propriety that we
are discussing here. It makes kids uncomfortable and trivializes both the act
of education as well as the female reproductive system.
But whatever it is or isn't the fact is the local newspaper
did its level best to create public opinion in order to back up this teacher
and the school instead of reporting the actual facts of the case and allowing
readers to decide. The Northwest Herald invented the news. It did not report
it. This sort of shabby reporting is happening in nearly every state of the
union and not just on the big national stories.
(Originally posted at Big
Journalism.)