6th Grade Teacher Shows Students "The Passion" Clips...

I got this from Ananova. It seems that the Washington Post (registration may be required) had it first.

A sixth grade teacher in Washington, DC has been been removed from the classroom pending investigation into his showing a group of students excerpts from "The Passion of the Christ". The students were shown between 60 and 90 minutes of the film. The school is offering couseling to the students. Some parents are pissed off.

Read the article for the details.

OK, let's list the things wrong with this:

1. 11 year olds shown an "R" rated movie without parents consent.

2. This movie is by all reviews incredibly violent and is obviously about religious themes. We shoud not show this level of violence to those students, and doesn't the Constitution talk about separation of church and state? Inappropriate is putting it mildly.

3. 60 to 90 minutes of clips? Whatever topic this "teacher" was trying to illustrate could have likely been done in a LOT less time than this. How could any of this film have been related to "information the students had read in a social studies book", as they teacher is claimed to have told his principal.

4. This movie is not available on DVD or video tape. How did this guy get a copy? If he bootlegged it or bought a bootleg, I hope the MPAA rips a new one. Alternatively, if there is some liscensed source for this material, I am certain it was not intended for 6th graders.

For crying out loud, what was this man thinking? More than a few adults have been leaving the theatres because they were upset by the violence. This decision for children under the age of 17 to view this should be left to their parents, and from what I have read, it is nearly unanimous that children under this age should not be seeing it. This reckless behavior is astounding. This teacher has been teaching at the school for five years. My bet is he won't get the chance to get to the sixth.