This is fantastic.
BREAKING: Hudson mayor demands all school board members resign or face possible criminal charges over high school course material that he said a judge called "child pornography."
“I'm going to give you a simple choice: You either choose to resign or you will be charged." pic.twitter.com/guhp0zc0ns
— Jenny Beth Martin (@jennybethm) September 14, 2021
Except my ultimatum would be “commit sepukku or be woodchippered.”
So just what is this material? This is the first I’ve heard of Hudson.
Relevant news story here: https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2021/09/14/hudson-mayor-school-board-must-resign-after-students-write-sex-alcohol/8331974002/
@Toastrider: Yikes! High school sure has changed since I was there. We had a dress code until my senior year.
I can’t imagine the heat brought down on a student who wrote an essay about such topics. It is unfathomable that such subjects would be suggested by a teacher.
I’m thankful I’ve never seen child pornography, and never want to. Nevertheless, this doesn’t strike me as porn. In bad taste, certainly. Offensive, yes. Giving tacit approval to things high school students shouldn’t be doing but probably are, certainly, which makes it likely they’ll do sex, booze, and drugs more. That’s not a good thing. I’d bring back the pillory for the school board, and sell rotten eggs to the spectators.
By strict standards, probably not.
By legal standards though, it does qualify, which is the threat the mayor is holding over their heads.
(It’s the same legal standard that lets teenagers be charged as sex offenders for sending their current squeeze boob or dick pics. I didn’t say it was a GOOD standard.)
You’ve never seen porn, but leap into saying that cr@p isn’t?
@EN2 SS: Jack said he’s never seen child pr0n and doesn’t want to.
[Insert IANAL warning]
I don’t know Ohio’s legal standard for … erm, “under-age explicit materials” (trying to avoid spam filters and flags here). I’m in Oregon and just looked up ours, and it’s surprisingly specific — no doubt to avoid the “Potter Stewart categorization”. Neither these writing prompts nor anything the students produced would meet the definition.
However, we also have statutes against various degrees of “grooming” and “contributing to the delinquency of a minor”, and it may or may not meet one or more of those. But it would be a weak case; prosecutors would have a much easier time if the students had actually been assigned those prompts, but they haven’t.
At best, the board failed its due diligence when approving the book, which AFAIK doesn’t usually carry criminal penalties. The teachers, for their part, used the book they were told to use and didn’t assign any of the offensive prompts, and may or may not have realized they were there.
The optics are terrible, though.
Wait….am I dreaming?? The left will actually face consequences for their actions?? I need to make a note on the calendar for this.
Even something ‘small’ and local like this…I’ll believe it when I see it.
If I am reading the article correctly, the work that was/is offensive was not assigned to the students, and the teachers pulled the materials when notified.
While I have no doubt the school board is all about introducing sex topics into the schools at an early age, I cannot believe anyone on the school board was deliberately and knowingly pushing these particular materials. Maybe they were, and it will be up to the courts to determine that, but from what I can tell, threats to file charges are simply threats.
Then again, I am thrilled to see a mayor who will publicly tell off the school board.
First: He’s the mayor, not a prosecuting authority. He has no authority to file charges. That is up to a prosecuting authority. In most jurisdictions, though we tend to think of a person having authority to “press” charges, that in fact is not up to the alleged victim or others. It is up to the prosecutor. Neither can a victim drop charges; I have many, many times had to tell a wife or girlfriend that they did not have to press the charges, the prosecutor did. And they cannot drop them; only the prosecutor may make that decision.
Second, the material at issue here is most certainly not what would be described in my jurisdiction (and I doubt mine is an outlier) as “child porn.” Is it inappropriate for a high school class? Yes, even for an advanced class. Did the board know of the details of some of the writing suggestions in this book? I highly doubt it; almost certainly, they are not aware of the details of curriculum, nor should they necessarily be.
In short, the mayor is grandstanding.
At the same time, this is an advanced writing class, as I understand it, in a high school. Please let’s not pretend these HS juniors and seniors are naive waifs, wholly unexposed to the realities of a sex scene in a movie or never had a taste of a beer. Get real.
A sex scene you wouldn’t tell your mom about is DEFINITIVELY not something the high school teacher should be invested in.
We’re still talking about minors.
The problem is not only that this one particular high school had this material.
The problem is that the material:
1. Is a professionally produced curriculum that exists to start with.
2. Was likely approved by a high school teaching material accrediting organization.
3. The school board likely never bothered to review the material, or reviewed it superficially, and relied on the approval of “the experts.” (How many times has this happened in your corporate career?)
How many other schools are using this very same teaching material?
I wonder how many smart school board members, superintendents, and principals are desperately checking the Advanced Writing Curriculum for that “642” materails, and telling their teaches to remove it? And remove it RFN!
I also wonder how many lackadasical boards, superintendents and principals are going to be burned by this exact same material? And they should be literally burned if they are too stupid and too lazy to prevent a problem like this when they have been warned.
Which category above does your school board fall into? Professional and smart enough not to have the problem? Or Smart enough to correct it quickly? Or too lazy and too stupid?
Maybe we should all find out?
Maybe we should show an interest in and review our children’s learning materials?