Artsramble Archive

"Ironically, [the] "need to protect our children" from exposure to nudity is one of the reasons there is so much pornography in America.

Imagine you are a high school art teacher leading a pack of wild and wooly art wannabes, getting them ready for the scarey next step: art school. Besides foundation elements, you make them aware of Life Drawing 101 and the impportance of the of understanding the architecture of the human body. And then you are "labeled" and brought up on charges. You are a perceived pervert.

Rather than tell you the whole story which you may read at the address quoted below, we thought we'd tease you with Letters to the Editor in the Times Herald-Sun, www.recordonline.com, where the tale appeared.

Regarding the suspension of Middletown High School art teacher Peter Panse, I truly do wonder what the members of the Middletown school board use for brains. He didn't involve the parents while urging art students to take nude figure drawing classes? What does that mean?

Did he sneak into their homes, steal these children from their beds in the dead of night and take them to - horrors! - a nude figure drawing class and force them to - oh, no! - look at the nude human form? This is not the same thing as former Superintendent Sigler using a young male student repeatedly while a blind eye was turned by - oh, guess who? The Middletown school board!

I do disagree with Panse's lawyer on one point. He claims that on a scale of 1 to 10 in stupidity, this is an 11. I think it's a 47.

I haven't even finished reading today's paper (Jan. 14), but I had to write about the story of Peter Panse being suspended. Over the years, I have read about the Middletown school board's action with a mixture of outrage and disbelief. Today, however, is the winner.

Panse was suspended for encouraging his high school art students to take nude drawing as a way to increase their portfolio. I have taken nude drawing classes and can tell you that they are about as exciting as drawing a bowl of fruit. Sexuality never entered into it. If I am reading the article correctly, the students went on their own to New York City during the summer to take these classes. The article said it was done without parent participation. What would concern me more than the nude drawing would be that my 14-, 15- or 16-year-old was in New York City without my knowldege.

The responsiblity here is for parents to know what their children are up to. Panse should be immediately reinstated with a public apology from the school board.

For Middletown school board President Vincent Crescenzo to equate art teacher Peter Panse's advising his students to take life drawing classes with former Superintendent Robert Sigler's "ongoing sexual relationship" with a teen male student demonstrates how grossly ignorant and uncultured Crescenzo is.

His statement justifying the suspension of Peter Panse - "We didn't want it said that the Board of Education again turned a blind eye to the abuse of our children" - illustrates how unqualified Crescenzo is to be president of the Board of Education.

For a supposedly educated man to have such a puritanical attitude toward the study of the human body reminds me of the scene in the film "Artemisia" where the talented daughter of Orazio Gentileschi must examine her own body secretly by candlelight because the nuns of the convent school she attends consider viewing the nude human form sinful.

Ironically, Crescenzo's "need to protect our children" from exposure to nudity is one of the reasons there is so much pornography in America.

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