Airbrushing George Washington
Found this report on the web site of People For the
American Way. I hope this is a joke but I'm afraid it's true.
QUOTE
Georgia School District "Touches Up" Famous George Washington
Painting: What’s Next, The Washington Monument?
In response to a reported "touch up" by a Georgia school district to Emanuel
Leutze’s famous painting Washington Crossing the Delaware in fifth grade
history textbooks, People For the American Way Foundation suggested specific disciplinary
action for school officials. Muscogee County school district officials, worried that
Washington’s watch, lying across his right thigh, might look to some fifth grader
like the general’s genitalia, used paint brushes to touch up the page in over 2,300
books.
"Kids are disciplined for defacing school textbooks, so let’s make the
punishment fit the school officials’ crime," said Carole Shields, People For the
American Way Foundation president. "The superintendent should be kept after school to
write on the blackboard 100 times: I WILL NOT DEFACE PUBLIC PROPERTY, I WILL NOT DEFACE
PUBLIC PROPERTY."
According to yesterday’s Atlanta Journal Constitution, teacher aides spent nearly
two weeks painting over the offending watch because of how fifth grade students might
react.
"While Kansas is censoring evolution out of the state’s science standards,
this Georgia school district is going for a new low in censorship by taking out what
isn’t there just in case someone might imagine it is. By this standard, the school
district could end up with nothing left to teach," said Shields.
School officials in some Cobb County schools went one step further in their censorship
of the same painting. They ripped the page right out of the textbooks.
The historic painting can be viewed online at www.metmuseum.org/htmlfile/Education/gw.html
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