<p>As a teacher myself, this makes my hair stand on end. It is completely inappropriate and unprofessional to distribute this quiz and any teacher who doesn’t hesitate in the decision making that preceded it needs to have their head examined. Literally. That is why I wonder if there is another agenda or impulse that is being served. </p>
<p>As far as the argument that kids know all this stuff or talk this way anyway…well, so what? Kids masturbate, have sex, smoke pot, etc. That doesn’t mean that we should bring those behaviors into the classroom. It’s rationalization to use that argument.</p>
<p>Teachers first and foremost need to honor boundaries between themselves and their students. When those boundaries are compromised, respect is lost. I’m guessing that even the kids who laughed and enjoyed this quiz lost some respect for the teacher. AP kids are generally smart enough to know that there is more than one way to present information. This teacher’s choice to present it in this way i odd at best. Kids WANT boundaries between themselves and the adults in their lives. They are all feeling a little uncomfortable about this adult, I’m guessing. And if their not, they should be.</p>
<p>Good grief. I read the quiz. What in the world was the supposed educational value of this? There has to be a much better way to get the point across.</p>
<p>Just because something makes a point effectively (IF this quiz did that) doesn’t make it an appropriate teaching method. There are other, more appropriate ways, to make a point. If the point was pre-conditioning, then ONE of these questions would have been sufficient - not 13 of them!</p>
<p>I think the quiz shows the immaturity of the teacher. I suspect Art Johnson was too wrapped up in leaving his post to bother censoring the teacher.</p>
<p>I didn’t like the quiz… one of the tamer riddles could have made the same point without offending people. However, I do feel it’s necessary to point out that high school students think EVERYTHING is about sex. I remember when I was student teaching (I was 37) and mentioned the early human species Homo erectus. The entire class began to giggle uncontrollably. And when I said that Homo erectus spread across Africa, several of the boys couldn’t control themselves. One student fell out of his chair.</p>
<p>When I worked in our public high school, the cafeteria staff told me that on taco day they learned NOT to ask the boys, “Hard or soft?” to find out what type of taco shell they wanted. They asked, “Crunchy or soft shell?” instead. Otherwise the boys made a face and were mortified, or else burst out laughing. </p>
<p>No, the last thing a teacher needs to do is to point out sexual innuendo to teenagers. Believe me, they are VERY aware of it. </p>
<p>It amazes me the ignorance of people sometimes. I did some reading up on this, and I believe that, as a student at a public university only one year removed from taking AP Psych myself, I can relate to the students fairly well.</p>
<p>First, lets address the reason the teacher gave the quiz in the first place. The school principal said in an interview that the quiz was to show how innocent questions to a third grader could be assigned sexual meaning by an adult. I believe that he more than succeeded in this regard, seeing as to all of the attention this quiz has been receiving over its supposed “grotesque” nature. Is this any more vulgar than the images shown in abstinence-only education? These programs show pictures of both genitalia to students in grades 7-10. If you are to suggest that an average 13-year-old being shown pictures of diseased genitalia meant to scare them into not having sex is more appropriate than an AP student around 17 or 18 taking a quiz with sexual innuendos that something can actually be learned from, then I suggest that it is YOU that needs to have your head examined. Literally.</p>
<p>Second, lets address the fact that it might have made some of the students uncomfortable. The teacher actually addresses this himself. He allows any student that does not wish to participate the opportunity to leave before they take the quiz. Lets assume that he did not give this opportunity, or a student didn’t want to get made fun of for leaving, etc. In school, there are many things that students learn or see that might make them uncomfortable. I will take an example from AP Psych to demonstrate my point. Sigmund Freud was an interesting psychologist, with some very interesting ideas about sex, dreams, and the subconscious desires that we all have; his thoughts are almost a given to be on the AP test. One of the things that he believed was that all dreams are filled with sexual undertones, and I know for sure that my text that we read in high school gave examples of Freud’s dream interpretations. Basically, to make a long story short, anything that was cylindrical in shape, such as if you walked by a tree or a flagpole, means that you were thinking about a *****. Any type of hole then, naturally, means a vagina. If the AP test thinks this is fair game, what is so wrong about the quiz?</p>
<p>With all of the other things that parents could be concerned with in regards to their children’s education, it is a pity that they are instead wasting their energy instead trying to get a teacher fired for actually doing his job. This is a disgrace. If this man gets fired, the school board will never hear the end of it from me, and I am not even affiliated with the school in any way, shape, or form. Please, do you research before commenting negative things about people that deserve better.</p>
<p>I hardly think high school students need to be taught that practically anything can be described in salacious, sexualized terms. I wouldn’t be tempted to fire a teacher over this, but I wouldn’t exactly respect him in the morning, either.</p>
<p>My 8th grade English teacher – at an all-boys school – used sexual innuendo in practically every test or quiz he ever gave. A good number of the sentences we had to diagram, or correct the grammar for, concerned girls and what you did with them. Not in super-explicit terms, but it seemed pretty racy at the time. We all loved it. At least I think we all loved it, even the boys who later turned out to be gay. We all learned grammar, that’s for sure.</p>
<p>My mother taught a moral philosophy elective to (private) high school seniors for about 20 years. First at a girls’ school, then a boys’ one, then to co-ed classes. She had segments on sex and pornography that included lots of explicit material. Every few years, a parent or two complained, but her class was wildly popular, she was a known quantity, and she knew lots of the parents socially. (At first, many were her school friends; later, many were her former students.) Plus, she had a great track record of getting kids to talk to their parents, even when the relationships were very difficult. So the critics were generally told, politely, to pound sand. To my mind, a great argument for private schools, at least the ones with, um, balls.</p>
<p>Coleraincards, thank you for the primer on Freud and his theories. I’m pretty sure most of us are familiar.
I am also pretty certain that all of the other posters and myself understand and support the premise of illustrating the role that sexual innuendo plays in our perceptions. That really isn’t the issue. For me, the real issue is the way in which this teacher went about teaching this concept. Did you read the test? Whoever wrote the questions went out of his way to make the questions lean toward sexual interpretations. Read the question in the test in which the answer is peanut butter.</p>
<p>Really? Peanut Butter? Because peanut butter is the first thing that I think of! Don’t you? It doesn’t even make any sense in the context of peanut butter. </p>
<p>That is why I say that the primary objective of the test is to be deliberately provocative. I don’t buy that this teacher wanted only to teach the concept of sexual tension. Once this quiz was given, I very much doubt that any meaningful or thoughtful discussion followed. </p>
<p>And, by the way, I have, actually, had my head examined and have been declared sound.</p>
<p>Isn’t that a big “duh?” Of course the author did. I think the parents who think this is worth all the drama should be thankful this is at the top of the problem list. </p>
<p>dmd - that made me giggle too. </p>
<p>It’s not just kids who giggle at such things. A club in which I am involved decided to collect items to send to a member who is in Afghanistan. In discussing it with the board - all professional adults, we couldn’t contain ourselves when someone reported that we needed to send several boxes because John Smith’s package was too big. Things went completely downhill when a newbie asked who he was and the answer was, “he’s one of our most active members.” We have not been able to discuss packages since.</p>
<p>Cartera,
If the objective of the test is to illustrate that our perceptions lean toward a sexual interpretation of a statement, then wouldn’t it make more sense for the statement to be neutrally worded between the sexual interpretation and the innocent “peanut butter” interpretation? Wouldn’t that method best demonstrate bias? Have you read this quiz? If not, you should. The wording of the questions, in my opinion, are nearly impossible to interpret in any way other than sexual. The “innocent” interpretations are a stretch of the imagination. If the test were more neutrally worded, it would be more convincing as a vehicle of education. In my opinion, it is a sensationalized gimmick on the part of the teacher that, no doubt, left the students, at best, laughing and, at worst, embarrassed and uncomfortable. Neither of those outcomes is the desire of a good teacher determined to educate.</p>
<p>Do I think he should lose his job over it? No. But he needs to be counseled by his administrators, for his own good and the good of his students.</p>
<p>Do I think that the students have been seriously harmed by the quiz? Of course not. The discussion is about whether this quiz is appropriate in a High School classroom. I say it isn’t. That’s all.</p>
<p>That was not the objective of the quiz. The objective of the quiz, which I have previously stated, was to show that something innocent to a 3rd grader can have sexual meaning attached to it by adults. This is not the same as saying that adults tend to place sexual meaning to something that is neutral between the sexual and non-sexual in an adult; in fact, if it is truly “neutral” in adult minds (which is pretty much impossible), then it should be taken as sexual by some adults and non-sexual by other adults. This obviously does not mean that adults tend to place sexual meaning to things neutrally worded, because that then disrupts its claim on being “neutral”.</p>
<p>^^^
And where did you find the an indication that your understanding of the objective of the quiz is, in fact, the intended objective? Are you speculating?</p>
<p>Pretty much everything that a “third grader” reads or hears is going to be interpreted, by that child, in an innocent way, isn’t it? Although I do know a few who have a more worldly view on things.
Again, have you read the questions? They go through linguistic contortion in order to set the reader up for a sexual interpretation.</p>
<p>From the principal: “The questions could either be answered with something non-sexual like bubble gum or could be taken as a sexual innuendo, Lee said. The point of the questions was to show students how wording that a 3rd grader would find innocent, an adult would assign a sexual connotation.”</p>
<p>Again from the principal: “Were there sexual innuendos? Yes, but it wasn’t a sexual test.”</p>
<p>This is a Principal on the defensive in the face of parental and public questioning. Please read the questions that were on the quiz and tell me that a third grader would be able to answer them in any way at all. Outside of a sexual interpretation they are far-fetched and close to nonsensical.
Of course this was a sexual test.</p>
<p>I did read the questions on the quiz, and for all but one or two, I could see both sides of it. If you are innocent like the average 3rd grader, you would only be able to see the non-sexual side.</p>