LOVEMAKING IN SCHOOL

...He never discussed mat matter with his staff member...

...In fact, I think that a filmstrip without any narrative can generate as much confusion as clarity...

...It was observed without incident...

...In a document entitled "Family living Including Sex Education," disseminated by the Board of Education, prostitution is listed as "content" with the fallowing related learning activities: "Analyse the relationship of prostitution to health, economics, law enforcement, code of values and social problems...

...And District Attorney Merola noted, "I believe in sex education, but this guy wasn't teaching sex education...

...And considerable orientation would have been conducted before the film was finally seen...

...It is ironic because even a casual observer at the school (as I was) would loon discover that sex is the main student topic of con-venation, even when the views exchanged are innocent, ignorant, or boastful...

...How can they do that as well as do what parents, hospitals and churches have failed to do...

...Perhaps the filmstrip shown to tenth graders was too sophisticated for Monroe students-an argument made by both the school administrators and the creator of the filmstrip...

...Sex education is clearly a case in point For me, the sex-education materials recommended by the Board of Education have as much humanness to them as do the directions for a Tinker Toy...

...Every educator to the left of Max Raf-ferty claims it is necessary to cope with the breakdown of institutions and the corresponding increase of despondency...

...Yet that was what this case warranted...

...Sometime in the middle of March, a middle-aged teacher who had been at Monroe for fourteen years HERBERT I. London, professor of social studies and director of the University Without Walls Program at New York University, is the author of Fitting In: Crosswise at Generation Gap (Grosset A Dunlop...

...When I began research on this story, I was skeptical about sex education...

...1 brought into my research on this story Victorian attitudes toward sex born of Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s that concealed sex behind crinoline skirts and, knowing smiles and four-letter words overheard at Sam's candy store in Brooklyn...

...Sex is intrinsically a biological subject...

...When I asked him if he would show the film again, he said, "Considering all the trouble, I don't think so...

...From that time on, the school, some of its students, the local community, the Board of Education, the curriculum, the Bronx D.A., and the teacher in question have alt been deeply, irreparably affected by what has become a cause celebre...

...After teaching for twenty-four years, his career may be at an end, albeit Chancellor Anker is publicly committed to his transfer...

...He was refused,later he rejected-legal assistance by the U.F.T...

...Here is a new catechism that substitutes feelings for catch-phrase "learning activities...

...He just wanted to teach what he thought his students should know...

...Sex education in the schools is an argument whose time has passed...

...First of all, the film in question is a filmstrip made by the Unitarian Universalist Association that was not, according to anyone's testimony, produced for anything other than sex-education programs...

...and perhaps the students would have been better off...

...As is often the case in controversies, there are two very different yet plausible interpretations of the incident...

...Two weeks after the screening, the "marking period" ended and grades were given out...

...The student's father went to the school the following day to register his grievance with the principal...

...Where, however, does that leave the teacher...

...After many interviews and several meetings between the major parties, it was decided that criminal charges would not be leveled against the teacher...

...Merola,* the District Attorney, argued that this teacher was not authorized to teach health education...

...She was joined in her protests by another student who, at this point, described the filmstrip as "an embarrassment," adding the fillip that the teacher had made improper advances and used "street language" during the screening...

...When the teacher requested transfer to a well-known high school, the principal inquired, "If no criminal charges have been brought against you, why were you asked to leave...

...The ultimate question posed by this situation is: Can a teacher have more sensitivity to a young person's needs in a certain area than a parent-and should the teacher violate a public trust by acting on that sensitivity if the circumstances demand it...

...And even though he admits that caveats about the use of the materials had been introduced, and specific instructions against the showing of the filmstrip without some orientation had been noted, he believed the filmstrip possessed characteristics that were appropriate for the semi-literates in his classes who simply could not understand the written materials and tapes that were part of the preparatory materials...

...Showing of this film without a narrative, musical accompaniment, or plot on Forty-second Street would not be an immediate challenge to the box-office supremacy of Deep Throat...

...As Merola claimed, "It would not have been possible to obtain an indictment in the case," but "that's because of a weakness in the law that gives teachers the freedom to show students sex films that would be illegal at a Forty-second Street theater...

...Notwithstanding the dismissal of any criminal charges, there is left the residual curiosity, the innuendos and whispers that can destroy a reputation...

...because he stopped paying dues after the Ocean Hill-Brownsville dispute in 1969: In the same week the case broke, one of his teenage sons was bitten by a raccoon and required a series of rabies shots, and his wife had to return to Norway to visit her ailing father...

...He wanted to avoid publicity...

...but the official notification of this action was sent only to Physical Education Department chairman, where sex education is normally taught, and not to biology teachers...

...But what has been ignored is the attempt to humanize a subject eviscerated of feeling and sensitivity by the educationists...

...Nor is be a teacher eager to convert public norms...

...school authorities wanted to return to the status quo...

...If you can get transferred for showing a sex film, I'll do it tomorrow...

...But would teachers be better off...

...The teacher in question is about as concerned with martyrdom as my pet cat...

...Are twenty-four years of teaching kids effectively (all According to the record) so trifling...

...The conflict between academic freedom and penal law which was often used to characterize this case is a glib response to a complex matter...

...But the more I learned, the' more equivocal I became...

...He was an unwitting Job fighting a struggle he barely under-stood against a formidable array of adversaries equally perplexed about what should be done...

...The principal at Monroe said, "The decision to transfer Mr...

...LOVEMAKING IN SCHOOL HERBERT LONDON Controversy over a film on sex education Standing in front of New York's Monroe High School were what appeared to be half the school's population boogeying to the transistor music of Stevie Wonder, flirting with one another as hands darted across nubile bodies and shouting the same adjectival obscenity as a preface for any comment about school, the lunch menu, the weather, or a film on television...

...X) was best for all concerned...

...The principal at Monroe High School said, "This incident only jeopardizes those sex-education programs we have...

...This was no cool daddy elevating the street rhetoric of the 'sixties into a revolutionary platform...

...Had the directions been followed, a male and a female teacher would have been present in the classroom during the screening...

...if the topic is discussed at all, it makes as much sense to have it taught by a biology instructor as a physical-education teacher-maybe even more sense...

...It was a frenetic scene that exuded an aura of barely repressed sexuality...

...Mote-over, legislation changing the current legal restrictions failed to pass in the recently completed legislative settta...

...The District Attorney is technically accurate in noting that a film explicitly showing sexual intercourse for adolescents in a public theater where a fee is charged is a criminal violation...

...When he balked, he was put in a school lab where he is barely noticed, never given assignments, and is probably the highest-paid test-tube cleaner in the city...

...The suggested readings are seemingly written for Ph.D.s in physiology, not kids with fifth-grade reading abilities...

...Since there is a segment of the applied biology curriculum devoted to sex education in the broadest sense, and since students are palpably concerned with sex, are generally ignorant on the subject, and display an attitude toward lovemaking that is often crude and sometimes brutal, the teacher thought a filmstrip which sensitively and graphically shows the need for mutual fulfillment during sex an appropriate lesson for his students...

...Finally, it could be argued that a teacher sometimes has to follow the dictates of his own conscience if he is to teach ef-fectively...

...He waited for some official word of action from Chancellor Anker, but the letter mat was supposedly sent never reached him...

...The girls applied their make-up meretriciously, with reddish rouge on the cheeks and lipstick mat ignored the contours of the lips, and the guys wore jeans that were intentionally two sizes too small, high heels that required as much skill to walk on as circus stilts, and shirts that were unbuttoned to reveal the newly sprouting hairs on their chests...

...but she did not arrange a meeting between parent and teacher, which under the circumstances would have been the natural thing to do and might have avoided any subsequent action...

...showed four of his applied biology classes (no one could give me a satisfactory explanation of applied biology) a filmstrip called "Lovemaking...

...In May, when the teacher Was installed in the Board of Education offices, he was asked to count stacks of paper until he had reached piles of five hundred...

...What I am suggesting is that if sex education is to be a part of the school curriculum, it should have a human dimension that has more sex and less educationist education...

...He has been teaching in public schools for twenty-four years, is the father of two teen-age boys, holds master's degrees in high school administration and elementary education, and is one of the few teachers I have ever encountered who is dedicated to teaching in a ghetto school...

...now I am downright cynical...

...I contend that, if this filmstrip can generate a debate about what should be included in a health-education class or even something called applied biology, all the controversy may have served a useful-if somewhat circuitous-end...

...I am convinced that sex education should not be left to the educators...

...But, however complex the explana tion of justice in this matter may be, what remains un-resolved is the basic issue: the academic freedom of a teacher and the ambiguity of a sex-education curriculam Who should decide what is to be taught in sex education -the curriculum-makers in the Board of Education, the individual teacher, the publishers, or community sentiment...

...Academic freedom is not absolute, but the legal parameters on such matters as sex education for minors simply dp not exist...

...Since the principal was attending a central Board meeting, the assistant principal heard the charges and attempted to mollify the parent...

...Believing the filmstrip to be a legitimate teaching resource that was tacitly accepted by the Board and the Monroe High School administration, the teacher showed it to only those students in the four classes who wished to see it...

...Curiously, in this case both the protagonists and antagonists believe they are supporting sex-education programs...

...Since "criminal intent" could not be proved, it was deemed appropriate to give the teacher a mild reprimand for "his bad judgment" and to arrange for his transfer to another school...

...The Board of Education wanted to get the issue oat of the media's grasp...

...At Monroe High School last March, one teacher tried to fill the legal and ethical vacuum...

...As Assistant District Attorney Kaminsky argued, "Nothing is pornographic per se...

...The teacher was acting in good faith and to were all the others, from the Chancellor and District Attorney on down...

...When one student learned she had failed for the quarter, she became irate, tore her Delaney card up and proceeded to kick the teacher...

...It was in this eroticized climate that a controversy arose-and one that still remains unresolved-over the showing of a film dealing explicitly with the subject of sex...

...In an overcharged climate, with very few guidelines to rely on, there is no right answer...

...As a result, publishing houses "manufacture" and "package" new materials to meet the newly discovered educational need...

...Are our schools surfeited with so many outstanding teachers mat, when one makes a dubious error in judgment, he can be so cavalierly transferred?* When I mentioned the teacher's fate to several other teachers, all they could say was, "I wish I were so lucky...

...and the District Attorney wanted to drop a case where there were no criminal indictments possible...

...But as schools are asked to assume more responsibility, it becomes obvious they cannot even do their main function well, which is to teach students how to read and write...

...I am not sure the Unitarian Universalist, Association materials are better...

...He answered his own question by saying, "It's too risky to hire someone like you.'' The teacher was asked to leave because the parties involved wanted to forget the matter...

...Maybe the showing of the filmstrip displayed bad judgment/But rather than instituting a public auto-de-ft, the teacher in question could have been told not to do it again...

...What they ignore is his actual fate...

...yet for two months stories about the incident were carried continually by the press...

...Even when the Chancellor finally decided to transfer him, acknowledgment was made of his commendable teaching record...

...The teacher in question had been apprised of the film's existence and the accompanying sex-education kit at an orientation session conducted by the Bureau of Health Education of the Board of Education...

...As of this date, transfer arrangements have not been consummated, and the teacher receives twenty-plus thousand a year for sitting in another high school's laboratory cleaning test tubes while his classes remain unattended to by a "regular" teacher...

...What has happened in recent years is that, as wrecks of every kind are washed up on the shore of rehabilitation, the cure for the symptoms of social entropy is invariably found in an educational institution...

...The median reading score for the entering class at Monroe High School-tenth grade- is 5.2, excluding the Spanish-speaking population...

...Whether it's the drug problem, health care, or venereal disease, the schools are seen as the curative agent...

...What resulted was a public-relations solution to a difficult problem that appeared-but only appeared-to satisfy all concerned...

...Still upset, the parent described the matter to a district leader, who called a meeting with community leaders, approximately seventy parents and the two girls in question...

...pornography depends on where and when, on the context and the audience...

...And the filmstrip has also been shown at various high schools in the metropolitan area, as my random check indicated, although school officials, "for the record," now unanimously deny its previous use...

...In fact, the classes uniformly wrote favorable reviews of the experience, with such comments as "It's better to learn from teachers than to ask your friends and be unsure...

...He is still feeling the effects of his efforts.ling the effects of his efforts...

...If all the directions were followed, this film would not have been shown...

...He was removed from his classes by the Assistant Superintendent, Bertha Gordon, without the requisite forty-eight-hour notice, which was a violation of the union contract and an extraordinary discourtesy after many years of commendable service in the schools...

...Students I spoke to-admittedly, they are poor judges of their teachers-thought "he was the best cat in the school...

...After that meeting, the Bronx District Attorney was called, and his assistant proceeded to conduct an investigation...

...The other side of the story involves the Board of Education contention that the filmstrip had been officially banned prior to its showing at Monroe High School...

...He has been humiliated by all the attention, even though the District Attorney and the Chancellor were careful to keep his name out of the newspapers...

...Since these steps had not been taken, the Assistant Superintendent of Schools in the Bronx- without the benefit of a formal hearing in the presence of the teacher and his counsel-reassigned the teacher to the Board of Education...

...It is also somewhat misleading to say that only health-education instructors can and should teach about sex...

...He was threatened by the Minister of War of the Savage Skulls, who is the boyfriend of one of the girls who first lodged a complaint against him...

...But is that a fair analogy...

...Parental permission for viewing would have been obtained...

...In the final analysis, it may be difficult, indeed impossible, to recon-cile a teacher's role with prevailing community senti-ments...

...The claim that the filmstrip was officially banned is accurate...

...When I first read about this incident, I instinctively recoiled against tile showing of this film to teenagers...

...My own prejudices, by the way, haven't been altered...

...As one student said to me, "Man, sex is what I dig...

...It was also contended that, if the film was to be shown at all-and the teacher in question had been advised against it by the director of the Social Counseling pro- . gram-the entire kit should have been used as the creator had prescribed...

...Presumably, the student described the incident to her parents and also made mention of the filmstrip that had been shown two weeks earlier...

...Furthermore, Mr...

...It should also be noted that the filmstrip was purchased by school authorities and shown by guidance counselors "for special purposes" on many different prior occasions...

...As is the case with many contemporary issues, this was not a case of the well-meaning versus the mean-spirited...

...Surely the teacher and the school system would have been better off if that had been the case...

...In a somewhat flamboyant fashion, he maintained for public consumption that "You can legally show in a school films you can be locked up for showing to youths in a public theater...

...On one matter the District Attorney is absolutely correct: The law is ambiguous about the teacher's freedom to conduct his classes as he sees fit...