Brickbat: The Goat

Arizona's Cactus Shadows High School suspended teacher Andrew Cupo after several parents complained about the sexual language in a play studied in his elective advanced drama class. Students must get parental permission to take the class because it may contain sexual material. And Cupo also gave them the option to study a play other than Edward Albee's "The Goat, of Who Is Sylvia?" But Emily McAtee, a student in the class, says she declined to read another play because she felt she'd be left out. She says she was offended by Albee's play. Her father, Guy, says that even though he signed the syllabus sent home at the start of the year he really didn't realize the class would contain material he might find offensive.

Comments

[Snark Plissken]

And Cupo also gave them the option to study a play other than Edward Albee's "The Goat, of Who Is Sylvia?" But Emily McAtee, a student in the class, says she declined to read another play because she felt she'd be left out. She says she was offended by Albee's play.

I assume next year it will be replaced by the more appropriate play, "The Fainting Goat: of who is Emily."

[Snark Plissken]

The Goat, Fainting Goat, that was a slam dunk!

What is wrong with you people!!!!

[Fist of Etiquette]

Some of us just aren't cut out for leadoff commenter.

[UnCivilServant]

And yet you aspire to the role anyway.

[Snark Plissken]

So you're saying I need more shaky-cam?

[Ted S.]

I assume next year it will be replaced by the more appropriate play, "The Fainting Goat: of who is Emily."

I vote for Equus.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Nonetheless, student Emily McAtee ? who declined the option to study a less controversial play because she thought she'd feel left out ? testified before the school board on Tuesday that she regretted that decision because the vulgar terms in "The Goat" offended her sensibilities.

Advanced Drama may not be for you, sunshine. Perhaps Feminism 201. (You already have the basics down.)

Instead, the irate parent recruited a group of about 10 other parents and walked into the principal's office on Monday morning and demanded that the school's police officer handle the matter. The officer was then required to question several students about the matter.

It's never too early for a parent to teach kids what it's like to be interrogated by police.

"Having signed an acknowledgement of the course curriculum is in no way authorization for material of this nature to be approved," he insisted to the school board. He did not comment as to why his daughter declined to study the less controversial script.

She declined because she didn't want to do the play but didn't want to be left out. Her solution was elegant. Pitch a fit so that no one could do the play. Problem solved in the most selfish way possible.

[GILMORE]

what makes some of this even moar awesomes is that you could read the entire syllabus material in an hour or so. Victor Hugo reimagined, it aint. they're having a shitfit over possibly the least consequential, unchallenging, vapid and self congratulatory material in the 'literature' department. next up = Parents protest "Blocks in Nursury School = Too Many Corners!! School told to use ovals."

[DontShootMe]

So, how long before we start getting news stories about this little selfish twit being bullied by her classmates, whose experience in Advanced Drama she just ruined?

Friends, what are they?

[kellymo]

I don't know. With that quality of a hissy fit, seems she's got the advanced drama part down pat.

[PM]

This is why the meme of "getting parents involved in their kids' education" doesn't tend to change much in the real world. "Well, sure, I read the syllabus and signed it, but I didn't realize what was, like, in it!"

I really honestly do dread what education is going to look like when the Millennials' kids hit middle school.

[Robert]

But look at the bright side, which is that schools are responsive to parent's complaints.

[Almanian!]

Pussies.

[Live Free or Diet]

So now we protect children from their education, and parents from their inattention?

[Cdr Lytton]

Two plays, one Cupo?

[Swiss Servator, O Luzern!]

I...you...that just...

*shakes head and walks slowly out of the room*

[Cdr Lytton]

Hey, I left the goatse comment out.

[NotAnotherSkippy]

You fucker. That is the one image in my life than needs to be excised with a scalpel or a sledgehammer. And you had to go pick at the scab. Fucker.

[GILMORE]

this whole episode is in fact the first act of Eugene Ionesco's 'Rhinocerouus' reconceived as a real time pseudodrama acted out by non actors on a ficticious college campus. in act 2 Emily has an affair with the goat while the father stages a sit in the feminist studies dept because "penises dont mean he cant woman too". act three al qaeda kills them all.

[Doctor Whom]

When I was in junior high school, I had to read a play that opened with some smutty double entendres and went on to celebrate underaged sexuality and disobedience to family. It was called Romeo and Juliet.

[Snark Plissken]

At least it didn't entail any disobedience to the State.

[Heroic Mulatto]

She was a 2011 semi-finalist in the Ayn Rand "The Fountainhead" Essay Contest.

Maybe this is just an example of Randian trolling?

[Juice]

She didn't complain about the rape scene back then?

[mr simple]

"I never took the opportunity of the other script so that I didn't seem discriminated against," said McAtee to AZCentral. "I understand Mr. Cupo's point of what is metaphorically said within the script, but when we're rehearsing these things and saying these things out loud, we're not thinking of the metaphorical things, we're thinking of who we're trying to portray as the character."

Sounds like she was discriminated against by her english teachers.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Unless Ms. McAtee was cast as either the goat-fucker or the fucked goat, I don't see her problem.

[Snark Plissken]

Goat-fucked the link.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Go(at) fuck yourself.

[mr simple]

I was commenting on her atrocious grammar.

[Neoliberal Kochtopus]

So in this corner we have a teacher and Edward Albee

And in the other corner we have helicopter parents.

This is like asking me to choose sides in a blogwar between Heartiste and Jezebel.

[Andrew S.]

Sometimes, you do have to support the lesser of two evils. And here, the teacher deserves support over the idiot parents.

[Lady Bertrum]

Or, you don't need to support either and can just point and laugh which is what they all deserve.

[Ted S.]

Jesse posted this some weeks back, but it deserves another posting here.

[Lady Bertrum]

And this is why pubic education is almost always idiotic.

[Old Man With Candy]

Has she hire Wolk as her attorney?

[Old Man With Candy]

hired

goddam fingers

[Ken Shultz]

Reason #147 to send your kids to private school or home-school.

[GILMORE]

Dear David Lynch,

We all loved Twin Peaks. We wish you would do another TV project. We suggest "Cactus Shadows".

Love,
The internets.

[Adam.]

i need to take this off my RSS; it's like a random quick and fierce nutpunch every time