From: ivester@UTKVX.UTCC.UTK.EDU (Stan Ivester) Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk Subject: Details on teacher suspension/Zappa video Date: 31 May 1994 08:46:34 -0400 Organization: UT Press Lines: 163 Sender: daemon@eff.org Approved: usenet@eff.org Message-ID: The following article, previously posted in the alt.fan.frank-zappa and alt.censorship newsgroups, appeared in the Sunday, May 29, 1994, issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer: Michael E. Ruane: "School showing of Zappa film hits wrong chord: A teacher wanted his advanced-English class to see an absurdist viewpoint. Some parents want him fired." "Mifflinburg, Pa. -- The two names can crop up almost anywhere around here: at the grocery store, the beauty parlor, the doctor's office, the school cafeteria. First you hear the name of the suspended English teacher who wears earrings in his left ear and keeps guitars in his basement: Richard K. Hanson. Then comes the name of the late avant-garde rock musician Frank Zappa, creator of such albums as Burnt Weeny Sandwich and Weasals Ripped My Flesh. Often what follows in this traditional, central Pennsylvania agricultural community, with its Moose hall, American Legion post and farmers' exchange, is a nasty argument. You might guess why. Mr. Hanson, as his students call him, recently showed his English classes at the Mifflinburg Area High School part of a grotesque 1987 Zappa video titled "The Amazing Mr. Bickford." The color film -- which includes violent and raunchy, though highly creative, claymation by California animator Bruce Bickford and music by Zappa -- brought protest to the local school board. Now the board is seeking to have Hanson fired. The incident has torn a classic division down the middle of this rural community: One side says the film is obscene and sexually explicit and argued for parents' rights in education; the other complains of conservative censorship and the usurping of teachers' and students' rights. For this quiet Union County community, famous in bygone times as a center of buggy manufacturing, the dispute has been strikingly bitter. There have been student walkouts and suspensions. One turbulent school-board meeting drew police from surrounding communities. And some parents claim that anti-Hanson students have been intimidated. Hanson, 40, a native of Hackensack, N.J., has been called by critics a chronic "loose bolt" who, for years, has been pushing the limits of teaching propriety. His supporters say he is a victim of the area's powerful religious right, which is seeking to stifle a creative teacher. Caught in the middle seems to be: no one. The events began on March 4 when Hanson, a theatrical, husky-voiced man with longish hair, glasses and a trace of a New York accent, showed about 40 minutes of the film to eight students in a small advanced English class. The students had just finished studying 19th century Transcendentalist writers, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who possessed organized and relatively upbeat philosophies. Seeking a contrast, Hanson starting presenting artists with an absurdist point of view. In a recent interview in his spacious home in nearby Lewisburg, Hanson, who was once a professional rock guitarist, said he felt the Zappa film fit this bill. Hanson -- who came to the area to attend college in the 70s, wrote the Mifflinburg bicentennial song and has taught at the high school for 13 years -- said modern teenagers are extremely sophisticated. `Ideally, it would be nice if they were all like Wally and the Beav,' he said, `but lets be realistic. Zappa, who died at age 52 of prostate cancer on Dec. 4, founded the band the Mothers of Invention in the '60s and went on to mix rock, jazz and classical music into a strange but famous genre all his own. Hanson said that he acquired the film, which contains a series of disjointed, gruesome and nightmarish vignettes, after Zappa's death and he believed it would be ideal for his advanced-English students. The showing, at least for the students, proved uneventful. One student dozed through part of it. Others worked on projects at their desks and paid the film only moderate attention. The problem came when Hanson showed it a week later, on March 11, to about 100 students in several standard English classes. At least one student was offended, and the battle was joined. Hanson said school officials asked to see the film. When he showed it to them in his classroom on March 28, they were upset. `I was offended by it.' said Superintendent Ben Van Horn in a recent telephone interview. `I was expecting that there would be some frontal nudity, and in many grades that is not inappropriate. . . When I saw this video and saw some explicit sexual activity, I was offended." Hanson was instructed to provide a written explanation. He did so on March 31. Among other things, he wrote: `If students are to transcend low-level thinking skills, teachers must begin to take innovative steps . . . risks must be taken. . . `Many students in the Mifflinburg area will never visit a metropolitan area, will never see a professional theatre production, will never visit an art museum, and will never see a dance company of hear a symphony.' `In short, most mifflinburg Area High School students will never develop an appreciation for the multi-ethnic, multicultural, multidimensional and and incredibly diverse artistic expressions our country affords. . . "I thought I was opening a door to new thought and perception --- a door of illumination. But not so." Six days later, Hanson was suspended. On April 13, district officials informed him that they were seeking to fire him from his $36,000 a year job for "wilful . . . violation of school laws' and for `immorality' The case went to outside arbitration. A hearing is scheduled for June 23 and 24. Hanson, who said he is scheduled to go on sabbatical next year, has filed for unemployment. "If you keep young people stupid, they wont mess with your world", Hanson said. "I think it is a design, as Frank Zappa calls it, to have nincompoopery take over." Meanwhile, there have volleys of outrage, pro and con. Some students and parents, as well as the teachers union, lined up on Hanson's side. Other students, parents and supporters of the school administration were arrayed against him. A local newspaper, the Sunbury Daily Item, hosted a public showing of the film and polled many of the 1,000 people who attended. Most polled found it suitable for high school students. Some parents, however, refused to view the film. One was Alice E Shoreman, 49, long a supporter of local schools and a mother who has spoken out publicly against Hanson and the film. Recently, she and her husband, Neil, 49, and two other mothers of children in the school gathered at the Shoremans' home in nearby Glen Iron to talk about the controversy. The two other women declined to give their names, saying they feared for the safety of their children. One, along with Neil Shoreman, had just viewed the film that morning. The other had seen it at the public screening. "I wish not to see it . . .," Alice Shoreman said. "I see enough garbage in a day. You can't sit and watch violence after violence after violence and not have it affect you," she added, noting that her family does not have a TV set. "Whatever you've filled your mind with is going to come out." One of the other mothers said she took notes while watching the film. "I saw sodomy, what quite possibly could have been cannibalism," she said. I saw an altar, which was portrayed more toward the end of Satanism than a church altar. . . I saw sexual intercourse . . . I saw lesbianism, I saw oral sex. . . I saw throats being slit, a person shot in the head. . . I saw nothing good." "there was no theme, no story," Neil Shoreman said. "The music was just awful, notes all over the place. It wasn't a tune; there was just a collection of sounds continually. . . It was 40 minutes of nothing. . . "I has to be . . . people that can be used to challenge children's minds," he said. "that have a more wholesome background than Frank Zappa." All lamented the division in the community. "I fear to go get my hair cut tomorrow," the second mother said, "for fear my beautician is a Hanson supporter and I'm going to come out shaved." "There's really no room for middle ground," Neil Shoreman said. The day after the Shoremans spoke, seven of Hanson's eight advanced-English students gathered at a bed-and-breakfast inn in nearby New Berlin run by the parents of student Carolyn E Kribbs, 17. Not one student said he or she found the film offensive. Some were interested in it; some bored by it. "I was intrigued by the complexity of the film" said Stefanie Hoffman, 17, a junior and the daughter of the New Berlin police chief. "It was interesting. But it was enough to get bored with it after a while." Jim Bromfield, 17, a junior, agreed. "I can't say I was unimpressed by it," he said. "But it was really boring" Josh Muchler, 17, a junior liked the film a lot. "I was really impressed with it," he said. "the amount of time that it took to make it and the intricacy that the clay figures were formed with, I think it was just incredible." The students generally agreed that Hanson is " "different" as a teacher. When asked to grade him, Hoffman said she would give him an "A or A minus". "I'm upset that one complaint can have this huge effect," Offman said. "It just doesn't seem fair. If I ever wanted to go into teaching, I don't now." Stan Ivester