"Proportionality" is a term that should be kept in mind as the Pinellas County school system evaluates a parental complaint over an eighth-grade class assignment. While the assignment was inappropriate, it should not have sparked the federal case it has.
Lisa Porthouse has pulled her 13-year-old daughter out of Dunedin Highland Middle School and hired a lawyer because her daughter was given a proofreading assignment in which some vulgar language was used. Porthouse's daughter had been a student in Deborah Steiglitz's language arts class and was one of 25 students who were given a poem full of malapropisms and other mistakes to edit. The point of the poem, copied from a book by former educator and poet Taylor Mali, was to demonstrate the pitfalls of relying solely on computer spell-checking programs to catch mistakes. Although much of the poem was perfectly acceptable, even humorous - one part read: "I needed to improvement or gone would be my dream of going to Harvard, Jail, or Prison (in Prison, New Jersey)." - the poem was also peppered with offensive words and phrases, including "douche," "prostitute" and "a__mates." It probably should not have been utilized in an eighth-grade class without a bit of pre-editing.
Porthouse was justified in her concern when she contacted the school last month and spoke with one of the assistant principals. She was right to expect assurances that this lesson was too mature for some middle school students. And in fact, Porthouse received personal apologies from both the teacher and an assistant principal. Yet, for some reason this did not satisfy her. Porthouse continued to agitate against the assignment and the teacher. She filed a formal complaint with the district's Office of Professional Standards, calling the poem "offensive and sexually harassing" in violation of the Pinellas County Code of Student Conduct, and she retained counsel.
This is a raging overreaction. Stieglitz is a three-year veteran of the school system and has received nothing but glowing evaluations as a teacher. This assignment was a misstep, but no other parent beyond Porthouse complained. Even in middle school, students are sometimes appropriately exposed in literature to disturbing themes and language. An apology should have ended the matter.
