Sixth-graders in North Carolina were given an art assignment that involved an image featuring a sexually explicit act.
Parents are outraged over the assignment that was given at Kennedy Middle School located in Charlotte. Fox News reported that the principal has since promised to see that teachers only post vetted images and links onto digital learning platforms for students.
“It was brought to my attention that there were some inappropriate artist images that were inadvertently included in a 6th grade art lesson while the teacher is on maternity leave,” Principal Kevin Sudimack said in a statement. “I worked with the art teacher to have the pictures removed from the CANVAS platform.”
Parents like Samantha Davis said she was “shocked” to see this form of artwork as part of the curriculum.
“I understand the topic being appropriate for college and adults,” she said. “I don’t find this artist and what she depicts as something age-appropriate for middle school kids to see.”
“To just pull it is nice, that’s great — but it shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” Davis added.
The artwork assigned was by Kara Walker, is titled “Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred b’tween the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart.”
“This work is based on purposeful misreadings of historical texts like ‘Gone With the Wind.’ I wanted to ensure that there would always be this like punch-in-the-gut feeling of culpability in white washing or wishing away the unseemly, icky part of the story, of any story,” Walker told the Museum of Modern Art. “But specifically the story that I want to talk about always comes back to an American mythology that involves race, slavery—a sadomasochistic construct that underlies the American history narrative.”
