Sensitive Images Find Their Way Into Classrooms

As word spread that a Villa Park High School teacher had allowed students to view a video of the beheading of an American civilian in Iraq, Principal Rod Hust received a couple dozen phone calls, e-mails and letters from parents.

Most said teacher Stephen Arcudi had stepped over the line of good judgment because the graphic material was inappropriate viewing in a classroom. But about a third of the calls, Hust said, supported Arcudi’s decision and said showing the video to interested students was justified in the context of war.

To Hust, the divided response was a stark reminder that, when it comes to discussing disturbing or controversial issues in the classroom, teachers are often left to navigate a tightrope of judgment calls on which even parents can’t agree.

“Teachers have to always remember that they are working with kids and ask themselves, ‘Where is too far?’ ” Hust said. “If you’re discussing the Holocaust, is it right to show the incinerators? Some would say it is absolutely right. That you must show them so the students understand. Others would disagree.”

Hust is hardly alone in confronting such questions. Teachers from three other schools in Southern California have also come under fire recently for showing the video, accessible on the Internet, of Nicholas Berg’s decapitation.

Teachers, administrators and education experts say there was little or no justification for incorporating Berg’s slaying into a lesson plan. But the viewings, they said, highlight the challenges teachers face in broaching sensitive topics such as war, genocide and terrorism.

The question has greater urgency because the Internet provides relatively easy access to raw, uncensored images far more disturbing than the photos and television images available to past generations.

“It is something we have to think about all the time,” said Susan Graseck, director of a Brown University program that develops high school curricula on historical and current international issues. “How much should we be putting in front of the kids?”

Graseck’s team has created lesson plans on topics such as genocide in Sudan, the Vietnam War and the ongoing crisis in the Middle East. If teachers are going to use disturbing material, she said, they must question whether it helps students think about the issues critically and from different perspectives.

David Pearl, a history teacher at Villa Park, agreed. “If I am thinking about using images of the Holocaust or of a Buddhist monk lighting himself on fire in the streets of Saigon,” Pearl said, “there are questions I have to ask: Is there a purpose in showing the violence or is it simply gratuitous? And who are we dealing with? Are the students freshmen or seniors?”

Decisions are hardly black and white.

When discussing the Vietnam War, for example, Pearl does not show his class a film that included the infamous 1968 gunshot execution of a bound Viet Cong prisoner by a South Vietnamese general in Saigon. But lessons on the Holocaust, he said, need to include some visual sense of the horrors of World War II concentration camps.

As the Internet has become ubiquitous in homes and classrooms, using it as a source for teaching material has grown more complicated, educators said.

“Many teachers haven’t learned yet how to effectively use the Internet as a learning tool,” said Joel Colbert, director of the teacher education program at USC.

In an overarching way, school boards decide what teaching materials are appropriate, by adopting specific textbooks and curricula or setting standards to guide teachers on what material to use.

If teachers want to use videos or photos not specifically approved by district officials, they usually must get the principal’s permission and notify parents.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, for instance, requires teachers to seek clearance before screening R-rated videos.

The more conservative Garden Grove Unified School District bans R-rated films -- and requires parental notification before showing PG-rated material. Under that policy, “Schindler’s List” -- the acclaimed Holocaust film used widely in other districts -- is not shown in Garden Grove schools.

But practically speaking, teachers can’t be expected to seek a principal’s permission to show every photo clipped from a newsmagazine to help illustrate an event. Depending on the material, at what point should that permission be sought?

“As educators, we must be extremely diligent when it comes to the pitfalls of using controversial material in the classroom,” Garden Grove Unified spokesman Alan Trudell said. “Our parents entrust us to make wise decisions that are best for their children.”

Josh Otlin, a history teacher at a Massachusetts high school affiliated with Graseck’s program at Brown, said that erring on the side of caution did not necessarily mean avoiding disturbing material but that a teacher must be able to justify its use as an important part of the lesson.

“The purpose isn’t to disturb, but to engage the student,” Otlin said. “As a teacher, I need to be able to justify why something is an effective resource for reaching a teaching objective and why it is better than a sanitized version.”

Otlin said he would not show the video of the beheading.

“Just because they can see it on their home computer doesn’t mean it’s appropriate in the classroom,” he said.