Chapter 2

That Friday, in their Intro to Ed class, Professor Martins began the lecture with some remarks about the students’ reports on their classroom observations.

“The reports you’ve done so far for your elementary and middle-school class observations are fairly good; but in most cases they lack the full details that you need to support your conclusions. You need to show your thought processes that led you from your observations to your conclusions. Don’t assume that your reader can make the connections that you think are obvious. This is important in the future when you need to write a proposal. Connect all the dots, okay?

“Now there were a number of real problems with your high-school observation reports. Obviously you saw that at our two high schools where you’re observing, that they’re running the Naked in School Program. Show of hands, class, how many of you had the Program running in your high school?”

About half of the students in the class raised their hands.

“Again, how many of you were selected and actually participated in the Program?”

Only eight of the forty-two students in the class raised their hands.

“Okay, then. The problems with your high-school observation reports, for the four students who have observed in the high schools so far, is that you’ve ignored the additional objectives that the Program imposes on the lesson plan for those classes. This shows that you don’t fully understand two things. First, how the Program’s objectives need to be integrated into the teaching of the lesson, and second, the effect of being in the Program on the participating students.

“Our faculty has been considering this situation and since the Program will be running in all high schools in the country by next fall, it’s essential that you students—you presumably intend to become teachers—that you fully understand those two instructional principles that the Program curriculum imposes. So the School of Ed expects that you students will obtain the required experience in dealing with the Program and the best way is through a first-hand exposure to it, and I mean that literally. Beginning at next class meeting on Monday, and for the remainder of the semester, these classes, lectures, and presentations, will be conducted with you students being naked, and your high-school observations shall be conducted naked as well.”

There were loud gasps in the room and shouts of “NO!”

“Also, like in the high schools, we’re developing a way for each of you to spend a week in your college classes naked as well, but this is much more logistically challenging to do...”

He was cut off by a number of shouts of objection and a loud clamoring by people trying to ask questions.

“I’m not answering any questions here. This will turn the class into a shouting match. If you have questions, please email them to me...”

Cynthia stood up. “Sir, this is not a question, it’s a statement.”

“Please sit down...”

“I will not sit. You will listen, sir,” Cynthia declared as she strode to the front, suddenly radiating an aura of command and authority. “And I mean to speak and will be heard. My comments are for both the class and for you too, sir, and you will not interfere, is that completely clear? You may try to fail me for this, but I will expect you to listen, and listen well.”

Roger had risen too and joined his sister at the front of the room. “Listen to us both, in fact,” he added.

Cynthia continued in a louder voice, “Roger and I had been chosen last year to participate in high school for that Program abomination and we totally refused to cooperate; first, we are morally opposed to the idea of nudity in public. Second, its effects on the kids who participate have been demonstrably bad in enough cases so as to call its so-called benefits into question. Third, its effects on student learning are as yet undefined but appear to be uniformly negative.

“Now, as far as your requiring us to be naked in this class, both Roger and I categorically refuse. How many of you students will willingly strip for the prof here?”

Everyone in the room wore a stony expression and shaking heads indicated the negative.

“None? Just what I thought. So, Professor Martins, no way am I a lawyer, but I know my rights. First, as an adult, I cannot be deprived of my right for privacy in my person for any reason. My body is private and will remain clothed. Second, if you intend to try to enforce this stupid new rule of yours by using threats of lowering our grades or even failing in the course, I believe that’s called coercion—even extortion, and I think that using coercion to compel a person to provide sexual favors, and maybe even to force a person to remove his or her clothes, is a felony, a criminal sexual offense. At least I recall something like that way back when I took a civics class.”

“But this is a class requirement...” Martins tried to interject.

Roger broke in, “Whatever rules the university comes up with, those rules have to follow civil law. You can’t make up requirements which violate the law, and extortion happens to be illegal.”

Cynthia took up the argument. “Here’s what I think. Professor, if you don’t drop your class nudity nonsense, for the next class meeting, I’ll bring a police officer with me. Then when you order a student to strip, the student will say...” she pointed to the class... “class, what will you say?”

“NO!” came the roar.

“Then if you make any statement of coercion or otherwise try to force the issue, I will ask the officer to arrest you for a felonious sexual assault,” Cynthia continued. “And possibly also arrest your chairman or dean or whomever told you that you had to use coercive threats.”

She turned to the class again. “Guys, Roger and I kind of led a resistance in our high school against the Program and basically got it totally stopped there. Our school couldn’t fail anyone or punish anyone because everyone stood firm and they would have had to punish everyone—the entire school. Are we all together in our refusal here?”

“YES!” they shouted.

Professor Martins had no idea what to do to regain control of his class. Nothing like this had ever happened before; he came to class, where he was indisputably in charge; he spoke, students listened respectfully. He ordered that things be done, things were done. Nothing in his academic career had prepared him for the way that these two students had seized control of his classroom, just like that! By nature, he was a mild, non-confrontational person, and his mind was whirling! How could he reassert control?

“Wait!” he cried. “Please, wait; listen to me. At the curriculum meeting where this was discussed, none of us had any idea that there would be such dismay over incorporating the Program objectives into this class. The faculty felt that most of you had experienced the Program, you had become familiar with public nudity, and now you would learn about its operation from the teacher’s point of view.”

Cynthia interrupted again. “None of you has ever taught in high schools, I bet. Right?”

“No, but...”

“Having just been through high school, and then after my high school observations, and talking to some others who’ve observed at those schools for this class, and talking to the teachers who had to run the Program in their classrooms, there’s a damned huge gap between the way those classes should perform and the way those classes actually perform. Unless you’ve tried to work with materials like the Program curriculum and its lesson plans seem to have, at least as I understand them, and you try to apply them to the real classroom world with kids whose upbringing and personal morals totally oppose everything that the Program stands for, you’d see how this poses an almost impossible situation for the teacher. I’ve seen it happen over and over again.”

“Let me break in here,” Roger said. “As Cindy said, we saw how the Program curriculum failed over and over—in every class. Whenever we asked to have the educational objective explained, that is, the objective of something that the Program required a teacher to do, the answer was always that it was in the required Program curriculum, that they had to follow that curriculum, and some teachers even implied to us that there actually was no valid objective given in the materials that they had to use.”