Was Madison art teacher’s ‘teaching moment’ inspiration or indoctrination?

By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Reporter

MADISON – Art, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

I never thought much of Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ,” but the photograph of a crucifix in a glass of the “artist’s” urine really seems to speak to some people.

Such is the case with Madison Metropolitan School District art teacher Kati Walsh and her personal blog post of her elementary school students’ drawings of Gov. Scott Walker in jail.

The political cartoons by kindergarteners and first-graders were inspired by one student’s comments in class that, “‘Scott Walker wants to close all the public schools’… So the rest of the class started drawing their own cartoons and they turned very political. They have very strong feelings about Scott Walker,” Walsh wrote on her blog.

Well, the cartoons started getting a “little inappropriate,” the teacher wrote, so the class stopped drawing and discussed political cartooning.

“I did not publish the inappropriate cartoons that depicted any harm coming to Walker,” Walsh told Wisconsin Reporter’s Ryan Ekvall in an email. “I made them throw them away and we talked about how when you disagree with someone, it’s OK to disagree with them respectfully.”

She said she initially thought the picture of what appeared to be orange engulfing Walker’s head represented the governor set on fire, but after talking to the student, the art teacher said she learned the orange was supposed to depict a prison jumpsuit.

Read more at WisconsinReporter.com

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