Clovis Unified gets national attention from artsjournal.com for junior-high ‘Oliver’ ban

One of my go-to websites is ArtsJournal.com, which gives a nice national summary of art-related news. The Munro Review has been featured twice in recent months: the first was for Doug Hoagland’s big piece on Measure P, and the other was for (no surprise!) my piece on the silliness that unfolded after first-grade teachers from Clovis Unified and Central school districts left a Children’s Musical Theaterworks school show of “Oliver” last Thursday because of concerns about content, triggering a decision by school officials to keep seventh and eighth graders from Kastner Intermediate School from seeing it the next day. (Different classes from Central Unified showed up at school shows on Friday, but none of the ticketed Clovis students scheduled for that day showed up.)

As kerfuffles go, it was relatively benign, mostly a reflection on an embarrassing, reactionary decision by a principal and area superintendent, but not enough for the Bee or GV Wire to hop on the story. My TMR story did get lots of reads, however, and landed me a Monday morning interview on KMJ, where we all cordially agreed that keeping middle-school students out of “Oliver” because of violence, drinking and “thievery” is laughable considering the grown-up cultural onslaught kids that age face today.

By the way: I encourage you to sign up for ArtJournal.com’s weekly newsletter, which is faithfully compiled by Doug McLennan. It always arrives Sundays in your emailbox. It’s a good way to start your week.

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