CEDARVILLE (KFSM) – Cedarville school administrators say they are trying to figure out what to do after second-graders were shown an explicit parody video about Martin Luther King, Jr., that includes several instances of racial slurs and inappropriate language.
Supt. Dan Foreman said elementary school teacher Lynn Schumacher showed the YouTube video to her class of seven and eight year olds Wednesday, two days after Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. He said Schumacher was unaware that the video was inappropriate until after the children had already watched some of it.
Latia Hernandez, whose daughter is in the class, told 5NEWS the teacher showed a video, titled, “It’s Martin Luther King Day Charlie Brown!”. The video shows animation of the familiar Peanuts characters, but their regular voices are dubbed over throughout the eight-minute run time.
(Click here to see the video. WARNING: CONTAINS DOZENS OF INSTANCES OF PROFANE AND RACIST LANGUAGE)
Foreman later said an investigation revealed a separate video was actually the one played for students---the "Boondocks Martin Luther King Speech" video from YouTube, which includes a Martin Luther King figure lecturing "n-----s", a racial slur used to describe African-Americans. The video uses the slur 14 times.
The superintendent said the video was partly played but was stopped before it played its full length of two-and-a-half minutes.
(Click here to see that video)
Hernandez and several other parents said the Charlie Brown video was the one played to the class, although school administrators deny that.
The superintendent said the teacher did not know she was doing anything wrong at the time. Cedarville School District policies state any outside material, including videos, being shown to students must be approved by the school’s principal. That did not happen in this case, Foreman said.
Foreman said administrators are reviewing their policies and investigating the incident to figure out what exactly happened and how they can avoid similar situations in the future. School officials are also reviewing whether Schumacher should be disciplined, although Foreman said he could not go into details because it is a personnel matter.