By Tim Binnall
A teacher in Florida is under fire for screening an unsettling horror film featuring Winnie the Pooh to his class of fourth graders. The troubling incident reportedly occurred last Monday at the Academy of Innovative Education in the city of Miami Springs. While the name of the school may seem to suggest that they take an outside-the-box approach to learning, one imagines that the unorthodox screening was not what parents had in mind when they enrolled their children at the charter school. The film in question, which was inexplicably shown to a math class, was Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, wherein the titular character and his equally sinister sidekick, Piglet, "become feral and bloodthirsty murderers."
Expressing outrage over the ill-advised screening, parent Michelle Diaz lamented that her twins were "exposed" to the slasher film for approximately thirty minutes before the unnamed teacher finally turned it off at the behest of the frightened students. Compounding her consternation, she said, was that the math instructor initially "didn't stop the movie, even though there were kids saying, 'hey, stop the movie, we don't want to want this.'" As for how the highly inappropriate film, which is not even rated, wound up being shown to the fourth graders in the first place, Diaz explained that the teacher actually blamed the students, indicating that they chose this particular movie for class.
Understandably, Diaz dismissed the teacher's attempt at passing the proverbial buck, arguing that "it's up to the professor to look at the content" of any films that might be shown in class. In response to the controversy, the Academy of Innovative Education issued a statement wherein they acknowledged that the movie "was not suitable for the age group" and assured parents that they have "addressed this issue directly with the teacher" while also meeting with "those students who have expressed concerns." Oddly enough, a similar incident occurred at a Dutch elementary school last December when an instructor was fired for showing The Exorcist and other horror films to his class of youngsters.