Tuesday, October 5, 2010

GENTLY, WITH A CHAIN SAW:  Back in 12th grade, we each had to "teach" one session of our health class, and so my friend Craig and I asked if we could combine our responsibilities over two classes and show our classmates a recent film about teen suicide, and since he said yes we just popped the R-rated Heathers into the VCR and completed our curricular responsibilities.  We thought we were really cool.

Flash forward to 2010, and skip past the overstated objections to Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan for their nudity and violence to find out that in the Philadelphia suburbs, they were showing Larry Clark's unrated Kids in high school Health and Sexuality classes?

Looking through the catalog of R-rated films being shown (as compiled by the objecting parents), there's very little that I wouldn't let a 16- or 17-year old see.  I think it's silly to complain about using Frost/Nixon for AP American History just because it "contains one use of 'motherfucker', and a few uses of 'fuck'" as well as "occasional mild coarse language" like "prick"?  Or objecting to the use of the first twenty minutes of There Will Be Blood to illustrate Western expansion?  That's more than a stretch.

Still, including films like Kids and Glengarry Glen Ross (for 11th grade English, in conjunction with Death of a Salesman) in the curriculum feels a bit gratuitous. Or maybe I'm just become a prude prematurely.

66 comments:

  1. Meghan9:50 AM

    That's so Council Rock.

    Seriously, I would have some concerns about my kid seeing Kids.  Movies with coarse language, not so much, but Kids was pretty graphic.

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  2. Though I haven't seen Kids, I can see the problem with it (same with Requiem for a Dream) because of the exceedingly explicit sexual content.  Glengarry, on the other hand, I have less of a problem with--it's not THAT much coarser than language especially teenage boys will tend to use, and the play itself is unquestionably a worthy literary work.  An interesting one is "V For Vendetta," which I do think has the potential to promote interesting discussion if handled well, but I have concerns about because all too often it's misread, particularly by younger folks, as an "anarchism now!" manifesto, and it's easy to misread it.

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  3. Watts9:56 AM

    This is not me suggesting that Kids is approproiate to show to, well, kids, but out of curiosity, what movies would you show in a "health & sexuality" class?  Specifically to discuss sex?  I'm racking my brain and I can't think of one that isn't either A. a lame movie or B. not a message I want kids to misinterpret (Juno, anyone?).

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  4. Tosy and Cosh9:56 AM

    I had a high school Engish teacher who was famous for, not just showing the Zefferelli Romeo & Juliet every year, but rewinding the nude scene to show it again. Not sure how she got away with that.

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  5. Watts9:57 AM

    And as an aside, I'll point out that I grew up in such sheltered, simpler times that in 1987 (7th grade) my parents had to sign a permission slip for me to watch "Roots" in history class.  Never mind that it aired on BROADCAST television TEN YEARS prior...

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  6. We saw the Romeo and Juliet with the nude scene in ninth grade English with a substitute teacher — who just happened to be the mother of someone in the class.

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  7. Meghan10:03 AM

    We got the nude scene in Romeo and Juliet fast-forwarded too.  In addition, in 7th grade music class, we watched Amadeus and some sex scene was fast-forwarded.  I never went back to see the whole thing unedited, so I don't know what the scene was.

    Clearly, Pennsbury's teachers in the 80s weren't as edgy as CR's teachers now.

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  8. Meghan10:04 AM

    We got the nude scene in Romeo and Juliet fast-forwarded too.  In addition, in 7th grade music class, we watched Amadeus and some sex scene was fast-forwarded.  I never went back to see the whole thing unedited, so I don't know what the scene was.

    Clearly, Pennsbury's teachers in the 80s weren't as edgy as CR's teachers now.

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  9. Joseph J. Finn10:15 AM

    And I do like the combining it with Death of a Saleman.

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  10. I must object to inflicting There Will Be Blood on any captive audience. 

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  11. It's unquestionably of high literary value.  It's the pervasiveness of the coarse language, though, which gives me pause.

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  12. patricia10:23 AM

    Watched that one in my freshman English class in high school too, and the teacher tried to show us the nude scene.  She fast-forwarded through it at the very first snicker.  I can't even fathom how your teacher managed to show it twice.

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  13. In my (Catholic) high school health class, our teacher showed us Less Than Zero.  Talk about inappropriate. Striking anti-drug message? Yes. Probably not appropriate for 10th and 11th graders? Most definitely.

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  14. <span>In my (Catholic) high school health class, our teacher showed us Less Than Zero.  Talk about inappropriate. Striking anti-drug message? Yes. Probably not appropriate for 10th and 11th graders? Most definitely.</span>

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  15. patricia10:28 AM

    Kids was really graphic but also, to me when I saw it in college, shocking.  It stuck with me for a long time.  I think it does have a lot of things to say to teenagers about risky behavior, and I think it's useful that it shows white, middle-class kids taking those risks and having those consequences.  This is all without being preachy or "message" or whatever.  I can see the value.

    That said, would I want my high schooler to see it?  I dunno.  Would depend on the kid, I think.  Juniors or seniors could handle it, I think.  Probably I think it would be good as a permission slip kind of movie.

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  16. isaac_spaceman10:33 AM

    The problem with Kids is not necessarily the sex.  It's the nihilism, and also the fact that Larry Clark is one of the creepiest people in the entire world. 

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  17. tortoiseshelly10:44 AM

    At my small town, Texas high school, our health class watched some Melissa Gilbert movie where she plays a pregnant teen considering abortion, a rather graphic movie of a woman actually giving birth, and Bill Cosby's stand up special. I don't know how the last one got in there, unless our teacher just thought we needed some comedic relief after the first two.

    I think our English class watch Romeo and Juliet, though I'm not sure about the nude scene. I know my English teacher junior year showed us a bunch of music videos, including U2's "With or Without You" when discussing symbolism.

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  18. Maggie10:44 AM

    Funnily enough, I had a nun who was notorious for stopping the Zefferelli Romeo & Juliet at the precise moment before the nude scene and picking up the next day right after it.

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  19. The Pathetic Earthling10:54 AM

    I only remember seeing "Red Asphalt II" in driver's ed, "The Missiles of October" miniseries in American History (with Martin Sheen as RFK), and the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet.

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  20. Genevieve11:01 AM

    We watched it without fast-forwarding - I don't remember snickers, but I remember being surprised.  But I think it was very quick, yes?  and rear view only for the guy? 

    I just re-watched The Competition and was surprised the brief nudity made it through the TV censors.  Maybe that's why it doesn't get re-shown often?

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  21. Maggie11:06 AM

    We watched the Roman Polanski MacBeth during AP English.  It's ridiculously violent - I have a vivid memory of a scene where a severed head bounces down a stone staircase.  We also watched his "Tess" after reading Tess of D'Urbervilles.  Given that I attended an all-girls Catholic high school, it seems crazy you'd show anything by Roman Polanski (there was absolutely no discussion of the charges against him).

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  22. Adam C.11:09 AM

    I've always thought of Requiem for a Dream -- as well-made, well-acted and gutwrenching as it was -- is a movie you need to see only twice in your life:  once because you really should see it, and once to show your kids, at an appropriate age, so you can J. Walter Weatherman them with "And that's why you don't do drugs!"

    As for Kids, I remember very well seeing it in the theater (15 years ago!) with my then-fiancee, now-wife, and saying something like "Jeez, I can't imagine how hard it must be to raise girls today."  SMASH CUT to today:  two daughters.   Thank God we don't live in a Larry Clark and/or Harmony Korine movie.

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  23. Adam C.11:10 AM

    See also Bully.

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  24. Boy, you guys had good viewing.  The only projector moment I think I had in high school was in chemistry, when there was reel on translation.  It was clearly done by big consumers of acid, and had people chanting "tRNA! tRNA", punctuated frequently by someone screaming "peptide bonds!"  Amazing how a 50 minute class can make such an impression.

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  25. Marsha11:50 AM

    I remember watching a movie about the third rail in elementary school that scared the bejesus out of me, and a whole lot of reeeeeeally out-dated movies in 6th grade about men-stroo-ay-shun (while the boys learned how to carry their books in front of them).

    My AP English teacher lurved Olivier, so we watched all his Shakespeare movies. And my music theory and history class watched Amadeus, which was awesome. But I most clearly remember watching "A Man for all Seasons" in 10th grade history class. What an incredible movie, and it really brought the history to life.

    Never watched anything as controversial as Kids, but we did read Bob Woodward's "Wired" (the Belushi bio) in 11th grade English. My teacher thought Belushi was a classic tragic hero. The massive amount of detailed content about drugs made a few parents complain. While Woodward certainly doesn't make the drug life look glamorous, a few parents thought that the book essentially amounted to a how-to guide for buying (and in some cases manufacturing) drugs.

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  26. Was anyone else forced to watch the TV movie "The Morning After" with Dick Van Dyke (which IMDB tells me was made in 1974) where he plays an alcoholic?  (The Beatles' "Yesterday" was the theme song.) I saw it in middle school and it's my most vivid school movie memory -- it depressed the hell out of me.   Although evidently not enough to keep me and most of my friends from drinking once we got to high school.

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  27. lisased12:49 PM

    I took a "Catholicism as Reflected in Popular Culture" class my senior year, and we had a great time. We watched some innocuous stuff like "The Trouble With Angels" and "The Bells of St. Mary's", but then our teacher announced that we'd be watching "The Exorcist". He sent home permission slips, and most parents signed them. My dad took one look at the paper, looked at me, and asked, "How many times have you seen this movie?" "Seventeen," I replied. He shook his head, signed it, and said, "You'd better get an A."

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  28. isaac_spaceman12:55 PM

    I say "don't see also Bully." 

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  29. Heather K1:49 PM

    I love lisased's story.

    I don't remember watching anything all that controversial in the public high school I attended.  The Zefferelli Romeo and Juliet and Schindler's List in AP English and History.

    But I do remember watching a horrifying clearly to scare us about abortion video that documented a real birth and some footage of a d&c in 8th grade at my Catholic school, but we did have to get permission slips signed on that one.

    Oddly now I can barely remember the d&c footage and still am freaked out by the birth footage.  Not sure exactly what that says about me, but sure does explain why I don't have any kids.

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  30. Adam C.1:53 PM

    Yeah, I kinda thought that as soon as I hit "Post."  As skeevy as Kids<span> is</span>, Bully made me want to take a full decontamination shower.

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  31. I still remember the nightmares after watching "The Monkey's Paw" in 6th grade.  That was it for movies during school, other than the sex ed movies - saw the girls version, and heard the recap of the boys movie at lunch.  

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  32. I was 25 when I saw Kids and was horrified.  I don't think I could have handled it at 16.  I worked at a movie theater (indy - art house type) at the time and it was really interesting to watch people leaving the theater after that movie.

    It really, really affected people.

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  33. isaac_spaceman2:48 PM

    Bully was it for me, but I understand that he's done stuff even more child-porny since then. 

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  34. Jenn, I feel like one of us makes an anti-Blood reference every few months just to make the other very happy.  Thank you.

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  35. Joseph J. Finn2:57 PM

    Man, how I love The Trouble With Angels.  Rosalin Russell is fantastic in it.  Now if only Disney would release a proper DVD and not the slash and pan that's out now.

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  36. Marsha3:00 PM

    No, but I thought, at first, you were talking about "The Day After" (the nuclear explosion one). We had to go home and watch that with our families, then come into school and discuss it. This was before VCRs.

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  37. Watts3:04 PM

    I had no idea how conservative a school I must've gone to.  We had parents complain about Lee Smith's "Oral History" being read by 11th grade AP students because of the S-E-X.

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  38. lisased3:19 PM

    We did also. I remember shaking uncontrollably after that movie and having bad dreams for months.

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  39. lisased3:20 PM

    I didn't expect much out of it, but I remember liking it. That class was taught by a Jesuit scholar, and he knew how to read his audience.

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  40. I have no comment yet a zillion stories.  Those of you who know what I do will know why.  Sigh.  I do love to entertain but alas, cannot.

    But personally speaking- saw The Day After and other random books based on novels in high school.  When I was a teacher, I regularly showed Cry Freedom (Stephen Biko story with Kevin Kline and Denzel Washington), Gandhi and The Last Emperor.  I realized that those movies could show more about the culture of these countries than I could ever teach.  I never had an issue with showing movies.

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  41. Is that why I have this irrational fear of the third rail?!  I never knew where that came from.

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  42. Genevieve4:21 PM

    I refused to watch it.  Though I still have bad memories of "Testament" (so well done that it freaked me out, particularly later scenes with Lukas Haas).

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  43. Genevieve4:23 PM

    For noncontroversial school movies:  does anyone else remember "Donald Duck in Mathamagic Land"?  I can't find anyone else in real life who remembers this movie.  There's Donald in a greek toga and laurel wreath, also a game of pool (to show the angles a ball will go once you hit it), and that golden, um, thing I can't remember that's a shape that shows up in everything.

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  44. I don't remember it from school, but remember seeing it at home on video when I was a kid.  You're not insane (at least not with respect to that memory).

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  45. isaac_spaceman4:30 PM

    You can find it on YouTube.  I showed it to Spaceboy 1.0.  We used to watch it every year.  I didn't need YouTube to remember the part where they show a pentagon, draw lines connecting each of the vertices (making a star), then explode away the triangle-points of the star to get another pentagon.  Vaguely satanic!

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  46. Adam C.4:48 PM

    I absolutely saw this in school, and my memory is telling me it was circa third grade.

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  47. Joseph J. Finn4:48 PM

    Ugh, now Testament was a rough movie to get through.

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  48. Adam C.4:48 PM

    <span>I absolutely saw this in school, and my memory is telling me it was circa third grade.</span>

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  49. Carrie4:52 PM

    Adam: 15 years ago when I realized that 14-year-olds could rent DVDs of "Pulp Fiction" from the Free Library of Philadelphia, I became a "premature prude." Still, excepting Polanski's "Macbeth," I think Shakespeare adaptations should get a free pass for showing to 7th graders and up-- yeah, even Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. But I flinched when my then-11-year-old was shown "Amistad." Great story, but a little violent for 6th graders.

    Joseph J Finn: I love love love "The Trouble With Angels." It's very potent. Ida Lupino was one hell of a director.

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  50. bill.4:54 PM

    we have the DVD

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  51. According to IMDB, The Day After aired in 1983.  I was 10, and remember that my parents would not let me watch it because they thought it would be too upsetting (and they were usually not very restrictive about my viewing habits).  (We did have a VCR, however, since 1980.)

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  52. I watched this at work just last week.  I arrived late, missing the pool game but making it in time for the repeating pentagon and it was as if I were back in my elementary school auditorium.

    (We also saw the movie of Flatland, with a main character voiced by Martin Sheen and a surprisingly famous supporting cast.  Despite the cast, it was the weaker half of the double bill.)

    I'm wondering what project we'd have to launch to be able to justify showing Heathers...

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  53. The Pathetic Earthling6:11 PM

    We had a VCR in 1980, because my Dad committed to chaperoning my 5th grade field trip to the Chabot Observatory before he knew that was the week Shogun was on.

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  54. Maddy6:26 PM

    I watched Kids this summer (age 17, summer after 12th grade) and I didn't feel like it was inappropriate for someone my age, although it was pretty disturbing and I can't imagine being allowed to watch it in school.  One of the friends I was watching with found it really upsetting and it just seems like a movie that shouldn't be part of a school curriculum.  (And then we had the strange experience of watching the first few episodes of The Wire immediately afterwards and realizing that the guy who played Telly in Kids also played Johnny on The Wire.)

    We did watch a few war movies in World History (Saving Private Ryan and All Quiet on the Western Front), and there weren't any objections.  We also watched Napoleon Dynamite in 7th grade health for some unknown reason.

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  55. kenedy jane8:36 PM

    Oh my gosh - The Day After!  My father was stationed at Offutt Air Force Base which was basically ground zero in that movie.  Remember when you saw the flash of the nuclear explosion and the junior high on the hill was flattened?  Yup, that was the school I was attending at that time.  And it was required viewing for us!  Nope, didn't worry about living there after that...  We used to also have drills at that school for nuclear/tornado warnings where we sat in hallways with our heads between our knees.  Somehow I didn't think that would help when the buidling was flattened...

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  56. heather k9:39 PM

    Just had a very vivid memory of watching Glory (and not the edited for school version) during our 7th grade rockathon circa the middle of the night on a big screen televsion some appliance store let us borrow and spending a good ten to twenty minutes getting the VCR to pause at the exact right time when that guys head gets totally exploded.

    This is giving me new perspective on my premature prudery.  Because that was gross but totally cool as a 7th grade girl!

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  57. This is nothing as racy as the above, but I have strong memories of reading "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" in English class.  We read it aloud, and I was "playing" George.  There's a scene in which George calls Honey "angel tits."  I recall having read ahead a bit, knowing this was coming, and wondering how in hell I was going to be able to just get through that in a class full of other teenagers.  (IIRC, it was fine, and we didn't linger on it.)

    I've only had to sign two permission slips allowing my daughter to watch something in school:  Barack Obama speaking to students in September 2009, and Barack Obama speaking to students in September 2010.  Don't get me started.   

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  58. lisased9:23 AM

    Same here. Ridiculous.

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  59. RandomRanter11:13 AM

    There was less snickering in my class since it was all girls, but I recall surprise at the boobage. Our excellent English teacher also let us watch the "Moonlighting" version of "Taming of the Shrew" - which since it aired on a broadcast channel had nothing objectionable (at least not more thatn the play itself), but got us into some great discussions about the differences. 

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  60. Marsha2:13 PM

    Yes. Yes it is. That movie was friggin' terrifying. We were very, very young when they showed it to us - 2nd grade, maybe? It may be my earliest memory of school.

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  61. Marsha2:15 PM

    I should amend. It was before (a) my family had a VCR and (b) before we had VCRs in our school and (c) it was easy to get your hands on a videotape of something to show to your class even if you DID have a VCR.

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  62. Marsha2:21 PM

    Yup, I saw it. Not annually, so I don't remember it that clearly, but I did see it.

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  63. Genevieve3:47 PM

    Whoa, Kenedy Jane, I can't believe they made y'all watch it, given that that was your school.  Yikes.

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  64. Genevieve3:49 PM

    Awesome.  The last time I looked for this, couldn't find it - someone's uploaded it since then.

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  65. Genevieve3:53 PM

    Our school, thankfully, didn't require permission slips (though I don't know if they showed it this year).  The principal emailed home that they were showing it and that kids could leave class with parental permission.  I far prefer an opt-out in that situation than an opt-in, though in other contexts I think an opt-in is better.

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  66. It actually was probably an opt-out in our case too.  It certainly was last year.  (I don't think we're in the same district, G, but the same ideas hold sway.)  Our little one said that one student in her class left this year; I believe one did last year as well. 

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