Parents Sue Teacher for Allegedly Selling Kids’ Art: “Hey, that was our idea first”
Teacher defends himself by saying he’s underpaid and has to deal with bratty middle-schoolers all day; parents admit he has a point.
By Gabe Herman · April 2, 2024
Disclaimer: While this article is based on facts as genuine as a masterpiece, it does contain some paint-by-numbers satire.
Parents in a Quebec school district have filed a lawsuit against a middle school art teacher for allegedly selling their children’s artwork online. The suit, which is also against the school board, is to the tune of $1.5 million. The parents say that they are the ones who should have first dibs on exploiting their children.
The group of parents is currently in lucrative negotiations with several streaming services for the production of a 10-part documentary series about the incident. Some parents are also pitching a series to HGTV that will feature the homes of all the families involved in the lawsuit.
“How dare the teacher exploit my child,” said one angry parent. “Any money made through him is legally mine, including artwork, TV deals, and everything on social media.”
The lawsuit includes over 300 total works of art from 10 different students, which appeared on shirts, cellphone cases, and mugs, and were listed as high as $174.
The drawings came from an assignment for students to draw creepy portraits of either themselves or a classmate in the style of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
"Honestly, my son's drawings are just as good as Basquiat's. He's a little genius."
“If Basquiat paintings sell for millions, my little Joanie could easily get that much for her art,” said one parent, who is apparently one of those people who thinks that anyone can make modern art.
Another furious parent steamed, “Why was my child’s art only going for 20 bucks, while the drawings of other kids with less talent were selling for much more? It’s outrageous.”
Along with financial compensation, the parents involved in the lawsuit are also demanding a written apology. Apparently, they weren’t happy with the initial apology from the teacher, which was full of sarcasm, insults of the children’s art, and the teacher saying that the kids “looked pretty creepy overall, which inspired the assignment in the first place.”
The middle school teacher explained himself by saying that the kids are brats, he’s underpaid and overworked, and the students are always extra annoying during art class. He said he had been saving up to buy a really cool voice-activated bidet. However, that dream has now been destroyed by a bunch of buzzkill parents.
The school’s principal acknowledged that the teachers are underpaid and that the kids are indeed annoying brats, but that selling the art was still unacceptable, at least in such an obvious way that he would clearly get caught.
The teacher offered another explanation for his alleged actions: “Many students had expressed an interest in becoming tech entrepreneurs,” he said. “So I was just trying to give them a business lesson in how to exploit others for personal gain.”