It was Old Home Night at the high school, also known as Open House, when parents of high schoolers get to see who among us is aging quicker and graying faster; who’s lost pounds and who’s been sneaking Rice Krispie treats; whose husband is not at the Open House but rather is a lout sitting at home watching football highlights; and which couples are collective outcasts because neither the mom, nor the dad, showed up at Open House.

There is another reason for Open House, of course, that is to meet the teachers my 11th-grade daughter will be spending the next nine months with. This is one meet-and-greet that almost always ends up being a good experience, as this particular high school usually hires mature, top-notch teachers who place a strong emphasis on critical thinking.

Usually.

“The name of our course is Rational Thinkers, Critical Thinking,” my daughter’s sociology teacher said.

Excellent!

“I tell my kids that 90 to 95 percent of what we do in pre-calc they will never, ever use in their daily lives,” said the math teacher. “But 100 percent of what I teach them about how to think, they will use.”

Yes!

“We use naked Barbies on bungee cords,” said the male physics teacher.

At that very moment, Mr. Gravity and Dynamics flashed a Power Point picture of a blonde Barbie from the breastline up, her big blonde hair poufed out around her like a brothel boarder.

“We used to use eggs to teach the theories of dynamics and gravity. But yuk, that was a mess! So a few years back, we found this box of naked Barbies at a garage sale and we said, ‘We’ll take ‘em! We don’t even need clothes! Clothes mess with the flow of air as the doll is being dropped.’ ”

Let me just say right here and now that I am not, and never have been, one of those power parents who marches into the public school, demanding a particular philosophical approach, and it had better be mine. I am no book-burning Sarah Palin. Nor am I a mom who ever banned Barbie from her daughter’s toybox. (For true Barbie-hating moms, check out antibarbie.com, also a funny post by Strollerderby blogger/mom Karen Murphy who grew up feeling overlooked by Barbie, then tried to hide Barbie from her younger daughter.)

The way I look at it, Barbie is part of our culture. If a 5-year-old child really wants a Barbie, I say get the Barbie and then spend as much time as possible talking about the fact that about 99.999999 percent of the female population does not look like that.

But naked Barbies in school? With teenaged boys and girls handling them?

Consider the prurient obsession at this age. Consider the jokes the boys will have to make to hide their embarrassment. Consider the idea of dropping the Barbie to the ground and what that suggests about domination and power. Consider the girls and their embarrassment about a facsimile of their bodies being handled in such a way.

“Yeah, and so where are the naked Kens?” I asked as I was leaving.

That was all I could eke out at the moment. But the more I think about it, the more I think I need to e-mail that teacher a long and respectful note about getting those Barbies out of there. He could use, say, Tonka trucks instead, or rocks.

What do you think?

- Debra-Lynn