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This may be one time that bad-boy Bart Simpson didn't deserve to get in trouble.
In the wake of the controversy over a T-shirt on which the animated star of Fox Broadcasting's "The Simpsons" proclaims "Underachiever and proud of it, man" many teachers, academicians and experts on the effect of TV on young minds are recommending that the school officials who banned the shirt, not Bart, write 100 times on the blackboard "I was wrong."
Although a few suggested that C-average Bart may not provide the best role model for students, most of those contacted by The Times found Bart-and his "underachiever" T-shirt-at worst harmless and at best a healthy way for kids to rebel against authority, man.
Last week, it looked as though Bart's checkered academic career might be over for good as two elementary schools, one in the Midwest and one in California, banned the "underachiever" T-shirt. La Habra School District superintendent Rich Hermann recommended that parents keep all "Simpsons" T-shirts at home. J.C. Penney's yanked the "underachiever" T-shirt and another bearing the words "Hi, I'm Bart Simpson. Who the hell are you?" from its boys' and mens' departments.
But many teachers say they don't share the concern about Bart's image.
"Every generation needs its anti-hero, so to speak," said Larry Moore, a world history teacher at Arroyo Seco Junior High in Valencia. "In past generations, it was Holden Caulfield; now, it's Bart Simpson. Maybe this is the evolution of `Catcher in the Rye.' "
Reasoned Liba Feuerstein, who teaches 12th-grade English at Granada Hills High: "I would think that an underachiever wouldn't know what the hell an underachiever is. . . . It seems to me (that) in L.A., kids...