Don’t touch!
May 15, 2008Here we go again — zero-tolerance taken to absurd lengths:
Smacking a female classmate’s behind has garnered a one-day suspension for a 6-year-old Hoagland Elementary student on grounds of sexual harassment, raising the ire of the boy’s mother who is questioning the school’s labeling of the incident.
“He doesn’t even know what the word ‘sex’ means,” said the boy’s mother, who asked this morning not to be named so as not to identify her son. “How can they suspend him for sexual harassment?”
[. . .]
According to the EACS student handbook found on both the Hoagland Elementary and EACS Web sites, sexual harassment is defined as “engaging in behavior that constitutes the sexual harassment of anyone at school or a school-related activity such as unwelcome sexual flirtations or propositions, sexual slurs, leering, sexually degrading descriptions or comments, sexual jokes, spreading sexual rumors, touching an individual’s body or clothes in a sexual way, or, cornering or blocking of normal movement.”
People are going off the deep end. Does anybody really think a 6-year-old knows enough to touch “an individual’s body or clothes in a sexual way” or make “unwelcome sexual flirtations or propositions”? But if the kid’s that dangerous, maybe he ought to be put on the sex-offenders registry so he can be kept in line for the rest of his life.
For those unclear on the concept, THIS would be actual sexual harassment:
CORYDON, Ind. - A Harrison County commissioner said the sheriff should step down voluntarily while the government investigates sexual harassment allegations against him.
Two female employees have filed claims with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that Sheriff Mike Deatrick violated their civil rights by sexually harassing them.Deana Decker, the sheriff’s department’s dispatch supervisor, said Deatrick had grabbed her breasts “on numerous occasions” and on one occasion put his hands down her pants. In another complaint, Melissa Graham, a former receptionist who works now as a dispatcher, said Deatrick remarked about her breasts and engaged in other lewd behavior.
Tags: sexual harassment, zero tolerance, education
May 15, 2008 at 10:26 am
My wife tells me that some first grade boys come up and hug female teachers and aides, burying their faces in the woman’s chest. It doesn’t happen nearly as often with flat-chested women, and it doesn’t seem to happen at all with female students. My wife isn’t flat-chested. She isn’t harassed by this, but she IS scared to death that someone will make accusations against her.
The kid at Hoagland probably is engaged in regular harassment, not sexual harassment, though. He’d be as likely to smack a guy’s butt as a girl’s, if he wasn’t afraid that he’d get clobbered in return.
But non-sexual harassment shouldn’t be acceptable.
But schools exist because kids need to learn stuff. One of the things they need to learn is to behave. They ought not expel the kid; sentencing him to days watching TV and playing video games is a reward, not a punishment. They need to use in-school detention instead, plopping the kid in isolation and giving him schoolwork to do.
“God invented school boards,” according to Mark Twain. “That was for practice. Then he invented jackasses.”
May 15, 2008 at 10:38 am
Here’s a novel idea…Tell the kid not to do that and go back to his seat.
May 15, 2008 at 11:32 am
Good idea, Tim. That’s what my wife does. With some kids, though, it’s sorta like telling mosquitos to go elsewhere and let you fish in peace.
My neighbor, Don, says he’s not sure about primary school students, but teenagers will behave if you calmly explain to them what you want them to do. He points out that you have to get their attention first, though, and says laying a 2×4 up aside the head will do that.