From ifeminists.com comes three stories about children labelled as sexual harassers.
First up is this boston.com story about the impact of public school zero tolerance policies regarding sexual harassment.
In his seven years, Randy Castro has been an aspiring soccer player, an accomplished Lego architect, and a Royal Ranger at his Pentecostal church. He also, according to his elementary school record, sexually harassed a first-grade classmate.
more stories like thisDuring recess at his Woodbridge, Va., school one day in November, when he was 6, he said, he smacked the classmate's bottom. The girl told the teacher. The teacher took Randy to the principal, who told him such behavior was inappropriate.
School officials wrote an incident report calling it "Sexual Touching Against Student, Offensive," which will remain on his student record permanently.
Then, as Randy sat in the principal's office, they called the police.
"I thought they were going to take me to prison," Randy said recently. "I was scared."
I'm not advocating allowing this sort of behavior at school, but does a six-year-old know enough to sexually harass another person? I'm not even sure kindergarteners are learning the labels of their body parts at that stage.
Unfortunately, the story gets worse.
In 2006, a kindergartner in Hagerstown, Md., was accused of sexual harassment after reportedly pinching a female classmate's buttocks.
A 4-year-old in Texas was given an in-school suspension after a teacher's aide accused him of sexual harassment for pressing his face into her breasts when he hugged her.
At least the teacher wasn't labelled a sex offender and sent to jail for giving the student a hug in the first place.
The truth is that children act out what they see on television and some of that can have sexual implications. But none of the behavior described in the article could be called sexual harassment in any real sense. It's important to teach children to keep their hands to themselves, but labelling kindergarteners sex offenders dilutes the meaning of that term and unfairly labels people too young to be aware of their behavior. And we don't really know yet how this sort of idiocy will affect those "sex offenders" as they age.
In a second article, an 11-year-old boy has been suspended for quoting South Park because it offended three female classmates.
The boy's grandmother said he was quoting from the show. In a letter to the local school committee, she wrote that "there was never any sexual intent or comment made."
But the girls' parents are outraged and have taken legal action against the boy.
"When we first got the letter from (one of the parents), he asked us to keep the boy out of class. That has been granted. The fact that this escalated beyond that, I don't understand how that happened," School Committee President Kerry Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald received another letter saying, "I want to know specifically what will be done to ensure that my daughter is not exposed to further harm by this boy." (Emphasis mine)
What harm was his daughter exposed to? Being offended? An 11-year-old is old enough for middle school, and any adult can tell you that these girls will be exposed to a lot worse than South Park by the time they reach high school.
This isn't to say quoting South Park (or Family Guy or The Simpsons or a host of other animated shows) is appropriate. But the purpose of school is to teach children how to behave and when it is acceptable to talk one way and when it isn't. Labelling children and scarring their school records seems a bit harsh to me.
The final article described the suspension of a first grade boy for putting two fingers in the waistband of a classmate's (girl) pants.
A first grader was suspended for three days after school officials said he sexually harassed a girl in his class by allegedly putting two fingers inside the girl's waistband while she sat on the floor in front of him.
The boy's mother, Berthena Dorinvil, said she "screamed" about last week's suspension from Downey Elementary School, and added her son doesn't know what sexual harassment is.
"He doesn't know those things," she told The Enterprise of Brockton. "He's only 6 years old."
School officials declined comment to The Enterprise, citing the child's age.
"They would have not suspended the child without doing an investigation," said spokeswoman Cynthia McNally.
Dorinvil said the school principal, Diane Gosselin, called her to pick up her son Jan. 30. She said her son asked the principal if the police were going to come get him.
The principal told Dorinvil the girl complained to the teacher after her son touched the girl's waistband, hitting her skin, in a room full of children.
Dorinvil said her son told her he touched the girl's shirt, not her skin, after the girl touched him.
All of these stories are about children learning to keep their hands to themselves. Calling such horseplay sexual harassment overreaches and also dilutes the power of such terms. The main problem, however, isn't even the ridiculous zero tolerance policies of schools. The problem is parents who want their children protected from any offense and are willing to litigate to get what they want.
We don't live in a perfect world. Sometimes, you get offended. There's nothing in the Constitution that protects you from getting offended, and that lack of protection includes hot house flowers (children) whose parents can't handle dealing with unpleasantries at school. It's odd that this generation, brought up after the Sexual Revolution, seems inable to handle the least offensive behavior.
|