Sex, Lies, and the First Grade
Some stories just make you shake you head. Questions like, “What were they thinking?” and “Are people really THAT stupid?” appear before your eyes.
This one’s a doozie, folks.
An article I saw last week: First-grader suspended for sexual harassment. I’d like to think I’m not the only one who saw this and did a double take, thinking I’d read the headline wrong … or stumbled across great news satire.
Sadly, this story is true. School officials in Massachusetts kicked a 6-year-old out of classes for three days to punish him for sticking his fingers inside a girl’s waistband. Which they, in their wisdom, called sexual harassment.
I call it political correctness run amok.
The boy denied touching the girl’s pants, telling his mom that the girl touched HIM first and he only responded by touching her shirt. Whether it was her waistband or her shirt, he’s now considered a sex offender.
The only problem is, as his mother told the press, she doesn’t even know how to explain to her son what “sexual harassment” is. You see, in case you missed it, he is SIX YEARS OLD.
Sure, everyone had at least one scary, mustache-wearing monster in their fifth grade class—you know, the 5’11” bully who had been held back about three times—but that’s an entirely different demographic from six-year-olds. I’m going to go out on a limb and join the medical experts who say that most first graders are too young to get sexual satisfaction from touching others.
Like many roads to hell, the PC road was paved with good intentions. But it has become a parody of itself. If sanity stays on its holiday and this trend continues, don’t be surprised to see these headlines in a newspaper near you:
President, Under Pressure, Renames Residence “Rainbow House”
Swedish Women Banned From Entering US Due To Hotness
Bartender Jailed After Serving Manhattan, Not Womanhattan
Abe Lincoln Exhumed, Charged With Not Ending Slavery Sooner
Senators Fined For Capitol Dome’s Breast-Like Appearance
Fetus Arrested After Touching Mother’s Uterus
If that last criminal commits his heinous crime in Massachusetts, he probably will be charged with sexual harassment.
posted by David Amulet @ 7:08 AM
33 wisecracks
33 Comments:
It wasn't to long ago that a kindergartener was charged with sexual assault for kissing a classmate on the playground. Political Correctness has indeed run amok.
Crazy. I HATE all that PC stuff...it sure has come around to bite us in the ass, hasn't it???
"Womanhattan"??? That's good....:)
don't you mean womynhattan?
(for the lesbains and feminists out there)
I remember a buddy of mine getting in trouble for looking up a girl's skirt while she was playing on the jungle gym.
#1 He was a precoccious little 7 year old, and he did get in trouble. They didn't call it sexual harassment back then. They just said it was inappropriate and that was that. The boy never did it again.
#2 Do they even have jungle gyms anymore?
If people get this Nazi about PC-ness, I won't even be able to give directions around my city. We have funny street names like: Boone's Slick, Salt Lick Road, and Upper Bottom.
I don't think the school officials realize how this will affect the poor little boy. No wonder we have f****d up people running around. They get told that at 6 years old when they do what little kids do - mess around! Totally ridiculous...
Capital dome does look like a breast:) But then again, I've heard the Washington Monument is a penis and the pool of water in front of it is the "entry" into Mother Earth. Nice... And they're getting after a 6 year old?
Thinking about all this just gave me a headache.
"Senators Fined For Capital Dome's Breat-Like Appearance". I love that one. Too funny!
I feel sorry for the little tyke and his mom. You know the creepy neighbors are going to start looking at her askance each time the meet in the grocery aisle because they think she is raising a sexual predator.
It reminds me of when Jon Stewart was interviewing a woman who wrote a book on how PC has gone too far. She said that in some school districts the teachers are barred from using red ink for correcting papers because it's been deemed too "traumatic" for the students. Talk about CODDLING our future generations.
This is what happens when people with phDs with no classroom or teaching experience start pushing education reform legislation. These practices seem to be based in psych 101 textbooks not in anything resembling reality.
Oh and I wanted to leave you with a small gift...
Ooga chaka...
The kid is lucky they didn't hit him with "Playing Doctor without a License."
Ever see the book Politically Correct Bedtime Stories? Wait to kindergarteners are being read that crap.
Oh, and the Fetus/uterus commment was hysterical!
HAHAHA!!
I think I'm going to go to a bar and order a 'womanhattan', then cry discrimination when I don't get one.
(Just as an experiment, of course!)
Unbelievable. Why is it so impossible for people to think about these issues rationally? I really want to see the day when they exhume Abe Lincoln and arrest him for not ending slavery sooner--that one really made me laugh!
Good grief! I just...I'm speechless. That poor boy is going to be forever known as the first grade sexual offender. And that poor girl is being set up to unknowingly cry wolf for future assaults like when she gets bumped into in the hallway at school. Utterly ridiculous.
I appreciated your sarcastic satire at the end, btw.
What a world, what a world!!!!
I think that six year old was probably being harrassed by the little girl. I know that we girls, at the age, could be a little boy's worst nightmare. She's lucky he didn't punch her or put gum in her hair. I wonder what the school would have done if he had? Oh, the horrors!!!!
I like your mock headlines. "Rainbow House" is one I can actually see certain groups advocating. Scary!
This post makes me want to go look at the Capital Dome. There was a Peanuts cartoon a few years ago where they stuck in a part about Linus' brother Rerun getting accused of sexual harassment. He asked a little girl in his Kindegarten class if she would go to Paris with him and he got suspended for it. Not too far from real life at this point.
I actually think that this sort of thing has to happen. Politically correct attitudes like these need to come out so the people can squash them down. I'm still waiting for little signs on lawns saying "Don't step here. It may hurt the grass' feelings."
The link didn't work for me, I don't know why.
Anyway, stuff like this si killing our country, slowly.
I'll add a good story. I'm a journalist for a small newspaper. A local teacher was fired for sleeping with her former highschool student. FORMER. He graduated and then they began having sex. I went to the board of education meeting a few weeks ago when the board publically terminated her tenure and embarassed her in. I'm not sure if I want to write about it because I don't want to participate in embarassing this woman.
It is polictically correctness gone crazy.
I'm getting a little tired of kids being arrested for drug trafficking for giving another kid an aspirin, expelled for bringing a kitchen knife to school by accident because a younger sibling dropped into their backpack. Hell, I don't think I EVER stayed on MY OWN MAT at naptime and somehow I made it through preschool without getting suspended...
Thanks for all the comments. I'm pleased to discover that I'm not the only one who finds humor, sad though it may be, in this story. I think I'll stay on the topic of education gone awry--I've just seen a couple of stories that deserve to be mocked publicly.
-- david
If that last one wants to get off on that charge in Massachusetts, he can just leave her dying in a car in a ditch while he "goes for help" and then run for the senate. It's a sure thing.
Love ya back.
I had recently read this article and just have to shake my head. As a teacher, I have to be so careful and worry about stupid things all the time. If a student wants to come in my room and there isn't anyone else there but me, I won't let them in because I am afraid of what could be said etc... it is a totally different world from when I went to school.
I read this somewhere too and it is just plain stupid!
We have taken PC and sex crimes to the absolute max and gone to silly with them.
This could wreck his entire life.
Long ago when my daughter was four, she came home & asked me what the f-word meant. I never over-reacted to those things. Sheesh! What is this world comin' to!?!
If anyone ever wondered wether reality was stranger then fiction... this is the answer. Not only is it stranger, it is stupider. The problem is, this is not new. In second grade, I received a spanking for looking at a girl's underwear. The girl was wearing a skirt so high, that when she sat down under a tree, she got leaves stuck to her ruffled underwear. I said "hey, you have leaves stuck to your underwear" I thought that I was simply being polite (I still do), yet I was hit for my courtesy. The world had always been "AFU". The difference is, now we vent our psychosis in court.
Excellent post. I teach third grade with 4 boys who have been left back once already. I am beginning to see their minds wander inappropriately. But again, a lot of this naturally happens to a boy between the ages of 9 and 13, not 1 and 6.
How insane. As if there isn't enough to worry about in the world, we gotta pull this bullshit on kids.
shouldn't it be Personhattan?
I would have thought Ben would have played National Health Services :)
Great post! Loved the potential headlines we may see soon.
Back when I was in school, wedgies (grabbing underwear waistband and puling up) were a popular means of attacking a schoolmate. Back then, our teachers called the incidents "roughousing" or "boys will be boys."
There was nothing sexual about it. But it did teach you to keep your pants pulled up and your shirt tucked in to avoid such ambushes.
Now, we'd be on death row.
I remember a similar story a while back where a little boy kissed a girl and it was deemed sexual harassment. I'd hate to be that boy growing up...
Political Correctness Sucks.
I say we stage mass protest and all just be entirely politically incorrect. Oh, hang on... I do that already.
"proctoligyst charged with anal probing"
Just a bit of a PS--
Of all your theoretical headlines, the one I can see actually happening is: Swedish Women Banned From Entering US Due To Hotness.
I can see some overly coddled bookish phD type claiming that we should bar attractive foreigners from entering our nation because it will demoralize our comparatively less attractive nation as a whole and thus seriously damage the national psyche.
Also, on a tangential note, by the next Olympics I can forsee NBC airing only US American victories. Their coverage has always been so lopsided that it's hard to believe that there are nations BESIDES the US competing. It will get to the point where NBC will coddle the American people so much that we'll see the US victories and ONLY the US victories-- because after all, those other nations don't really count now do they? Why show a Japanese gymnast when it's far more entertaining to show Kerri Strug taping her ankle (see also any/every gymnastic event of the 1996 Summer Olympics). And of course they won't show any of the Swedish female athletes because of their hotness. ;-)
as an "overly coddled bookish phD type" I would like to say that not only do I support the entry into the U.S. of attractive Swedish women but that I am will to pay planes fares if necessary.
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