Here we go again

by Jennifer Kent [emphasis added, where I just could not restrain myself...]

BELLMEAD (TX) - A four-year-old hugged his teachers aide and was put into in-school suspension, according to the father. But La Vega school administrators have a different story. Damarcus Blackwell's four-year-old son was lining-up to get on the bus after school last month, when he was accused of rubbing his face in the chest of a female employee. The prinicipal of La Vega Primary School sent a letter to the Blackwells that said the pre-kindergartener demonstrated "inappropriate physical behavior interpreted as sexual contact and/or sexual harassment."

Blackwell says it's ridiculous that the aide would misread a hug from a four-year-old. Blackwell wrote to administrators demanding that the whole incident be expunged from his son's academic file because his son is too young to know what it means to act sexually. David Davis, the executive director of the Advocacy Center in Waco tends to agree with Blackwell. He says assuming the boy has not had sexual encounters, or been inappropriately exposed to pornography, most four-year-olds are sexually innocent.

Blackwell got a response from the La Vega administration. The sexual references on the discipline referral were removed. But the thing that makes Blackwell most upset is they told him "your request for an apology by the aide and removal of all paperwork regarding this incident is denied." Now the young student's file will refer to the incident as "inappropriate physical contact."  [Is there any possible way to construe that statement, other than as a euphemism for sexual contact?] And Blackwell says he will continue to fight the district. La Vega I.S.D. administrators told News Channel 25 they couldn't comment on this case because of student privacy issues.

 Seems to me that the administrators pretty well trashed any sense of "student privacy" by filing this silly-assed action in the first place.

Have we genuinely come to such a pass where schoolteachers, aides and administrators are deathly afraid of even pre-pubescent children?

Just for grins, let's compare this summary judgment of a young child to, say the police shooting of 88-year-old Katharine Johnston last month in Atlanta. Cops dressed in dark clothing break down two reinforced doors. Octogenarian who has previously been target of a home invasion opens fire on cops, not knowing who they are. Cops return fire and kill the old woman.  Now, I won't argue that the police should have held their fire; that's ridiculous. And I won't argue that Johnston was not justified in blasting the intruders; that's equally ridiculous. But as in all these kinds of cases, the first comment by the police chief is that "we have to consider the totality of the circumstances."

Applying this to young Master Blackwell, we'd have to ask how tall he stands in relation to the alleged victim. Did she bend down to accept his hug, or do their comparative statures place his face against her bosom automatically? Had he ever hugged her, or any other staffer before? Had this staff member ever, in her tragic life, been hugged by a kid before? Does the kid listen to Howard Stern? Did he say anything that indicated this was a sexual encounter? (Here, I pause for ten minutes as I consider the full range of possible vocalizations.) Most important, did the "victim" feel sexually aroused? If she did, then the administrators are certainly chasing the wrong problem.

All this begs the question, just how much more stupid and irrelevant can the educrats make the public school system before parents in large numbers do something?

tags: sexual harrassment  schools  

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