Posted on 04/12/2008 4:28:37 PM PDT by goldstategop
Is American public education a form of child abuse? A week ago, the Washington Post’s Brigid Schulte reported on a student named Randy Castro who attends school in Woodbridge, Va. Last November at recess he slapped a classmate on her bottom. The teacher took him to the principal. School officials wrote up an incident report and then called the police.
Randy Castro is in the First Grade. But, at the ripe old age of six, he’s been declared a sex offender by Potomac View Elementary School. He’s guilty of sexual harassment, and the incident report will remain on his record for the rest of his schooldays — and maybe beyond. Maybe it’ll be one of those things that just keeps turning up on background checks forever and ever: Perhaps 34-year-old Randy Castro will apply for a job and at his prospective employer’s computer up will pop his sexual-harasser status yet again. Or maybe he’ll be able to keep it hushed up until he’s 57 and runs for governor of Virginia and suddenly his political career self-detonates when the sordid details of his Spitzeresque sexual pathologies are revealed. But that’s what he is now: Randy Castro, sex offender. The title of the incident report spells out his crime: “Sexual Touching Against Student, Offensive.” The curiously placed comma might also be offensive were it not that school officials are having to spend so much of their energies grappling with the First Grade sexual-harassment epidemic they can no longer afford to waste time acquiring peripheral skills such as punctuation.
Randy Castro was not apprehended until he was six, so who knows how long his reign of sexual terror lasted? Sixteen months ago, a school official in Texas accused a four-year-old of sexual harassment after the boy was observed pressing his face into the breasts of a teacher’s aide when he hugged her before boarding the school bus. Fortunately, the school took decisive action and suspended the sick freak. By the way, is that the first recorded use in the history of the English language of the phrase “accused a four-year-old of sexual harassment”? Well, it won’t be the last: In the state of Maryland last year, 16 kindergartners were suspended for sexual harassment, as were three pre-schoolers.
School officials declined to comment to the Washington Post on Master Castro’s case on the grounds of student confidentiality. However, they did say that the decision to call the cops was “the result of a misunderstanding.” And it’s not like he was Tasered or anything.
When school officials call 911 because of a “misunderstanding” with a six-year-old, the fault is theirs: He’s a kid; and they’re school officials who are supposedly trained and handsomely remunerated to know how to deal with children. Incidentally, the phrase “school officials” isn’t quite as rare as “37-year-old teacher’s aide accuses four-year old of sexual harassment” but it would still ring foreign to your average old-school schoolmarm in a one-room schoolhouse. Back then schools had schoolchildren and schoolteachers and that was pretty much it. But now grade schools are full of “officials,” just like the Department of Homeland Security.
So who does get a little breast and butt action in American schools these days? Obviously not your four-year-old gropers and six-year-old predators: The system’s doing an admirable job of cracking down on those perverts. No, if you want to get up close and personal with body parts you’ve got to be a “school official.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit recently heard oral arguments in the case of Savana Redding. Back in 2003, Savana was an Eighth Grader at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, when the vice principal, Kerry Wilson, “acting on a tip,” discovered a fellow student to have a handful of ibuprofen tablets in her pocket. The other girl said she got them from Savana, who denied it. She had no tablets in her own pockets or in her backpack. Vice Principal Wilson, whose mind works in interesting ways, then decided that Savana might be hiding the ibuprofen in her cleavage or her crotch. So, without contacting the girl’s parents, he ordered a school official to strip-search Savana. She was obliged to expose her breasts and “her pelvic area.” If Vice Principal Wilson were a four-year old pre-schooler who’d been involved in a stunt like that, he’d now be a registered sex offender for life. But fortunately he’s a “school official” so if he decides to apply search techniques associated with international narcotics traffic he pretty much has a free hand to do so. After all, ibuprofen is serious stuff. As Reason’s Jacob Sullum put it, “It’s a good thing the school took swift action, before anyone got unauthorized relief from menstrual cramps.”
The policies of these “school officials” are dignified by the name of “zero tolerance.” “Zero sanity” would be a more accurate description. One day we’ll look back at this period of government-instituted madness and wonder why those entrusted with the care of minors (or, to be more accurate, those who enjoy a de facto state monopoly over the care of minors) were unable to do what teachers in civilized societies have been able to do throughout human history — exercise individual human judgment. This week Michelle Obama called for Americans to pony up even more dough for their public school system. The United States already spends more per student than any other developed nation except Switzerland, and at least the Swiss have something to show for it. By any reasonable measure, at least a third of the cash dumped into American schools is entirely wasted. And, if we simply shipped every youngster to boarding school in the Alps instead, the kindergartners might have a sporting chance of making it to Second Grade before being designated as sexual abusers.
But I don’t expect Michelle Obama to see it like that. Last week, an Obama delegate was revealed to have told her next door neighbor’s kids to come down from the tree and quit playing “like monkeys.” Unfortunately for her, they were African American, so she was “ticketed” for racist speech by the Carpentersville police, and, after issuing the usual solemn statements deploring such decisive remarks, Senator Obama removed the delegate from his campaign, had her encased in a cement overcoat and lowered into the Chicago River. He, too, operates a “zero tolerance” policy. Amid the debris of human lives caught up in these idiocies, you can also find the ruins of an indispensable element of civilized society: a sense of proportion.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
and then they tasered him, the little menace to society?
***
“There was a time I could see. And I have seen. Boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there isn’t nothin’ like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is no prosthetic for that. You think you’re merely sending this splendid foot soldier back home to Oregon with his tail between his legs, but I say you are… executin’ his soul! And why? Because he’s not a Bairdman. Bairdmen. You hurt this boy, you’re gonna be Baird bums, the lot of ya. And Harry, Jimmy, Trent, wherever you are out there, fuck you, too! ” - Lt. Colonel Frank Slade, Scent of a Woman
Potomac View Elementary School.
I wonder if you really can see the Potomac from the grounds of the school, or if that's just the name of the community it's in? Steyn doesn't ever tell us.
I mean, if you're going to name a community something like that, it should really be bound by areas that routinely can see the Potomac river. But in that case, Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love (or the city where men love other men as a Chinese tourist once asked me) should probably only be what's now called the "Gay-borhood"
So, Potomac View... has anyone ever noticed that house that Milard G. Tidings bridge runs right by? It's on the left if you're headed north. Now, that overlooks the Susquhana river, I think. That house is in Perryville, not Susquhanaview. But it's a beauty of a house. I wish I owned it. I think it's a house.
I heard they had lawnmower races in Perryville. That'd be a sight to see, I think.
Gosh I wish I owned that house. But use one hand for wishing one hand for working and see which gets full faster. That's what I say.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Public education is a form of torture and ought to be declared unconstitutionl by the Supreme Court.
I think a lot of this stuff started with nutsy “feminists” who decided that anything they didn’t like, regardless of how innocent the intention, was “harrassment.” I think a lot of it was just attention-getting and an attempt to make themselves seem like victims. I remember reading a statement by one of them to the effect that “sexual harrassment is whatever I say it is;” in other words, there was no longer an objective standard for actual behavior.
And of course, the left also found that this gave them incredible control. So now people take perfectly innocent words and make them into dire racist insults, and other people take perfectly harmless gestures and see in them horrible sexual pathologies ...and there’s really no defense against those people. They’ve got the control they wanted.
Absolutely!
It has been a long a valiant fight. But in the end the killing disease was just too pervasive. Common sense has been pronounced dead in this country.
Well said.
Cos parents have no say whatsoever, right? We’re all ruled by public education and kids are so stupid they don’t see it (sarcasm).
Parents and kids are too stupid to realize any of this, right?
For heavens sakes. Some of these comments sound like socialism to me. We’re all too stupid, duh.
What are we gonna declare unconstitutional next? Seems some here are no better than the homos or fems or libs who want to declare everything they don’t agree with *hate* speech or *hate* crimes.
Public education is a form of torture? You can’t be serious with that statement. Are you falling for the sensationalistic MSM reports? Granted, some (emphasis on some) public schools are like prisons, inner cities come to mind, but you can’t seriously think all public education is like is. Where the heck do some of you people live?
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Steyn ping.
This is basically the same article as the OC Register one I pinged earlier.
Almost exactly so actually.
I don’t want to abuse the ping thing, ya know?
Cheers,
knewshound
How about an email campaign to the school?... letting them know we think:
"your actions have demonstrated you are incapable of making good, common sense decisions, and demonstrated beyond doubt that you and your staff are unfit to teach our children. What do you and your "officials" use for brains?
Sincerely,
concerned parent
Anyone got an email address ?
Poor kid was probably just hungary, looking for lunch.
"You know, we've talked a lot about zero tolerance. Well, it's not a catch word. It means, quite simply, if you do crime, you've got to do time."
--Remarks Following the Swearing-in Ceremony for William J. Bennett as Director of National Drug Control Policy
March 13, 1989
Apparently so, because THEY LEAVE THEIR BLOODY KIDS IN THE SICK, TWISTED SYSTEM.
And some of them defend the sick, twisted system on FR.
Well said. So true. Now it’s up to us to fight it.
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