Teach our children well - about kissing in first grade

Submitted by Mastodon on Tue, 2013-12-17 17:07

Article here. Excerpt:

'There was a lot of press last week about the 6-year-old first-grade boy who was suspended for a day from school for kissing a girl on the cheek and later on the hand after he had been told to stop kissing her. The media coverage takes the view that the administrative discipline in this case was too severe for the conduct, that boys are just being boys, and that talking about sexual harassment at that age is inappropriate and/or harmful to the children. Most of us probably would agree that both the words used and actions taken by schools in these situations need to be age-appropriate. At the same time, the idea that the underlying dynamics should be ignored, or seen as cute or natural, do all of us a great disservice.

It is precisely during these formative early years of childhood, indeed by kindergarten, that children are able to learn, and need to be taught, about respecting the boundaries of others - whether it be about toys, play areas or bodies. Additionally, these early years are critical to what girls and boys learn about sex roles and how to relate to the opposite sex.

It is not innocent play to the girl whose body is touched against her will by a boy, and then learns from either the inaction of, or trivializing by, administrators that she has no recourse and must put up with it. This can and often does create a sense of shame, fear and vulnerability in these girls that establishes a pattern for life.'

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... if the boy had been a girl and the girl a boy, would she have been suspended, too? And if there had been an outcry, would Barbara S. Bryant, teacher of sexual and gender harassment law at the UC Berkeley Law School, have written the same thing?

Thankfully, we're not where Stalin went. During his reign of terror, he had a law passed against 'wrecking'. This law in the old USSR made it an offense punishable by commitment to a labor ("re-education") camp, or death, for doing such things as eating any amount of harvested produce, even if it came from your own farm (which wasn't really yours anymore anyway, since the gov't had 'nationalized' it), and this law was applied without regard to age, culpable mental state, etc. The rationale was that everyone, without distinction, was to be treated exactly the same, here in this new utopian society - except of course if you were one of those in charge. This amounted to children under the age of 10 being sent to labor camps or murdered ("executed") for eating an ear of corn without official permission, no matter how hungry they were, among other atrocities and travesties of justice.

No, a day of suspension for kissing a girl without her written consent is not like getting shot for eating an ear of corn. But the notion of suggesting that a child under a certain age can grasp the deep socio-cultural implications of kissing another child's cheek in a feminist-powered society and thus be expected to show greater discretion than he may reasonably be expected to-- well, that's a bit much. Should he have received a talking-to? Yes. Suspension and a national news story-level of exposure with a 'gender harassment law' maven clamoring for setting more such examples with more nasty boys like him in a major paper? No.

Ridiculous. We have officially reached "ridiculous" mode.

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Submitted by Matt on Wed, 2013-12-18 06:06

"if the boy had been a girl and the girl a boy, would she have been suspended, too?"

I can't say for that school district, but I can tell you, my little sister kissed a boy she liked, when she was in that age range, and the school called my mother in to give them a warning. The school has also since implemented a no touching rule. Kinda scary, IMHO

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Submitted by Kratch on Wed, 2013-12-18 07:31

The problem here arises from our infusing OUR sense of sexuality into what is nothing short of innocent mimicing and touch.

A six year old has little sense of sex: what there is, is ungirded and not focused. To a six year old, a kiss and a hand hold or a pat on the back are all degrees of platonic friendship driven by unbridled experimentation.

The kid tried a kiss: perhaps he saw it on TV or his parents did it. And that kiss received an inordinate reaction on the first try. It is NATURAL that he tried again.

For example, if I carry an orange umbrella into the Mojave desert while eating cardboard and wearing a television set on my head and someone comments on this, you can be sure I will do it again to see the reaction. For me, in my primitive state, the things I did are a series of seemingly innocuous acts that curiously engendered an unusual reaction and for which I will experiment (by repeititon) in order to categorize.

The response of the administrators is what caused the problem. I would imagine they "lectured" the boy in a way to "heighten" his awareness that the act was "different." So he tried again, and that is human.

I think they "lectured" him inappropriately because they see all male acts of "connection" as evil. We are now accepting that, alledgedly, women are better at "connecting" -- whatever that means. So when a boy does it, using methods that, AS ADULTS, we infuse with eroticism, then we scream bloody murder.

I am afraid the only thing this accomplished was to demonize boys. And, in this case, hobbled the birth of an inquisitive young mind.

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Submitted by ThomasI on Wed, 2013-12-18 11:17

At this age there is no sexual mis-behavior, so kids should never be punished for sexual harrasment. However, kids do need to learn to follow rules and learn boundaries. "No touching" rules can be very confusing for kids. IMO, a young child who kisses a classmate after he has been warned not to, is no different than a kid who runs in the hallway after he has been told to walk.

Punishing kids for misbehaving as a result of touching needs to be done with common sense and with consideration of the child's mentality of the situation.

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Submitted by Kris on Wed, 2013-12-18 17:34