Here we go, the cult of the No-tolerance strike again. I don't know what they expect to do besides traumatize a boy about his sexuality. Brunch of PC morons.

That's the idea. People traumatized by sex are less likely to have it, and therefore less likely to reproduce.

Thereby reducing the surplus population, leading to the leftoid nirvana of zero population.

Isn't there an age limit for these things? In the UK, I don't think you can be criminally responsible for anything if you are under 10 years old. Otherwise you could sue a newborn for grabbing his mother's breast, I suppose.

Exellent point, Norman. No more breastfeeding, I guess, since it automatically creates a perv in training.

You guys just don't understand -- it's never too early to teach children about sexual harassment.

What we need is a new federal agency, say, the Department of Infant Sexual Harassment (DISH). This would be a cabinet-level department with a Secretary reporting directly to the President.

Since training needs to begin in the home as soon as infants realize that their hands and feet belong to them, we will need sufficient inspectors, trainers and support staff to ensure all parents are familiar with the regulations and are using the proper training techniques.

This will avert the present crisis in which youngsters are reaching pre-school and kindergarten ages with the mistaken idea that they can actually touch one another.

When I was in kindergarten, there was a little boy who liked to kiss me. Not all the time, though he did follow me around, and not in an adult-ish type way - just on the cheek. At the time, I just ran away. I guess now I could report him for sexual harassment.

Re: the other incident, with the boob-grabbing et al: It seems to me that schools have only two reactions to situations such as that: Ignore it entirely (often the case with serious situations such as when a boy fixates on a girl and follows her around making sexual threats to her) or come down on it like a totalitarian government (typically the case with the less worrisome situations). There must be a happy medium.

P.S. How about calling it the Department of Infant and Toddler SexualitY -- or DITSY for short?

Sorry, Amy, your flippant attitude toward this serious problem disqualifies your from consideration as the first DITSY Secretary.

I agree that a government study needs to be done about young boys' sexual harassment of girls and women! I think a lot of those boy babies are nursing a lot longer than they have to, and something should be done to protect those poor moms from this type of abuse/incest. Disgusting.

I'd like to be the national secretary of rationality and common sense.

In first grade, a kid named Clark attempted to cut off my pigtail or pretended to, traumatizing me for life. Well, actually, I just remembered it now, but I probably would have been traumatized if he'd been sent to the juvenile version of San Quentin because I told on him.

Thank god somebody has the strength of will to stand up to these sex-crazed six year old boys.
No doubt this one spends his school days lingering in the hall, wearing a leather motorcycle jacket and smoking unfiltered Camels.
Just the sight of a fiend like that could mar a little girl forever, possibly even pushing her into a sordid and tawdry life as a public school administrator.

Public schools are the most stupid public institutions that confer high status. Some of the teachers and principals are clearly dumb, and the remainder tolerate them to preserve the institution.

Many public schools are a laboratory of frustration for the principals, who have to put up with everything, including the nagging thought that they are failing to teach much. So, if they can't teach academic subjects very well, at least they can teach a regard for the rules, and respect for teachers.

So, unlucky students who are doing ordinary, not very harmful, but politically incorrect things, are identified as breaking a rule. Then, the mighty force of the institution comes down to prosecute the sinner, with complete disregard for common sense, proportionality, or the student, no matter what age.

(sarcasm) A rule is a rule, and the violation of human rights, no matter how slight, is a political offence. Punishment follows as an example for all, and to support the powers of the institution. After all, if you can't stop a six year old from touching his classmates, then what power do you have in life?

The sad thing is, there are some sexualized 6-year-olds out there - girls and boys. Pretty much every single one of these children has been sexually abused over some period of time, and generally they're not out of the abusive situation. Six-year-olds who are acting in a genuinely sexualized manner inappropriate to their age should, in fact, have their home lives inspected ASAP by knowledgeable authorities, in my opinion. But by "sexualized" I don't mean horsing around with classmates, kissing classmates on the cheek, or even playing doctor with classmates. Click on my name for details about the type of behavior that I'm talking about.

One of the many tragedies about this zeal to define every sort of opposite-sex touching among young children as "sexual harassment" is that, inevitably, some genuinely abused children are going to slip through the cracks. School systems that are going after six-year-olds who innocently touch other children in their classrooms are going to be so overwhelmed that they'll be highly unlikely to investigate, say, the case of a little girl trying to "seduce" her teacher because she's being molested. (Yes, I know that little boys are molested too, but you get the idea.)

The observation of weird behavior is probably one of the most reliable ways of identifying children who have been sexually abused, given the level of false reporting out there. A child may lie about having been abused, or having not been abused, but there are certain behaviors that young children won't know how to fake that can help identify them as victims. I don't think we've got a massive sweeping epidemic of child sexual abuse out there, but I do think the problem is significant enough that I don't want school systems wasting their time and stigmatizing innocent, healthy little boys (and girls) in the process. The idiots Amy talked about are pedophiles' best friends.

Remember - zero tolerance rules are in place because most public school teachers and principals are too stupid to be trusted with discretion.

There are precious few public school teachers that have enough intellectual firepower to be trusted with anything important. And they are being weeded out.

This is not an accident.

Brian says, "There are precious few public school teachers that have enough intellectual firepower to be trusted with anything important. And they are being weeded out."

I think this is overstated, but it is certainly true that efforts to weed out the stupid ones often fail. In the college where I taught, a notoriously bad student (not just stupid, lazy, and irresponsible, but also dishonest) tried repeatedly to get admitted to the English Education program. Both the English Department and the School of Education adamantly refused him. He transferred to a different school, which not only admitted him, but eventually granted him a degree. He is now "teaching" in a public school.

Perhaps I wasn't as clear as I wanted to be.

I was implying that the few remaining teachers with anything approaching a functional level of intellect are being weeded out.

The last thing the public education establishment wants is intelligent teachers.

I hear the pay is pretty bad for teachers ($30,000K), so that should weed out a lot of them. Apparently teachers in Canada get $80-90,000K which may attract better quality folk? The ones I had in high school seemed pretty surly but I think most were pretty good at their jobs.

Teachers in CT average $60,000.

For reference, I didn't break that until I'd been self-employed for three years, and that was after an 8-year post-college career.

You're older than you look. Are you insurance-fussy brian? You need a more colorful nickname.