Our culture is steeped in sexuality, with the result that too many children grow up with a pervasive over-stimulation which is damaging to the young, developing psyche. The results of such traumatic over-stimulation can include psychic numbing, devaluation of relationships in favor of hedonic sexuality, poorly differentiated sexuality which, again, devalues relationships, and various other problems in forming and maintaining intimate relationships.
Our culture's ambivalence about the premature entry of children into a faux-adult sexuality has been on display recently, with both sides of the conflict exhibiting the extreme splitting characteristic of a confused and pathological sexuality.
John Stossel in the Sun discusses the absurdities that arise from a strict adherence to "zero tolerance" policies. Such policies are greatly favored by those with a bureaucratic mindset because they do not have to worry about exercising critical thinking or judgment (and, after all, making judgments has long been eschewed as un-PC.) To call the outcome of such policies absurd may be an understatement:
Imagine how DeMarcus Blackwell felt when he was told that his son Chris had engaged in "sexual contact and/or sexual harassment" at school. School officials in Waco, Texas, said Chris rubbed his face in the chest of a female teachers' aide.
Well, before you can imagine this father's reaction, you need to know one other fact: His son was 4 years old when the "sexual" incident occurred.
What got Chris into trouble was giving the aide a hug. Only after DeMarcus strenuously complained did the school change the boy's record from "sexual harassment" to "inappropriate physical contact."
At least Chris wasn't sent to jail, as were 13-year-old Cory Mashburn and 12-year-old Ryan Cornelison of McMinnville, Ore. The boys were charged with five counts of felony sex abuse in the first degree because of their conduct toward some 13-year-old girls at their middle school.
The PC-psychosis forges ahead:
Cory's mom, Tracie, got the terrible phone call. "He had been touching some girls, and we needed to get down to the juvenile detention. They were arresting him," she told me.
Police officer Marshall Roache read the boys their Miranda rights. "Then he asked me if I understood them, but I didn't," Cory told me. "I thought you had to say yes. So I said yes."
Apparently the boys were playing games with the girls that involved slapping butts and acting like "party boy", silly dancing that the police and the DA described as "dry humping" the girls. Needless to say, such sexualized games are more likely when children have been exposed to sexually exciting and overstimulating TV shows, ads, pictures that are unavoidable on the front pages of newspapers and magazines throughout the land. These were Middle School children. Their sexuality, which is beginning to stir and beginning to approach adult form as they progress through puberty, is immature. They do not appreciate and cannot be expected to appreciate any harm which could result form their play, even play that has sexual aspects to it. In a more rational world, the children would be told to cut it out and perhaps receive some lessons, preferably from their parents, on why such behavior is demeaning to both the boys and the girls involved.
In contrast, the Portland, ME school board is about to take yet another step toward not only condoning but facilitating overt childhood sexual activity: [HT: Drudge]
Prescribe 'the pill' at middle school?
Students who have parental permission to be treated at King Middle School's health center would be able to get birth control prescriptions under a proposal that the Portland School Committee will consider Wednesday.
The proposal would build on the King Student Health Center's practice of providing condoms as part of its reproductive health program since it opened in 2000, said Lisa Belanger, a nurse practitioner who oversees the city's student health centers.
If the committee approves the King proposal, it would be the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception available to some students in grades 6 to 8, said Nancy Birkhimer, director of teen health programs for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. Most middle schoolers are ages 11-13.
Although students must have written parental permission to be treated at Portland's school-based health centers, state law allows them to seek confidential health care and to decide whether to inform their parents about the services they receive, Belanger said.
These adults, who have apparently taken complete leave of their senses, justify giving children condoms and birth control pills with the usual rationalization from those who do not want to admit they are facilitating destructive behavior.
Proponents say a small number of King students are sexually active, but those who are need better access to birth control.
If the school knows that some of their Middle School children are involved in overt sexuality, why aren't they contacting Child Protective Services? If I were to find out a child I am treating is having sex with their parent's approval, I would be mandated by law to report it.
When adults facilitate sexual behavior in children, it is called child abuse. If a parent were unstable enough to allow a 12 year old boy and a 12 year old girl to sleep together, we would correctly indict them for child endangerment. If an adult were to tell Middle School children that sex is just fine, in fact, here are some pills and condoms so they wouldn't have to worry about consequences, that would be the worst kind of dereliction of parental responsibility. (And I might add young adolescents have a very poor conception of causality; consequences rarely matter to young children which is why their parents need to be attentive and offer guidance and punishment when appropriate.)
We are over exposing our children to adult sexuality (often perverse sexuality) while at the same time condoning their embrace of overt sexual behavior and condemning their embrace of more age appropriate sexual derivatives. These adult behaviors truly put the LOCO into In Loco Parentis.
Update: Leo Pusateri makes a good point in his post ont his matter:
I work in schools. I know for a fact that kids can't get a friggen Tylenol without an act of Congress, and parental permission, yet this school wants to act like a drug pusher, and give kids heavy duty medication without the knowledge of their parents?? Not to mention putting these kids at risk by letting them think it's okay to have sex just because they're on the Pill.
Children who have given Tylenol to a friend or used an inhaler without first going to the nurse's office have been treated as drug users and dealers, in keeping with idiotic zero-tolerance policies; the contrast is remarkable.
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