THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610060041
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: 64 lines
Any parent of a school child knows The Rules.
1. Listen to the teacher's directions.
2. No unnecessary noise.
3. Keep your hands to yourself.
The list is just what a kid needs: simple, straightforward rules. What they don't need are adults who want to attach grown-up values and feelings to kids who are . . . how should I put this . . . kids. They're kids! Kids acting like kids.
Cases in point: Johnathan Prevette and De'Andre Dearinge. They are the modern-day version of Georgie Porgie, the nursery rhyme boy who kissed the girls and made them cry. But rather than puddin' and pie, these two boys were served up an adult-sized dose of moral indignation when they leaned over and gave female classmates big wet ones.
One boy, Johnathan, was moved temporarily from his first-grade class in Lexington, N.C., and withheld from an ice cream party, the kid equivalent of about five years' hard labor.
Second-grader De'Andre in Queens, N.Y., received a worse sentence - suspension - possibly because he yanked a button off his classmate's skirt as well. He said he got the idea from his favorite book, ``Corduroy,'' about a bear with a missing button on his overalls. Maybe that explanation softened school officials' hearts, since they lifted the suspension three days later.
So why did Johnathan's and De'Andre's kisses end up on national news instead of a teacher's ``no recess'' list? Not because they did something horribly wrong, or even radically different. They didn't.
And not because school officials overreacted in disciplining the boys, which I happen to think they did.
No, the boys became cause celebres because of two little words that never fail to hit the hot button: sexual harassment. If Johnathan and De'Andre had been disciplined for, say, whacking the girls in the back of the head, we would have heard nary a word.
But kissing, well, kissing. That's different. We can slide that one right under the wire of sexual harassment and have a field day.
We can let one side rant and rave about how feminists have taken sexual harassment charges too far. How you can't even be nice anymore without getting slapped with a lawsuit. And then we can let the other side fume and seethe over the fact that thousands of girls in middle and high schools are sexually harassed every year by boys who probably got their start by stealing a playground kiss.
And once the debate heats up, we can step back and say the whole brouhaha trivializes the very real, very damaging issue of sexual harassment.
Whew, I'm tired. Can we rest a minute and get a little perspective on this?
Yes, the line between what's acceptable and what's not when men and women meet can be thin and unclear at times. Yes, women and girls are all too often the targets of unwanted gestures and comments. Yes, these are confusing times in the gender arena. And yes, we must work harder to teach respect to children at younger ages.
But to label smooches on the cheek with the big, bad ``sexual harassment'' stamp is a bit of a reach.
The two boys deserve a talking to about respect, not a moral discussion of sexual harassment, two words their reading primers haven't gotten to yet.
Let's go back to the teachers' rules. And while Johnathan and De'Andre are reviewing the ``keep your hands to yourself'' entry, maybe we adults could take a look at another rule:
``No unnecessary noise.'' by CNB