4-year-old suspended after hugging teacher's aide

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

School administrators gave a 4-year-old student an in-school suspension for inappropriately touching a teacher's aide after the pre-kindergartner hugged the woman.

A letter from La Vega school district administrators to the student's parents said that the boy was involved in "inappropriate physical behavior interpreted as sexual contact and/or sexual harassment" after he hugged the woman and he "rubbed his face in the chest of (the) female employee" on Nov. 10.

DaMarcus Blackwell, the father of the boy who attends La Vega Primary School, said he filed a complaint with the district. He said that his son doesn't understand why he was punished.

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Now, of course, anybody with half a brain is going to condemn this. I think that any reasonable standard for what constitutes sexual harassment is going to exclude four year olds simply by virtue of the fact that, as articulated by his father, the kid "doesn't understand why he was punished." That is, I think an individual has to have some kind of understanding of sex in order to actually sexually harass someone. Like I said, it's a no-brainer; conservatives and liberals both can probably agree on that.

I'm more concerned about why this happened. It's a safe bet that the standard conservative take on this would be something to the effect that suspending this boy is an example of political correctness running wild. But then, to me, that's not very likely if only because this took place in Waco, Texas, which is not at all known for its leftist ways--indeed, Waco, a.k.a. "Jerusalem on the Brazos," a Southern Baptist enclave, is one of the most conservative towns in the Lone Star State. If p.c.'s going to be running wild someplace, I certainly wouldn't be trying to find it in Waco.

A liberal take on the event might see it as an example of paranoid school officials overreacting for fear of lawsuits or other legal action. That's possible, I suppose, because we've seen the same thing happen again and again on the issue of prayer and other religious observances in the schools--numerous teachers and administrators seem to have very little understanding of church-state issues, and it's not surprising that sometimes they err on the side of what they perceive as being caution. But busting a four year old for sexual harassment is pretty damned cautious. Stupid, even.

Might I suggest that this is actually evidence of what I've been saying for years now about public schools? If the schools' main function is to indoctrinate children into the culture of obedience and authority, and I strongly believe that to be true, then enforcing the letter of the law, no matter how harsh it is, comes as absolutely no surprise. The schools are utterly driven by rules and mandated procedures--all this "zero tolerance" bullshit we've been hearing about for so long is simply an extreme manifestation of the obedience mandate. Teachers and administrators are deeply immersed in this philosophy, day after day, year after year. It makes complete sense that common sense would sometimes lose out in such an environment. To me, this kid's bust in Waco walks hand in hand with the way that goth kids dressed in black were rounded up and harassed at schools across the nation for months in the wake of the Columbine killings. Sure, it makes no sense to you and me, but a rule's a rule, and the schools are all about obedience and authority, so kids have got to face the consequences and all that crap. Pretty twisted, but that's business as usual.

Man, quitting teaching was the best decision I've ever made.

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