Prime Time Crime
(Published in the Similkameen Spotlight Sept. 21, 2004)
Georgie Porgie – Public Enemy #1
By
John Martin
While numerous issues involving equity and fairness have been addressed and responded to as a consequence of changing public attitudes, the politically correct movement continues to demonstrate that it has succumbed to obsession and fanaticism. And no small helping of fascism to (jack) boot.
For all the gains that have been achieved in the area of employment equity, government negates this progress by insisting on posting blatantly racist recruiting ads prohibiting applicants of a certain pale skin colour from applying.
But it’s not just in the workplace that politically correct zealots are running amuck like Vikings on crack. Apparently they’ve decided their services are indispensable in the public school system as well.
I’m referring to the story this past week concerning the Toronto woman who received a phone call from her five year old son’s kindergarten teacher, informing her that the boy was about to be suspended because he hugged and kissed a couple of his female classmates.
Apparently, there is a zero tolerance policy for something called “sexual harassment” in most school districts. And five year olds in kindergarten, so it seems, are not about to receive preferential treatment under the new liberal orthodoxy.
Maybe I’m naïve or something of a dinosaur. But I was always under the impression that changing laws and policies in the area of sexual harassment were undertaken to eliminate exploitation, inappropriate and unwanted advances, and sexually charged environments and workplaces that were hostile and uncomfortable. I thought reforms were adopted to break a tradition and history of men using positions of power and advantage to control and humiliate women who may have had few options and recourses.
Hey, do I ever feel like a chump. Now I find that sexual harassment policies are actually in place to suspend five year old boys in pre-school. You know, I never even saw that one coming.
Remember the nursery rhyme, “Georgie Porgie?” It went like this:
Georgie Porgie pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry.
When the boys came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away.
Well little Georgie had better not get any bright ideas about kissing any girls in 2004. Because he’ll have a lot more to worry about than just the boys coming out to play. He’ll have to worry about ridiculous man-hating ideologues from the school district. He’ll have to worry about spiteful, revenge seeking, human rights activists driving public education policy into the gutter. And he’ll have to worry about government funded, out of control, anti-sexual harassment lobby groups seeking a court injunction banning him from the school grounds.
But what he should most worry about, and so should the rest of us, is what these thugs are doing to young boys.
Boys are significantly more likely to be held back a grade in elementary school and the drop out rate is 50% higher than for girls. Almost 75% of graduating girls go to college or university. For boys, it’s half.
While the progress of girls in school is to be applauded, these gains have clearly been achieved at the expense of boys. About the only areas where boys outrank girls these days is in drug use, suicide and criminal behaviour.
Defenders of the current trend, and those who would dearly love to see the five year old kindergarten student led off to sexual harassment counselling – or jail, are content to cite previous statistics where girls succeeded less in school and claim that turnaround is fair play.
Try explaining to a five-year kid that he’s not allowed to show affection. Tell him he has to pay the consequences for the type of society his great-grandfather lived in.
It looks like the three decade long, liberal revolution of the school system has finally succeeded. Little Georgie may not know how to read and write – but at least he’s been to sensitivity training.
John Martin is a Criminologist at the University College of the Fraser Valley and can be contacted at John.Martin@ucfv.ca