The indecency in public schools is out of control:
“…during school hours in a classroom with an experienced teacher present, two sixth graders completed the act of intercourse…at least ten students were witnesses. No disciplinary actions were taken against the teacher… All teachers were told to keep quiet.”
The class that incited these students to publicly engage in illicit sex acts? Shop. Those mortise and tenon joints sure are provocative, and I guess the shop teacher wasn’t named Mr Adler.
(Yes, I know this is a serious issue, but I think the school was right to avoid addressing it — although they certainly should discourage and stop such inappropriate distractions — and what they should have done, and I hope they did, was to inform the parents and let them deal with the behavior.)
As an educator, I believe that intercourse is an important part of every classroom activity.
My school hasn’t gotten quite that bad, but there have been several incidents where students were caught having sex in the student bathrooms. Is this the state of romance in the teen world today?
Sixth grade? Wow, these kids today, huh? Back in my day, they would have waited until eighth or ninth. Must be sumthin’ in the drinkin’ water — goddam fluoridatin’ commie pinkos. . . .
Dang. Shop class sure sounds different than when I was a youngster. All I got during my year of shop was a healthy respect for safety equipment and weak welding skills.
I wonder if they used proper safety gear while engaging in the act? If not, I see a definite “F” in their futures.
sixth grade! generally not yet teenagers. Yet if there was a computer in the room with a case of porno-whack-a-mole ads, they would fire the teacher for not pulling the plug. sheesh.
I wonder how many students in that school are gonna sign up for shop class next year? I bet it’ll be the most popular class. Easy A!
They must have been awfully quiet and very quick was all I could think on reading this.
I like how the report says the two kids “completed the act of intercourse” — not just attempted, not just initiated, but completed the act. How long do you suppose it took? Inquiring minds want to know, and empirical readers are ready to offer hypotheses!
Five minutes? Ten? Plus or minus how much? Come on, we deserve the information!
huh huhuh huhuhuh
He said wood.
I keep hearing people say that kids are having sex earlier and earlier, but what’s that mean? We pretty generally reach puberty from the ages of twelve to fourteen. I hear about this kind of thing all the time, happening in junior highs and high schools, regardless of the class segment of society they live in. It is weird that they do it in the schools, but their parents probably won’t allow them in the same house together for more than 5 minutes without supervision. Don’t really know what I’m rambling about anymore, but I guess I don’t see what the huge deal is. Aside from the fact that this teacher didn’t notice what was going on in his own class.
(And it’s shop class, to whomever posted about the ‘quick and quiet’ bit; there are usually large desks and benches to hide behind, and often the sound of large power tools being used.)
I wonder if they had been fighting instead of having sex if they would only have been recommended for suspension? This says a lot about our culture.
A very interesting contrast to the story of the teacher that was disciplined when here classroom computers were pelted with pop-up pornographic advertisements.
Fatmop says:
Yeah, I’m honestly surprised that anybody is surprised about this. Score one more for Puritanism and the parental desire to see children enshrined in nursery rhymes like mosquitoes in amber, I suppose. Right away, the the original article describes the sex act itself as “a disturbing case of sex in the classroom”. What is it about “Eyewitness News” reports which makes everything a disturbing case, and if the incident merits that description, shouldn’t we see some evidence to show the severity of it?
If this classroom was anything like MY shop classroom back in junior high, our ‘desks’ were tall, metal-topped, square and waist-high- and we sat around them- they were workbenches.
Furthermore, when the teacher needed to demonstrate a project, we’d all gather around and watch- which meant huddling up around a piece of machinery or one of the workbenches.
I’ll have to maintain that under either of these circumstances, an entire (silent and stealthy) marching band could parade through the room with juggling monkeys and a pink elephant, and the teacher is not going to notice.
Two kids whose nether regions are behind something such as a workbench, all huddled up together could easily be missed.
We’re focusing on the symptom, and not the cause, as usual.
The good news is that all the other students passed the health quiz.
My middle school didn’t even offer shop. :(
Actually, a school that lets that go on is going to get its ass sued.
But at Warren Township’s Raymond Park Middle School, two students engaged in illicit acts in view of goggled eyes.
Well, at least everyone had their safety goggles on. Wouldn’t want anyone losing an eye…
I find this interesting on a couple of things:
1. A ‘disturbed’ resident reported it.
2. The lingo the school officials used was ‘inappropriate behavior’.
Also of note, is that it occurred in Indiana, which, as I understand it, is a near-theocracy as it is.
It was a SHOP class? Which one? Woodworking? ;)
It’s a paucity of descriptive adjectives, Blake.
Which brings to mind a criticism I heard of William Styron’s writing. “Uses too many 50cent words when a 10 cent word will do.” I kind of like his novels, they expand my vocabulary. But in the meantime, we are stuck with a media that uses words that can be comprehended by the lowest common denominator.
Words like “shocking” “disturbing” and “passionate” are losing their impact because they are overused.
What the local media is up in arms about is that no one told the local media… and the teacher wasn’t fired, etc. My 6th grade shop was a giant room, with multiple huge places to hide, and there was a certain percentage of the time we were off doing things at the other side of the room from the teacher.
I immediately thought of the same thing. Somehow the students who fleetingly glimpsed porn popups were so “endangered” that their hapless substitute teacher was found guilty of multiple felony counts… but these 10 middle-schoolers who were treated to an actual live sex show were just fine, thank you very much. No need to discipline their teacher at all, never mind calling the cops! [sigh]
“Yeah, I’m honestly surprised that anybody is surprised about this. Score one more for Puritanism…”
Oh come on, let’s not get silly here. A couple of sixth graders having sex in shop class while the teacher’s distracted and ten students look on?
You don’t need to be a Puritan to think that’s pretty whack.
When I was in Jr High, there were no girls in shop class (and no boys in home ec) — until my friends Gayle, Sara, and I broke down the barrier and were the first girls to take shop and graphic arts at our school!
This was around 1974-1975.
So, go ahead, I know you’re looking for some uppity feminists to blame for this…
You do know this is all Norm Abram’s fault, don’t you? Powah Tools, Routahs, Table Sawrs, Bizkit Joinahs.
I can guarantee you all that if these kids were actually learning about mortice and tenon joints, dovetails, ripsaws (E.C. Atkins, of course) as preached to the True Faithful by St. Roy Underhill, they’d be too busy, too tired, to engage in such shenanigans.
OBTW, if someone is going to throw “theocracy” around…
the State Religion is basketball. Sectionals have just started.
How exactly did they confirm this? Eyewitness account from a bunch of 12 year olds? How reliable is that?? I just don’t believe it would happen like this – kids that age are just too self-conscious to go at it like bunnies with an audience of their peers. I suspect it’s a Margaret Mead-style wind-up of gullible and hysteria-prone grown-ups. Which would be hilarious.
Sonja, the article doesn’t mention the gender of the students. Now, I suppose there’s an argument for the exact, proper, puritan usage of the word “intercourse”, but hey, I’m just sayin’.
So, go ahead, I know you’re looking for some uppity feminists to blame for this…
Sonja, are there any other kind? (well-behaved women rarely make history)
“Buffybot” – love the name! :-D
Yes, it could be an exaggeration, a fiction, and that would be pretty damn funny. But the article did say that the teacher eventually caught them in the act – which seems to contradict the report that the completed the act. Hmm.
Ah. Warren Township in Marion County, Indiana. Lessee… According to year 2000 data on Warren Township:
– 16% of the population age 25 and over has a batchelor’s degree or higher.
– 81% have at least a high-school diploma
– 50% of the adult population is currently married
– 10% of households are comprised of a single female with her own under-18 aged children
– The population is 74% caucasian
But only 0.2% of the population is of Ukrainian descent.
Ah! THAT explains it!
The substitute teacher wasn’t just “disciplined” — she was charged and convicted, and is facing sentencing–up to 40 years.
The 10-second version: the district had allowed the firewall/security filtering to lapse; Amero was a sub for the day; Amero is a computer neophyte; the computer was seized by some kind of porn bot; kids may have seen thumbnail images of nudity/sexual behavior; the conduct of the trial was highly suspect.
DrumsNWhistles has the best running records of the travesty of justice.
That didn’t take long… (from my own blog:)
A blogger on the official Family Research Council blog has already conflated the sex in the shop class story with (godless) sex education.
Although the school and the district handled this poorly, this blogger dishonestly implies that this incident was some sort of sanctioned “educational sexual intercourse”.
Fantastic work. Nobody in my class would have been able to pull that off.
No, really. There was no visual safety in my shop class. There was nothing to hide behind. What the kids did is stupid (albeit probably harmless in itself), but I kinda wonder about the layout of the classroom for shop.
More likely detention. After all, kids will be kids.
Our shop classroom had both a darkroom and a down-draft spraying room for painting things. Either one would have been perfect for some hanky-panky. And lord knows I thought about sex in shop class. I thought about it all through junior high, and had I had the opportunity I know I would have done it. Maybe not with my friends watching though. However, I was present when a kid slid his hand up his girlfriend’s skirt in shop…so the story doesn’t much shock or surprise me. I remember the hand up the skirt turning into “Guess who had sex in shop class!”…but I was there…it was only a hand and it was only for like 10 seconds tops. Which makes me think the story is also heavily exagerated; probably just spun out of control when someone’s parents heard the sensational version.
Clearly schools need mandatory uniforms that can not be unzipped without a passcode that is changed every day and shared between two administrators, neither of whom knows the complete passcode.
Otherwise kids will diddle each other.
How long do you suppose it took? Inquiring minds want to know, and empirical readers are ready to offer hypotheses!
Five minutes? Ten? Plus or minus how much?
I doubt that the boy was using Studmaster Delay Creme or sensitively attending to the pleasure of his partner with extended foreplay; if they were going for speed, the freshly pubescent should easily be able to “come in” under a minute.
Ugh, first my head explodes from that post on the Holy Bottled Water and now this.
I went to schools whose student populations did indeed include those that had to drop out from, well, having children of their own, but at *sixth grade*? Wow. And *in class*? And–oh, there goes my head again. *glub blublub*
On the other hand, I suppose they *were* surrounded by wood.
Yeah, sixth graders engaging in inappropriate behavior is believable, but my bullshit detector goes off when it is implied that two students had intercourse in a class. In many areas of our great nation, fondling is considered intercourse, at least by the repressed perverts that are allowed to define such things. I agree that much hanky-panky could happen, but I suspect the usual exaggeration by the young. This is why nostalgia happens, every memory we have of brushing against an attractive classmate becomes, in our fevered memories, intercourse.
Pah, when I last did shop class we all got lathe.
Sexual behavior should in class should be limited to secretive masturbation during math period. At least that’s what my peers were up to. Nowadays, students have had the luck of a brothel 5 minutes away from the school that gave discounts to 14-year-olds. But we’re Europeans.
Ah, hipparchia, you make me nostalgic for my own dear alma mater. Not that I ever did such things myself, but there were certain of my fellow students you really didn’t want to shake hands with.
Was the sex homosex? When I took shop, very few if any girls were in the class.
Damn, I was born not only far to soon but on the wrong continent…
Ah, well, I suppose it’s time to pass out biometrically powered chastity belts to our children.
We are exhorted to think of them constantly.
Liz:
If this (@ #30)…
…was aimed at me (i.e., @ #22), note that I said she was convicted of multiple felony counts. As is often the case with news stories about criminal cases, the reported theoretical maximum of 40 years is vanishingly unlikely to be close to the actual sentence, but the mere fact of her conviction is a travesty of justice. The obvious inequity in how the Amero case was handled vs. how this Indiana incident has been was the first thing that popped into my mind.
I live in Connecticut, and have been following the Amero case for awhile. The local political blogs have been all over it; My Left Nutmeg in particular (i.e., see this roundup of recent developments, linked from today’s open thread). And BTW, I’ve been linking to relevant Pharyngula threads in my posts there.
This country is seriously screwed up in the way we react to anything related to sexuality… AND we’re also seriously screwed up in the way we react to perceived risk: Get the two together, and we’re screwed up^2!
My mother is a middle school guidance counselor…she’s not surprised by this story :)
My shop class certainly didn’t have any hiding spaces in it in middle school, but we did have tons of girls in the class (like me).
About kids having sex younger, it is a well established fact that girls are experiencing menarche earlier than in the past, so puberty and all that comes with it really is occuring earlier than it used to.
I am very surprised the school isn’t making a big deal out of this, and that’s great. If it had been a fight instead, most schools have mandantory suspension for both sides (at least where I went to school). So, sex=less punishment than violence. Maybe society can change!
I commend, praise and congratulate those kids! They have the right idea. Get it now, before you’re drafted! Nobody (well, maybe that’s too inclusive) wants to die a virgin in Iran or some other nasty place in the mideast.
I say again: GOOD FOR THEM! I also praise the discretion of their shop teacher.
Ummm… unless I misunderstood the blogpost and news story about this, the two students involved are in the process of being expelled rather than merely suspended… so, actually, sex=more punishment than violence. Maybe society can’t change. [sigh]
Ooops, thanks Bill for the correction.
The story hit CNN. It’s f–king rediculous. How in the world is this good for the kids involved? This whole country is loaded with sexual repressed retards.
And to think in some places and times kids (well, those regarded as young adults) do sort of get literal sexual education … I have a friend from one of those backgrounds, and she thinks it would do wonders for our puritanical attitudes to have such around…
I need a clarification on this. Are the monkeys being juggled, or are they the ones actually doing the juggling? This is an important distinction. (To me at least.)