Yeah, I know. The infantilization of a culture; the desire by the feminist movement to neuter masculinity in their continuing war on boys; the supremacy of political correctness in every institution we’ve allowed by taken over by the academic left; the intentional misuse of linguistic categories for the purposes of power; blah blah blah. You’ve heard it all before.
— Only this time, there’s a happy ending:
[Jerry] Bostic, until very recently, was principal of Brookside Elementary School in Gastonia, N.C. One of the students there was a 9-year-old fourth-grader named Emanyea Lockett.
Little Emanyea must have shown signs that he was on his way to becoming a heterosexual male, and there are elements in America today that would sure like to nip that trend in the bud. Emanyea told one of his fellow students that he thought a certain female teacher was “cute.”
Remember that as you read this story: Emanyea didn’t tell the teacher in question she was “cute.” He said nothing to the teacher at all. His remark was to another student.
A substitute teacher overheard the remark, and thought it was an offense worthy of being reported to Bostic. The principal thought the remark was offensive enough to suspend Emanyea.
For three days.
For sexual harassment.
This, readers, is a phenomenon rightly known as “hysteria.”
[…]
[…] Emanyea’s mother […] went straight to the media with the story about her son’s suspension.
Bostic and the school system of Gaston County, N.C., took quite a bit of well-deserved heat after the story broke.
Reeves McGlohon, the county school superintendent […,] gave Bostic two choices: he could either resign, or be demoted to assistant principal. That’s the official story.
I suspect what was going on in McGlohon’s mind was something like this: “Sorry, Jer, but I’ve got to cover my derriere. Sorry about yours.”
Bostic chose to resign, and then went into full-blown, whining-victim mode.
“To me it’s really a sad final note to a career that I have found very satisfying and enjoy working with kids,” Bostic huffed, according to several news reports. “I really don’t believe I was treated fairly.”
[…]
Bostic isn’t the only one who feels that way. There are those who’ve rushed to his defense, claiming he got a raw deal.
I’m not doing handstands, back flips or cheers about Bostic being fired. But his canning doesn’t leave me prostrate with grief either.
Bostic, by aligning himself with that American element that’s tried to hijack our language and make sexual harassment anything they choose for it to mean, brought this on himself.
This is the way we beat back the left and take back the language they are carefully and with deliberation gaining control over — be it through illegitimate modes of “interpretation,” or through the usurpation of once commonly understood words such as “tolerance” or “fairness” or “hate” or “racism” or “homophobia” or “harassment” or even “liberal” and “right wing” or “extremist,” each of which the left has deconstructed and reconfigured to align with some tenet of collectivism / liberal fascism / and the tyranny of a might-makes-right linguistic paradigm in which “truth” is decided upon by a consensus and judged as truth solely on that merit, regardless of the evident (political) motivations vocal ad hoc groups might have for adopting certain narratives as “truths.”
Frankly, we need more of this kind of push back — and yes, even some public shaming. And no, I don’t feel badly at all that someone so obviously unable to use a degree of discernment lost his cushy gig, and may have to take a hit on part of his publicly-subsidized (and enormously generous, no doubt) lifetime pension.
We’ve been bullied into pretending we can see the merits in these kinds of zero-tolerance decisions by hack bureaucrats pretending to be “educators” or “human resource experts,” and we won’t escape such petty-tyrannical zealotry until we make it clear that those who engage in it will feel the wrath of a community entirely fed up with such complete and utter lunacy — no matter that it’s disguised as earnest policy being marshaled on behalf of ever-new potential “victims” of some discomfort or other.
As I noted back in 2005, in fact. In response to a very earnest “pragmatic” center-rightest, who found my diminishing of the seriousness of such problems downright unhelpful.
The takeaway? The more things don’t change, the more they’re bound to stay the same…
There’s a reason Vaclav Havel had such success.
By the way, were one to go back and search through my archives for debates I had on a number of issues having to do with language, PC, identity politics, or hermeneutics, with bloggers and commenters ostensibly on the “right,” they’d see that many of those then “right-leaning” bloggers were the first to flock to Obama and move leftward when the political winds started shifting.
I’ve long maintained that this is no coincidence. Sure, there are those I had similar arguments with who still hew to the “conservative” label; but many of them, I think you’d find, are status quo GOP boosters, and their conservatism seems to extend to favoring tax cuts and beating back “purists” who are so unhelpful when it comes time for the GOP status quo to have their time as kings and queens of the Big Government trough.
Teachable moments, all, is the way I see it. YMMV.
I was just listening to the start of Leon Aron’s interview linked at the Enterprise Blog (during Limbaugh commercial time, so haven’t got far), talking about the uprising over vote fraud going on in Russia. Says he, there’s only so much people will swallow before they finally realize they’ve had enough. It’s just a human characteristic I think, sitting in the background, sooner or later to reappear. Thing about it is, as we know all too well, what happens next will take one of two possible paths, and one of those paths has only been taken once, so far as I can recollect, yet here we are, gratuitously abandoning that unique path without so much as a half the population even aware the path was there.
Aside from the War on Language and the War on Boys, this strikes me as being a salutary victory in the War on Incompetence. From an article linked from the linked article:
Gaston County Schools Superintendent Reeves McGlohon would only say that Bostic submitted his resignation. McGlohon had no further comment.
“He (McGlohon) told me he had made the decision he was going to terminate me or drop me into an assistant principal position,” Bostic said. “I admit I made some errors in what I did, but to fire me or to demote me with 44 years in it, it just doesn’t make sense. To me he was a very heartless man, and he did it because of politics.”
“I admit I made some errors?!” Are you kidding me?! Here’s a guy who thinks that one 9-year-old telling another 9-year-old that he’s hot for teacher is an actionable event. Here’s a guy who thinks that 44 years as a teacher makes one suited to being an administrator, as though managing a facility of 50 requires the same skills as making a roomful of kids look up trivia on Google. Here’s a guy who thinks he’s been fired not for causing a colossal fuckup that brought shame and embarrassment on his employer, but because of ‘politics.’ Here’s a guy who meted out an actual unfair punishment on an actual innocent person, whining about the unfairness of being punished for an egregious dereliction of duty. Not one of these things strikes me as representative of executive competence.
The district was paying this guy six figures (I assume) to be the chief executive officer of a school. The better part of such a role is skill in administration, leadership, and good judgement. What I’ve read so far of his role in and reaction to the debacle tells me that his leadership and good judgement are nowhere in evidence. I’m not sure anyone is such a fantastic administrator that he can overcome the other two weaknesses.
If your administrators are so incompetent that you have to rely on zero-tolerance policies, then fire them or cut their pay accordingly. And if your administrators are so incompetent that they’ll punish a kid for harmless hallway comments to a friend, then you need to fire them or demote them accordingly. I’m heartened that there is one Board of Directors in this country that seems to understand this principle. On the other hand, I’m kinda sad that such an example of what should be commonplace good governance is so remarkable.
I would’ve accepted the demotion I think
Here’s what I would have done:
-Suspend Bostic for the same time period, with no pay
-Put said suspension in his permanent record
-Have Bostic write either a letter of apology to the student and his parents, or a letter of resignation, before returning to work
-Erase any record of the suspension from the student’s files
That’s for a first offense. Really, there should be guidelines for this kind of thing.
There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Anyone ask Bostic his opinion on what should be done to the teachers/admin who approved the public spectacle of parents playing tonsil hockey with their own kids?
I would’ve accepted the demotion I think
Most education retirement systems are based on your last salary. I’m betting the demotion would have come with a substantial cut in pay, which would have also significantly affected his pension.
When I was a substitute, I had a first grader tell me “I like Teacher’s boobies” — loudly — in the middle of class. I told him sternly that wasn’t appropriate for a math class. He did it again. I made him go to time-out for recess. I did tell the principal (IIRC, the kid tried to slap my rump and that seemed adult for a 6-year-old), but I also told him I didn’t think any other disciplinary action was needed. He agreed.
Even aggressive comments about teachers is pretty normal for little boys. It’s like burping or something; you just teach them there’s a time and a place.
I somehow managed not to leap to the conclusion that a first grader was sexually harrassing me. Mainly because he wasn’t, but apparently not everyone can see that.
I’d guess earlier retirement affected it more. But maybe he was thinking wrongful-termination lawsuit.
Something I may have missed, but I don’t think I did: There was another “failure of reasoning” that could have avoided this whole thing too: The substitute teacher who overheard and reported it. I see no reason that failure of reasoning should go unmentioned/unpunished. I just get the sense that sometimes in these instances, the staff were the kids who just couldn’t wait to get other kids in trouble, and play stool pigeon for the “authorities”.
exanter
certainly the sub is complicit; at the same time, subs are placed in untenable positions – if she didn’t report it (zero tolerance policies) and someone else did, she’d probably never work in the district again regardless of outcome with this particular 9 y/o.
Vouchers, please.
Careful Jeff, you’ll scare off all those “real life readers of the Protein Wisdom” with such off-the-rails talking about public shaming and tyranny.
On the other hand, us “imaginary” (apparently) readers of the PW say “Rock on, MF!” and can also be counted on to pony up some bucks at the start of each month so as to help continue the on-rocking.
You were Bill Clinton’s 1st Grade Substitute teacher Ella?
You write a lot younger than that.
BTW, look what word’s in the middle of “substitute”. Ha! C’mere and let me give you a little spank.
KIDDING!!! DON’T PUT ME IN DETENTION!
still kidding. :^D
I was teaching years ago with a kinda hot young gal who overheard some kid remark to his buddy that he showed up for class to just check out her ass. I asked her if it bothered her, she said she was just glad it made them attend more often.
Reading the 2005 post cleared up something for me.
All the Cain harassment suits where from when he worked for the National Restaurant Association…in the mid ’90’s.
I wondered about that, but now it makes sense.
Here’s another one that has some further links if you’re interested in delving more into it, Lee.
And all the actual claims are of what? Why, harassment, of course. What sort of harassment? How dare you ask, brute! That kind. So shut up. And stop hating women.
There was something missing in that article, hm, let me think. Oh yeah! Ex-Principal Bostic, fuck you, fascist.
There, that’s better.
This comment is approved by the Shire Liberation Front.
Just to mark Vaclav Havel’s passing: a link to his Address to the US Congress (1990), and another to a translation of his seminal 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless.
One thing that jumped out at me in his Congressional Address — that despite his own nation being called a Republic, or perhaps especially because of it — is simply that Havel fails to distinguish the United States of America as a Republic, confusing it instead for a Democracy, over and over again. Too many have lost the salient tension of this distinction.
“The takeaway? The more things don’t change, the more they’re bound to stay the same…”
Speaking of which:
Alp, you master that fryolateur yet? ;^)
troonbop posted on 12/19 @ 4:07 pm
I was teaching years ago with a kinda hot young gal who overheard some kid remark to his buddy that he showed up for class to just check out her ass. I asked her if it bothered her, she said she was just glad it made them attend more often.
You forgot to mention that the kid in your story was 6 years old. Damn kids these days are growing up too quick,
We’re leaving out the real villain here: the substitute teacher who made a fuss in the first place. That person should be blacklisted as a trouble-making ass and never allowed around impressionable children again.