Okay, this is bad enough:
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) — Five fifth-grade students face criminal charges after authorities said four of them had sex in front of other students in an unsupervised classroom and kept a classmate posted as a lookout for teachers.
The students were arrested Tuesday at the Spearsville school in rural north Louisiana, authorities said. Two 11-year-old girls, a 12-year-old boy and a 13-year old boy were charged with obscenity, a felony. An 11-year-old boy, the alleged lookout, was charged with being an accessory.
“After 44 years of doing this work, nothing shocks me anymore,” said Union Parish Sheriff Bob Buckley. “But this comes pretty close.”
Authorities said the incident happened March 27 at the school, which houses students from kindergarten through 12th grade. A high school teacher normally watches the fifth-grade class at the time, but went to an assembly for older students and the class was inadvertently left unattended, Buckley said.
And God forbid I might seem to be defending indefensible behavior, but as my grandfather would have said, now wait just a minute.
A teacher for whatever reason was not in the classroom and the unsupervised fifth-graders–ranging from 11 to 13 years old–decided to have an orgy in the classroom the teacher couldn’t be bothered to supervise, but instead of the teacher, the fifth-graders were arrested?
What’s wrong with this picture?
Peggy U says:
Arrest them all.
April 4, 2007, 2:33 pmBob says:
Lock up thier parents up because these kids must have not have not been taught anything right and decent at home. you do not put kids in jail and furthermore since when did obscenity become a felony?
April 4, 2007, 4:17 pmJeffrey Quick says:
Nothing’s wrong with that picture. The teacher shouldn’t have been arrested, it should have been FIRED.
Now, here’s what’s wrong:
April 4, 2007, 4:34 pmrightwingprof says:
What astounds me is that if they felt they needed to arrest somebody why they decided to arrest the pre-teens instead of the adult who was responsible for them. I mean, isn’t that what “responsible” means?
April 4, 2007, 4:56 pmPeggy U says:
I think hauling in fifth graders might put the fear of God in them and leave a lasting impression. As to the teacher, yeah - fired works!
April 4, 2007, 5:49 pmDo What? says:
[…] Do What? […]
April 4, 2007, 6:01 pmsusan maguire says:
I teach fifth grade at a Catholic school. The students should be able to be left alone in a room briefly without “losing it”. Four of the students should be expelled from the “regular” school and placed in an alternative school for such students who behave so horribly. (Our communities need more of those schools.) The “lookout” should be suspended and counseled to stand on his/her own feet. The teacher needs a reprimand, but does not deserve the blame for this atrocious behavior.
April 4, 2007, 6:06 pmcathy says:
One should be able to leave fifth graders alone with directions to read or do their homework for 15 minutes or so without this sort of thing happening. The parents of these children are to blame. How did these kids become so sexualized at such an early age? And why don’t they have any concvept of what constitutes private behavior? Expell the four to an alternative school, put the look-out on probation along with the teacher (who could have called in, say, an eighth grader to keep an eye on things.) And then do something about the 2 girls and boys involved re sex education. You certainly don’t want these kids reproducing ny thime soon if at all!!
April 4, 2007, 6:33 pmNYC Math Teacher says:
It is possible that the teacher informed administrators that he wished to attend the assembly for the older students and was granted permission. Perhaps the administrators failed to find a teacher to cover the class. In other words, adminstrators may have dropped the ball (no pun intended). Note the use of the passive voice in the article: “…the class was inadvertently left unattended…”.
April 4, 2007, 7:51 pmMike says:
Fire/arrest the teacher? Only if we accept the proposition that any reasonable adult must expect that 5th graders absolutely will engage in overt sexual activity the second they are not under intensive adult supervision.
This seems rather like the kind of reasoning that requires women to be covered from head to toe, lest the mere sight of female flesh inevitably drive helpless–and otherwise perfectly virtuous men–into paroxyms of violent lust.
Someone obviously wasn’t doing their job here, but the ultimate, primary responsibility for this sort of ape-like (no, excuse me, that’s unfair to primates) behavior belongs to the little primates who did their best to rut like crazed weasels, and to the “adults” who may or may not exercise any parental influence over them.
April 4, 2007, 9:39 pmPeggy U says:
Susan: Do they still have reform schools? I know when I was a kid, a few miscreants were sent there. I reread the article. The teacher had to have been gone for more than a few minutes for this to take place. However, it is possible there was a miscommunication at the school that caused the teacher to be in another place. Why do they not have a regular teacher scheduled to be with them all day?
April 4, 2007, 11:24 pmsusan maguire says:
April 5, 2007, 6:55 amsusan maguire says:
Reply to Peggy: I agree that this class should not been left unsupervised for whatever reason.
April 5, 2007, 7:03 amThere have been some alternative public schools in the area where I live.
susan maguire says:
Reply: I agree that the students should not have been left unsupervised.
April 5, 2007, 7:06 amSIMON CORBIN says:
Subscribe Me Please: simon corbin
April 5, 2007, 2:40 pm