A few years ago a friend who was a math teacher at a Cherry Creek middle school told me about the oral sex problem. It wasn’t a myth, she said. It had become so commonplace among adolescents that a couple of students were caught unabashedly in the act at school.
In broad daylight.
The news from Castle Rock Middle School last week almost makes those look like the good old days.
At least back then there weren’t pictures of it on the Internet.
Whei Wong, director of communications for the Douglas County School District, said the news that some girls had used their cellphones to photograph each other naked and e-mail the pictures to boys at the school “was a real eye-opener” (so to speak) to parents and teachers. “Probably the most common reaction was, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.”‘
Police were called. An investigation ensued. Charging seventh- and eighth-graders with distributing child pornography via the Internet remains a possibility.
“It’s up to the Castle Rock Police Department and the district attorney,” Wong said. “We don’t know where they’re going to go with that.”
Here’s one vote for sanity.
Ground them. Make their computers off-limits for a month. Give them the sex talk to end all sex talks. But don’t turn them into registered sex offenders. These kids aren’t even old enough to shave, for crying out loud.
Still, at the risk of coming off like Sister Christella, who spent the 1950s breaking yardsticks on the heads of unruly children and making sure girls’ hems never crept above their knees, what were these kids thinking?
Is it just me or does it seem slutty – even in 2007 – for 13-year-old girls to pose naked for boys?
Diane Smith, director of schools in the Castle Rock area, said I’m not alone in my reaction.
Middle-schoolers always have been curious about sex and experimented with what they think is adult behavior, she said.
“The difference is that now kids know a lot more. Even in typical television sitcoms, the amount of sexual content today is way beyond, say, ‘The Brady Bunch.’ And if you have cable, it’s a lot more explicit.”
Add to that the free-for-all that is the Internet, and it’s hard to find an adolescent uninitiated into the world of sexual innuendo and lewd imagery.
Given the sophisticated technology literally at their fingertips and their skill at exploiting it, it’s not much of a leap for them to start producing titillating entertainment of their very own right at home next to the Barbie collection and the Harry Potter library.
“In this specific case, it started out with one girl taking a picture of another in her bra and pretty soon they were trying to outdo each other,” Smith said. “It was typical peer pressure, an impulsive kind of thing about who can be the most dangerous.”
Most parents don’t have a clue about what their kids are doing, she said, especially when it comes to the technology.
“We had a parent evening on Internet safety earlier this year at Castle Rock Middle School, and with about 1,400 students enrolled there, only 21 parents showed up,” she said. “We’re constantly sending stuff out about these issues, urging parents to monitor their kids’ behavior, but until an incident such as this raises people’s level of concern, we all get complacent.”
The school plans to hold another parents night on Internet safety and expects considerably more interest this time.
“The kids, they’re the natives in the digital world,” Smith said. “We’re the digital immigrants.”
While learning to check the kids’ cellphones for boob shots and searching their e-mail for signs they’re going digitally native is a good idea, somehow I think parents still may be ducking the real problem. Maybe the next parents- night program at the school should be about helping the kids develop enough self-respect to keep their clothes on.
Even when the cameras aren’t around.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
