three ♓ voice;

[quasistellar]

[You may want to cover your ears for this one, folks. Professor Constance Peixes is angry. She is very angry. She hasn't sent a Howler, but this might as well be one going out to the entire faculty and student body.]

I am absolutely appalled at the degree of inappropriate subject matter that our students are currently discussing in their journals. You should all be ashamed of yourselves, and particularly so for discussing it with incoming first-years. Mr. Makara and Mr. Kishitani, you both have a month's detention, beginning on the first day of fall term. Mr. Makara, for writing the entry in question, and Mr. Kishitani, for encouraging the discussion, particularly among the younger students.

What in Merlin's name were you thinking? This isn't a 'friendly discussion about biology', this was getting students to discuss matters of a highly personal and private nature! And at the ages of eleven, twelve, and thirteen!

AND MY DAUGHTER AMONG THOSE STUDENTS!

You continued arguing about it being perfectly all right to discuss touching oneself after some of the younger girls said they weren't comfortable with it! They were right to think that their mothers wouldn't want to see them in the middle of a discussion like that, because they don't!

To the rest of you: I highly recommend you think before you write a journal entry discussing a topic of a sexual nature, and frankly, I discourage you from doing so.

Comments

[glaringprotego]

[Deep. Breaths.

Her reply comes after a minute or two]

Children learn about pleasure from the time they are born, as I am sure you are aware. I'm not insulting your intelligence. I just find it disconcerting to think that you think they shouldn't discuss matters among themselves. Making this a punishable offense only reinforces the taboo. Saying they cannot talk about things where no prying adult eyes can see is only reinforcing the idea that such things are shameful.

Making it something that they have to hide will only make them go to greater lengths to hide it. It won't stop the discussion. Children learn from young ages what their body does. It may be my method of parenting, but you're simply censoring them. They're simply going to find better filters. Perhaps it should have been kept to older students but younger ones are also curious. They may not even know it's something that isn't shameful. At least they found out they aren't the only ones who do it.

[quasistellar]

The problem here is not what children learn about what their bodies can do. The problem is not even a group of students having a small, private conversation among themselves.

The problem is that they didn't consider the ages and comfort levels of everyone before thinking about this. The secondary problem is that there was some pressure being put on some students to give an answer of some sort. It's one thing for students who are comfortable with their own bodies to have a healthy discussion among themselves. It's entirely another for someone to be pressured into it.

The younger students we're speaking of are as young as eleven years old. You might be perfectly all right with an eleven-year-old discussing masturbation, but there are many parents that aren't.

There could be students out there who have had parents take their journals away because of this discussion, Deirdre. That's censoring them more than any kind of filter would, because it's a means of cutting them off from communication with their friends and classmates. I don't want that. I don't think you want that, either.

[glaringprotego]

No I don't want that, but there must be a better way to handle things than slamming down a month detention a piece. Yes, they did things in a foolish way without a great deal of thought to the consequences, but they did it seeking information. I don't agree with the pressure to provide an answer but I do agree with my husband. Finding something you aren't comfortable with in the journals is always a page turn away. We can't simply start censoring what they can say on their journals. We could fall quite easily into banning them entirely at that rate. There is no end to the things they could say that would make others uncomfortable.

And did you explain why you gave them the detention before you did so? They may think they're being punished simply for content rather than the openness of that content, their aggressiveness of questioning and the possibility of repercussions elsewhere.

[quasistellar]

During that month, I'm planning on giving them both a course in research ethics, seeing as they both claim it's some sort of scientific research. If they want to do research, best that they see what it entails in the real world.

They don't seem to actually understand those consequences. It's like speaking to a brick wall.

[glaringprotego]

Perhaps you had better start with explaining time and place to them. If there was somewhere they had to speak about things with each other, where everyone was--

[Dierdre pauses in mid-sentence]

Just don't react with gut instinct. Take the time to see what they say--lock their entry if you must. Explain why you're doing something and give them a chance to speak their part. Making something forbidden only makes it more enticing or did you never venture into the forest as a student?

Perhaps we had also have a class about resisting peer pressure and dealing with topics you don't agree with. No one should feel like they can't simply close a journal and leave a conversation that they don't wish to have or aren't comfortable with.