If The Schoolhouse Is A-Rockin', Don't Bother Knockin'

This week's "SF Bay Area = Sodom & Gomorrah" headline comes courtesy of the Oakland public school district, where a teacher has been suspended for the sexually flamboyant atmosphere in his classroom. The teacher's students were, get this, second graders, two of whom are supposed to have engaged in oral sex during class:

A teacher at an East Oakland elementary school has been placed on leave as officials investigate accusations that two of his second-grade students engaged in oral sex in the classroom and that some ran around without their clothes on, a district spokesman said Friday.

Oakland Unified School District officials said the allegations involved students in a classroom at Markham Elementary School, and that the reported conduct happened sometime last week. A student came forward with details of the incidents Wednesday, district spokesman Troy Flint said.

"Acting on early findings, the investigation is leading us to believe that these details have merit," Flint said.

The district placed the teacher on paid administrative leave, Flint said. The teacher told officials that he was unaware of either incident. His name was not released.

Although details of the incidents remain sketchy, authorities said they are investigating reports that a girl and a boy engaged in oral sex in the classroom, Flint said.

When I first heard this story, I thought, no way; maybe the kids were talking about oral sex, or playacting at something and calling it oral sex, or whatever. But, the Free Will wife, who is a child psychologist with a couple years in Oakland working with (euphemism alert) "at-risk populations" under her belt, found the story to be absolutely plausible. There's a lot of prostitution and sex-for-drugs bartering that goes on, usually in front of the kids, who go on to imitate what they see. Pitiful, I know.

I don't think I have to mention that all of this doesn't arise from loose-moraled neo-hippie types living in Marin County mansions. No, this is going on in the other segment of the left-wing base: the ghettos and poor neighborhoods that have been the focus of so much earnest concern, and bottomless Great Society-style programs, all with the same perverse result. As Walter Williams said in the WSJ just this morning: The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, what Jim Crow couldn't do, what the harshest racism couldn't do," Mr. Williams says. "And that is to destroy the black family.

Maybe liberals are right that budget-cutting Tea Partiers are just white racist crackers. But at least we haven't been using the power of government to destroy generation after generation of minority youth, all the while smugly bragging about how they are "saving" them.