Christina Hoff Sommers: "Schulen sind eine feindliche Umgebung für Jungen geworden"

As school begins in the coming weeks, parents of boys should ask themselves a question: Is my son really welcome? A flurry of incidents last spring suggests that the answer is no. In May, Christopher Marshall, age 7, was suspended from his Virginia school for picking up a pencil and using it to “shoot” a “bad guy” — his friend, who was also suspended. A few months earlier, Josh Welch, also 7, was sent home from his Maryland school for nibbling off the corners of a strawberry Pop-Tart to shape it into a gun. At about the same time, Colorado’s Alex Evans, age 7, was suspended for throwing an imaginary hand grenade at “bad guys” in order to “save the world.”

In all these cases, school officials found the children to be in violation of the school’s zero-tolerance policies for firearms, which is clearly a ludicrous application of the rule. But common sense isn’t the only thing at stake here. In the name of zero tolerance, our schools are becoming hostile environments for young boys.

Hier geht es weiter. Dabei verwendet Sommers die Formulierung "feindselige Umgebung" ("hostile enviroment") nicht zufällig. Sie spielt in der US-amerikanischen Debatte über Diskriminierungen insbesondere am Arbeitsplatz eine große Rolle.