I think we can all agree that children, in addition to being very annoying in movie theaters, are the future of our great nation.

The things they are taught, both by their parents and by society in general, will have a tremendous impact on how our society will be in the future.

Based on some items in the news lately, our society will soon consist solely of people who are too paranoid to interact with others, question authority or take a stand for what is right.

Hell, we’ll be lucky if people leave the house anymore.

Hillary Clinton tells us it takes a village to raise a child. Sadly, there seem to be a lot of village idiots in our village, and they are calling the shots.

Take, for example, the case of Johnathan Privette, a 6-year-old first grader in Lexington, N.C.. Last week, Johnathan gave one of his female classmates a kiss on the cheek. A teacher witnessed the “incident” and reported it to the principal.

The principal was now faced with a dilemma. Was Johnathan simply a curious child, or a pervert-in-training?

The principal, following the popular belief in our society that the only good reaction is an overreaction, chose the latter and suspended him from school.

Suspended from school for kissing a girl on the cheek? Back when I attended Herbert C. Hoover Elementary, boys and girls used to chase each other around the big fort at recess and try to kiss each other. (Not me, of course. I started being rejected by women at an early age.) My grandmother used to kiss me on the cheek and smear lipstick all over me, despite my best efforts to get away. I never hauled her into court.

Sexual harassment is a problem and it needs to be addressed, but it is ridiculous to think there is anything even remotely sexual about a 6-year-old kissing a classmate.

You may also have heard of 7-year-old Drew Carrier, who brought a tape recorder to class and taped his teacher brow-beating the class.

Among other things, she told the class that about half of them would be getting F’s next year, and told one child who was talking to a classmate, “That’s probably why you can’t read very well.”

Drew showed a lot of courage in sticking up for himself and his classmates. Instead of thanking Drew for brining the situation to his attention, Del Patterson, the president of the teachers union in Sapulpa, Okla., said the teacher had a good record.

He added, “My thinking is, anytime you use surreptitious behavior to gain information, that is some kind of entrapment.”

Patterson seems to be implying that Drew was plotting against his teacher. If Drew had purposely misbehaved in order to provoke his teacher and then taped her reaction, that would be entrapment.

Instead of dealing with the empirical evidence that one of his teachers was out of line, Patterson questioned the motives of a 7-year-old boy.

That is inexcusable, and it fuels the belief among children that even if you tell the truth, adults won’t believe you.

I wasn’t able to find anything in the newspaper about this third example, but I heard about it from what we journalists call “a reliable source.”

That source is my brother, who returned from a weekend trip to St. Louis with this story.

An elementary school student in St. Louis was on a playground near his school when he was approached by a drug dealer who offered to sell him drugs. The boy declined.

The pusher then offered to give the boy the drugs. Any bad after-school special or junior high health class film will tell you that this is a classic ploy to get the boy hooked on drugs so he will buy them next time. (“C’mon, Billy. You want to be cool, don’t you?”)

So the boy took the drugs, then turned them in to his principal. This could have been a great story.

A young boy turns in the drugs and reports the incident to a responsible adult, his principal. As a reward for his courage and maturity, the boy was promptly suspended from school for having drugs on school property.

Normally, this is the part where I make some smart-assed comment, but I really don’t think there is anything I could write that would make the absurdity of this more obvious.

This is the village that is raising our children. If I have children, I’ll either have to keep them away from the crazy villagers, or find a less hysterical village.

That shouldn’t be hard.

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Steven Martens is a senior in journalism mass communication from Cedar Rapids.