Teaching Manners to Reduce Girls’ Crime Rate

ByPamela Wood Browne

I’m in South Carolina visiting my parents and have been watching CBS Evening News with Katie Couric for the first time. My mouth fell open last night when Katie introduced the story “Charm School Gives Troubled Girls Hope.” Apparently a juvenile detention center in Orange County, California has decided that the girls’ recidivism rate would best be reduced by teaching them how to cook and dance… Huh?!… I was pretty much stunned that tax dollars are being spent on such a blatantly sexist program. Plus, helllooo!… I think a program that makes them more employable would be a far more logical and successful approach than trying to make them… I don’t know… more marriageable? At least Steve Hartman planted a seed of common sense when he mentioned that he didn’t know how to cook at that age either. But Katie just affirmed the message that teaching the girls “manners” would actually help them get out of a life of crime. Unbelievable.

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