http://sf.carnalnation.com/content/12357/4/jk-rowling-must-register-potential-pedophile
Seems outrageous. Or am I missing something here?
That’s an extremely misleading headline, which is too bad, because the actual program being referenced is plenty outrageous all by itself. Authors who want to visit schools aren’t being required to register AS pedophiles; they’re being required to register in a database of people that have passed a background check to prove they aren’t convicted molesters. They are supposed to pay for this background check out of their own pockets, and a lot of authors (rightly IMO) are refusing to visit any schools at all if they have to submit to this process.
Pretty ridiculous, and hopefully the author boycott will help get the policy changed quickly.
I was suspecting it was. Thanks for the SD.
The headline is misleading but the article itself is fairly balanced - most of it is lifted verbatim from the original article in the Independent.
For the record I think the application of these rules is ridiculous. I’m not convinced but I can see the argument for vetting people who have ongoing and unsupervised contact with children but to vet authors (and anyone else) who comes in to a school for a visit where they are certainly accompanied by a teacher is plain stupid.
It sounds like any other form of professional registration really. I disagree with Pullman that it teaches children anything because it’s a bureaucratic procedure that is completely opaque to the children.
That being said, it’s pretty nanny-state and I am not saying I support it, but it’s not THAT big of a deal.
It’s a little Nanny State, yeah, but it’s just a background check. Teachers, nurses, police officers, and dozens of other professionals submit to them all the time, and pay to do so. I don’t see what the big deal is. I paid 50$ and was fingerprinted so that I could attend my nursing clinicals at the veterans hospital.
The big deal is that in many countries a background check isn’t as routine as that.
Plus, why create a database of “people who don’t have a pedophilia conviction” when there already is one of people who do? You wanna know whether someone has a police record, ask for it through proper and already existing channels. In many countries (I realize it’s not the case in the US) anybody who isn’t in a “bad debtors’ list” is considered to be a low credit risk, someone who pays his debts in a timely fashion; in the same way, if you’re not in a list of “people who have been convicted of pedophilia,” you shouldn’t have to sign up for a list of “people who have not been convicted of pedophilia.”