Tim Kaine: What Do Students Not Know About Violence?

Right. This is the Internet, so some of our audience ought to be young. Will young people please explain to me what part of the concepts of violence, consent, and assault needed to be explained to you?

Hitting, pushing, grabbing, or choking another person is assault.

Deliberately injuring the other person, by assault or shooting or bombing or whatever, is violence.

Agreeing to something, as it might be to touching another person in ways that are not violent, is consent.

Always be sure you have another person's consent before you touch the person, get close enough to touch the person, or touch the person's things.

How much federal legislation and tax money does it take to explain that?

Here's U.S. Senator Tim Kaine:

"As a parent and lawmaker, I’ve become increasingly concerned about reports of sexual assault on and off our college campuses. In December, I met with students at the University of Virginia to listen to their concerns and suggestions on how best to prevent campus sexual assault. Some of the students I met with said they hadn’t been taught about sexual assault, consent, and domestic violence before college, and they thought education could be an important tool as we work to prevent these crimes that disproportionately impact young people. We agreed that with the alarming prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses and in communities across the country, secondary schools should play a role in promoting safe relationship behavior. To make this idea a reality, I introduced theTeach Safe Relationships Act last week to improve health education in public secondary schools by including information on “safe relationship behavior,” which would focus on preventing sexual assault, domestic violence, and dating violence. To learn more about the Teach Safe Relationships Act, click here.

In addition to promoting safe relationship behavior, my top education priorities are expanding high-quality preschools and improving career and technical education (CTE) to make our students both college and career ready.

Last Monday, I joined school administrators at Lewis & Clark Elementary to learn about the success of their Pre-K program as well as the high demand for more preschool classes to serve children who have been wait-listed or turned away because of limited space. I also discussed my new bill, the Providing Resources Early for Kids [PRE-K] Act, which would provide grants for states to either begin new Pre-K programs or upgrade existing programs. After meeting with administrators I visited two preschool classrooms and read to the students. You can see a visual story of my visit on my Medium post here.

From my conversations with educators, parents and students across the Commonwealth, I know strengthening education remains a top priority for Virginians. I will continue working across the aisle to improve our schools and I look forward to updating you on my progress along the way."