Cite as: 526 U. S. 629 (1999)
Kennedy, J., dissenting
tablish an understanding of appropriate behavior. The real world of school discipline is a rough-and-tumble place where students practice newly learned vulgarities, erupt with anger, tease and embarrass each other, share offensive notes, flirt, push and shove in the halls, grab and offend." Brief for National School Boards Association et al. as Amici Curiae 10-11 (hereinafter Brief for School Amici).
No one contests that much of this "dizzying array of immature or uncontrollable behaviors by students," ibid., is inappropriate, even "objectively offensive" at times, ante, at 650, and that parents and schools have a moral and ethical responsibility to help students learn to interact with their peers in an appropriate manner. It is doubtless the case, moreover, that much of this inappropriate behavior is directed toward members of the opposite sex, as children in the throes of adolescence struggle to express their emerging sexual identities.
It is a far different question, however, whether it is either proper or useful to label this immature, childish behavior gender discrimination. Nothing in Title IX suggests that Congress even contemplated this question, much less answered it in the affirmative in unambiguous terms.
The majority, nevertheless, has no problem labeling the conduct of fifth graders "sexual harassment" and "gender discrimination." Indeed, the majority sidesteps the difficult issue entirely, first by asserting without analysis that respondents do not "support an argument that student-on-student harassment cannot rise to the level of discrimination' for purposes of Title IX," ante, at 639, and then by citing Gebser and Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools, 503 U. S. 60 (1992), for the proposition that "[w]e have elsewhere concluded that sexual harassment is a form of discrimination for Title IX purposes and that Title IX proscribes harassment with sufficient clarity to satisfy Pennhurst's no-
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