Kids are now being suspended for hugging in school.

[The Backlash Cometh]

Report: Brevard middle school suspends teen for hugging girl

A Brevard teenager was suspended from school after officials saw him hugging another student, according to WKMG Local 6.

The mother of 14-year-old Nick Martinez says she wants the anti-hugging policy at Palm Bay's Southwest Middle School to change.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-brevard-student-suspended-for-hug-20111103,0,1228947.story

[SidDithers]

1. Gimme that Christian side hug...nt

Sid

[JVS]

2. No PDA is a long standing rule.

[Occulus]

3. It's a HUG.

For fuck's sake!!

[JVS]

6. Yeah sure, and is a 15 minute dry hump also a hug?

[NeedleCast]

8. Right...Because Adult Teachers and Administrators Are Not Smart Enough To Tell The Difference

No one suggested they are the same thing. Any person with a handful of neurons to rub together can tell the difference.

Some people, apparently, can not.

[JVS]

10. It's not about the adults, it's about the students knowing the difference and being accountable to..

do one without doing the other. If you allow hugging the students will dry hump and then say "We were just hugging! There's no rule against it! Waaaaahhh"

[NeedleCast]

12. This is Why Zero Tolerance Rules Fail

Many students do know the difference. Yes, you're going to have some kids who try to stretch the rule but, you know, they're kids. The Zero Tolerance Rules imposed by many schools to not recognize the difference between a friendly hug and "15 minutes of dry humping." The Zero Tolerance implies they are the same thing. This is why Zero Tolerance is a horrible idea...because any thinking person can tell the difference between the two and why one should be allowed and one shouldn't.

[HappyMe]

14. Thank you, well said. nt

[dtexdem]

21. Yeah, that slippery slope: if we allow students to be friends, they'll become lovers ...

and say: "We're just friends. There's no rule against it." ;-)

Now, a great big group hug for the idiot administrator who was unable to understand sensible differences among behaviors. ;-)

[MedicalAdmin]

25. Sure they'll SAY that, but they know they are getting busted...

... and they know they would if they got caught. They are trying the "no good defense like a good offense" defense. And you shouldn't fall for it.

Zero tolerance policies are the stepchild of spineless principals IMHO. Remember principals, kids are your students and not your buddies, so stop trying to be liked. It's a waste of your time and just makes the kids hate you more for a spineless fool.

[JVS]

27. The school might not fall for it, but their asshole parents are likely to fall for it and say...

"Oh, they were just hugging, how dare you punish my innocent kid!"

Or the school lets things slide and another parent comes in and says

"What the fuck is the matter with you, you let that scummy Johnny kiss and fondle my daughter and now people are bullying her on Facebook, calling her a slut and a whore. Where was your supervision?"

The rule is against a benign level of PDA because it is better to put a break on things before they get serious. I'm sure most teachers and admin really don't care what the students do, but since the school is held accountable for the children's behavior, it's best to establish rules.

[NeedleCast]

33. Its the creation of a rule where common sense should suffice

Almost always a bad idea.

There are a lot of good ideas in the world that don't need to be turned into laws (or rules).

[JVS]

36. Are you willing to give teachers and administrators the leeway to exercise their common sense...

and mete out punishment as they see fit, without using rules?

[NeedleCast]

41. Are We Still Talking About Hugging?

If we are, then yes. I'm not suggesting schools be completely free of rules. I do have enough faith in the system to trust teachers and administrators to understand the difference between a friendly hug, a romantic embrace and grinding and to take appropriate action (which, in all three cases, should amount to no more than a "knock it off.)"

[Juneboarder]

48. Sounds like someone needs a dry hump...

sheesh!

[HappyMe]

9. Lol!

Yeah, because a hug and a dry hump are sooo freaking hard to tell apart.

[JVS]

11. Ok, then write a rule for the students to follow that allows hugs but prevents dry humping.

How do you distinguish the two so that students know what's allowed?

[lbrtbell]

13. Easy

Most hugs don't involve crotch-to-crotch contact.

[snooper2]

16. what about a back hug?

[JVS]

32. You didn't write the rule. Go ahead. Write up your policy.

[MedicalAdmin]

31. At the end of your rule book / honor code have the following disclaimer.

The following of all rules is up to the students to get right. If you are not sure how a rule could be interpreted, then ask before you do it. If you decide to do it anyway and find that they rule has been violated, then welcome to adulthood early. The responsibility is yours. If you decide to push the limits or test the boundaries and are unsure, they you have taken your chances and will pay the price.



or something like that.

[socialindependocrat]

15. What is PDA?

[ScreamingMeemie]

18. Public Display of Affection.

:hi:

[The Backlash Cometh]

29. This is a racist policy that will affect latinos and

southern belles.

[ScreamingMeemie]

39. The poster asked for the definition of PDA...

:shrug:

[SoCalDem]

40. Ay Caramba, Ahh do decla-yah!

:rofl:

[SoCalDem]

38. Amen!

"School" has evolved into a pretty weird place.. I am SO glad I have grown up kids..

We were not necessarily suspended, but PDA was a BIG no-no...especially in junior high & high school.

We were told that we came to school to learn..not to get a date:)

[HappyMe]

4. Good grief!

:eyes: Humans behaving like humans!

[iscooterliberally]

5. So what if all the kids had a giant hug-athon?

Would they then have to suspend everyone and close the school? :crazy:

[NeedleCast]

7. Ahhhh, more Zero-Tolerance Nonsense

People are stupid.

Then again, the 1%'ers know that by turning your child into an emotionless robot that doesn't need human contact, they can create better workers.

[socialindependocrat]

19. I grew up segregated

We always had a "girls side" and a "boys side" in grammar school

I think it is one of the main contributors to men and women not
knowing how the other sex thinks.

Zero tolerance - like when the girl brought a knife to school
to cut a birthday cake and got suspended. What a bunch of bunk.

We train our children to not use their brain and then,
wonder why we have dysfunctional adults
(and a dysfunctional congress and police and families)

LET'S TEACH OUR CHILDREN TO THINK, REASON AND USE LOGIC!!!!!

LET'S TEACH OUT CHILDREN TO PROTECT THEMSELVES AGAINST THE AUTHORITIES WHO WANT US
TO TEACH THEN NOT TO THINK BUT TO FOLLOW RULES.

I hear too many Repubs who say, "It's their own fault - they don't
research politics and they vote for idiots!" I believe this is a product
of our school system and "follow the rules" mentality. That's why they do it - isn't it?
To make people easier to control??

[NeedleCast]

30. Totally Agree

I graduated high school in 1992 and the whole Zero Tolerance thing was just catching on. We started to see rules change from specific to very general things. Don't bring guns and knives to school becomes "don't bring weapons to school." What is a weapon? Practically anything under a general rule like that. If I'm on the baseball team can I bring a baseball bat to school, or is that a weapon? The #2 pencil I'm using to fill in the bubbles on my standardized test can be a weapon if I decide to threaten someone with it.

Throughout my grade school education and into college (which I didn't complete) my best teachers were the ones who encouraged us to think critically about problems instead of just "read chapter 12 and answer the questions in the back of the book."

Zero Tolerance is designed to produce automatons who can't think past following the rules. Especially in no-skill or low-skill jobs, this sort of thing is encouraged. The less training and thinking that goes into a job, the less training a company has to invest in its work force. If the McDonald's fryer tells you when to make the fries and when the fries are done, you don't have to think, you just do. Creates a homogenized, skill-less work force that you can be swapped out whenever the need arises.

[seabeyond]

17. my 13 yr old told me this is a new rule at his school. tailgate at the beginning of the school year

to start off the new year, my son got out of the car. watching thru the rearview, i saw a girl recognize him, get excited seeing him, running to him to give him a hug and yea.... good to see you.

made him feel very very good and a nice way to start the school year.

i am sad to see that the schools cannot recognize the harmlessness, and even see the good in a hug, yet only see it as a step to sex.

[MedicalAdmin]

34. Um ... Can you translate your post.

What exactly is the new rule at your sons school?

[seabeyond]

43. the Op is about no hugging. it is a new rule at my sons school. nt

[MedicalAdmin]

50. Oh. OK.

Thanks. That makes lots more sense now. I think I had a brain fart. Sorry about that.

I need coffee. :hangover:

[gvstn]

20. I think a "no prolonged" PDA rule should suffice...

A teacher walking by and saying "break it up" or "move along" is enough to enforce such a rule. Zero Tolerance for everything is getting out of hand. Zero Tolerance for violence should be the only ZERO rule.

[MedicalAdmin]

35. +1 - no prolonged PDA rule is a good idea.

Simple and enforceable.

[NeedleCast]

37. Even In Cases Of Violence Zero Tolerance Is A Bad Idea

What about the kid who is being bullied? If someone attacks a student, that student should have the right to defend themselves without being subject to the same punishment as the attacker...which is often the case with Zero Tolerance rules.

Some bully comes along and tackles a kid to the ground. Under Zero Tolerance the person being assaulted must just lay there and be beaten instead of trying to push off/fight back against their attacker. Cases abound where a student has been attacked and faced punishment for defending themselves.

[Douglas Carpenter]

22. well this is just plane flat downright loony

It as if some who have abandoned and would reject old style puritanical morality have recreated a sick and twisted new style puritanical morality that is essentially indistinguishable from the dark authoritarian moral codes of the past. I can't help but suspect that some of those supporting this craziness might actually consider themselves to be liberals and think imposing Orwellian police state society on young kids is actually protecting them from abuse - In fact it is only protecting them from being human beings.

Perhaps I'm mistaken and maybe I am making connections that are not really there. But this kind of story seems to me to be driven by the same mentality that says a poorly behaving nine-year old will be arrested and prosecuted as a criminal. This strikes me as coming from the same mindset where a couple of obnoxious little 13-year old boys who ran down the hall swatting some girls on their behinds are arrested, finger printed and brought to the jail and the prosecutor pushed to have them registered as sex offenders. And one could go on and on about different cases where fairly normal childhood and early adolescent misbehavior that should simply be corrected is instead criminalized.

For goodness sake whatever twisted and sinister minds are behind this kind of mindset and whatever sick justification they have created - I shudder at the thought of what type of future society well arise from this madness.

[socialindependocrat]

23. Doug - agree!!

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

26. There's no more middle ground

We're becoming a society of extremists where common sense has gone out the window. When I was kid back in the 60s, the police would first talk to the parents if a kid was acting up. Now they immediately criminalize him/her or expel him/her, with overzealous schools principals and prosecutors trying to further their careers, while the holier than thou upstanding community members look for any excuse to exercise their moral outrage.

[randome]

46. Not extremists everywhere. But we hear about them more.

My first job was at the St. Louis Zoo during the summers. On weekends, we would gather behind the 'Compound' (where the feed was stored) with a couple of kegs of beer and drink until we passed out.

The park mounties would come by around 2am, wake us up and tell us to go home.

Can't imagine that happening these days but on the other hand, I imagine cops still show sympathy for kids, we just don't hear about it much and the things we DO hear about are these zero-tolerance policies.

[socialindependocrat]

24. So, nobody watched Footloose, huh??

The tighter you hold on the more they revolt.

[thelordofhell]

28. I hugged all my teachers when I was a kid

Whether they were women or men. I didn't think anything of it. Nowadays I would be suspended and the teachers fired. Where the heck have we gone?

[LeftinOH]

42. Until someone scores a goal -then anything goes. n/t

[renate]

44. actually, a zero tolerance rule makes sense to me, even though I'm totally pro-hugging

In overcrowded classrooms and halls, teachers can't reasonably be expected to make hundreds of judgment calls a day correctly each and every time. They have enough to do with all the other discipline problems they have to handle, and then try to teach on top of that. Any time two friends are allowed to hug and another two friends aren't (and it's not as if a single teacher can focus on each of a dozen sets of kids at once to see what their hands or crotches are doing), it could turn into a big "it's not fair" drama at best, or accusations of "Mr Smith is so racist/sexist/homophobic" or worse. Many if not most middle-school kids LOVE to create drama, as anybody who's been around them knows, and a zero-tolerance policy on PDA makes life easier for the teachers, and for the students as well because they know what to expect. (It's also nice for the kids who aren't getting hugs all the time, or who aren't comfortable with PDA.)

I have so much sympathy for teachers and I'm in favor of anything that helps them spend their time teaching instead of worrying about what phone calls or complaints they're going to get from parents or students.

[JVS]

45. +1

A time and place for everything, and everything in its place. You want to hug, kiss, or make out? Go find a van or living room.

[Exultant Democracy]

47. My extended group went though a Francophile phase in highschool, we kissed hello

[DirkGently]

49. More "zero-tolerance" idiocy. "Because if you ban hugs, no one will get pregnant or be assaulted."

Same thinking that had the TSA confiscating nail clippers.