Give a Hug -- Get a Detention?

Over at MSN there is a news story about an 8th grader who is facing two days of detention because she violated a school policy against "public displays of affection" one Friday afternoon -- she put an arm around the shoulder of another student and gave a quick squeeze as a way of saying "have a great weekend." She did this with two of her friends as they left for home. If you'd like to read the story, click here.

I went to Junior High and High School in the dark ages -- the 1970s.

I remember that the big problems we faced every day were whether the teacher would catch us chewing gum in class, give us an F on homework that we wrote out in a yellow Bic Banana pen, or maybe the school principal might suspect one of the "really bad kids" of hiding pot in his locker. By High School, we added in cherry bombs or stink bombs being set off at the hallway intersections during class changes and the couples who were "snogging" during the break. The stink bombs were so infrequent that you almost always knew who was going to do it and where a couple of days ahead of time. You didn't rat them out, you just changed your route to you next class so you didn't get caught in it. The snoggers were there, pretty much in the same place every day and you could avoid them if you wanted, walk by and ignore them, or make fun of them as some did.

In the almost 30 years since I graduated from High School, things have gotten far worse. Teachers no longer care about chewing gum, math homework written in pen instead of pencil, and fire drills. Lock-down drills are par for the course and French kissing in the school hallways has probably been replaced by other forms of intimacy.

However, giving a detention for hugging a fellow student, a friend actually, is ludicrous.

Worse, the parents are afraid of the suspension the girl will get if she misses the detentions, so they have told her to serve the detentions.

If I were her parents, I would be at the school at the end of the school day to pick her up from the principal's office both of the days she is supposed to serve the detentions. And on the days when she would be suspended, I would be there dropping her off for a day of school and not "in-school suspension." Or, I would take her to the town mayor's office on the days of her suspension or to the state capital.

Sort of along this line is an email I received. It talks about why things are just going down hill here in America. It is supposedly written by Ben Stein. (You know, the "Clear Eyes" guy who says "wow" in a monotone.) Smart guy. Teaches economics and law at a DC university; Republican because he agrees with their economics **shudder**; known to many only because of the game show he used to host on Comedy Central. You can read the contents of the email here. But he didn't write that whole thing, and I was pretty sure he hadn't "written and recited" the bit about "forwarding" this to others. So I looked for a copy of it on the Net. Like I said, you can read the email contents here. If you would like to see what he really wrote and recited on the CBS Sunday Morning Show (12/18/05), go here.

I do have to agree with what he wrote.

I found the story about the detention-yielding-hug because I was looking for a news report my husband wanted me to read. That one was about the water shortage in Georgia. Instead, I found stories titled "Look Bootylicious in Denim" and the like. I asked "Who cares?" And I knew the answer -- more people really do care about that much more than clean water and its environmental impact. Maybe I'm getting old like Ben. Gee, I hope so!

By the way, I found lots of news stories worth reading, but haven't found the one he wanted me to read. I guess denim is more important than water after all.