This story is a rather sad reflection on what our (USA at least) society is comming to.
I’m not ranting because I understand why they have these rules. But still, it’s just sad.
Not enough information to parse for outrage. Personally, I think she was justified in feeling threatened. I’m guessing that she had just broken up a fight between two *male *eighth graders. If you’d just broken up a fight between 2 rambunctious 13-year-old guys, and one of them came up to you and opened his arms, is it more reasonable to assume he was going to hug you? Or he was going to grapple you to the floor?
I’d bet three highlighters and a pack of red pens (the equivalent of gold in the teaching world) that the student copped a feel during this hug and that’s why he got suspended.
I tell my seventh graders, you don’t touch me and I won’t touch you.
I like them, but you just have to be careful.
I teach that age group. We have more than one or two children who have a really hard time keeping their hands off other people, particularly the opposite sex. The article gives only the kid’s version of things. My guess is she reacted badly and administration suspended him because he is Gropey McFeely Jr. This kind of thing never comes out of nowhere IME. The comments on that article are hilarious. Stupid people can be very amusing when you don’t have to deal with them personally.
Our society has become WAY too PC
He said, "…she just snatched me up by the arm and drug me to the other teacher…”
I think we can assume she wasn’t teaching him English.
Yeah, we can’t hardly laugh at the tards, spazzes, and darkies at all any more, now can we?
“Having respect for others” is one thing. The progress of civil rights, and elevated awareness of and respect for people who are in one way or another different from you are great strides forward in our society. But then there is PC, coined as a word to ridicule the idea that you should walk on eggshells and think about every word you say for fear of offending anyone, anyone at all.
Being suspended because merely you tried to hug a teacher would be the result of the mindless application of a chickenshit rule. However, we don’t really know what happened. The news story is a little light on facts and has quotes only from the student and nobody from the school. The only fact is “According to school documents obtained by the station, it is against the rules for a student to hug a teacher.” We could draw the conclusion that the suspension was for violating that rule, but there may have been much more to the story than that.
My son’s middle school has a “no touch” policy. Nobody is allowed to touch anybody. This doesn’t merely prohibit romance in the hallways, or punching, but any touching at all–among students, or between students and teachers. This is part of a trend for “zero tolerance” policies to replace “use some common sense, people.” Then there was the case of the Arizona teen who was strip searched at her middle school because it was suspected that she had…Ibuprofen.
So although we don’t know the facts of this particular case, people are often hiding behind absolute rules as a substitute for judgement.
I can’t recall ever hugging a teacher thirty years ago. It would have been more likely that I’d burst out into singing the Star Spangled Banner in study hall. 
Teachers were always authority figures and scary in our schools. It was yes sir, no sir. You don’t hug a shark.
Maybe way, way, way back in the first grade I might have. But, I recall nothing of my life before the third grade…
CookingWithGas: It’s all about defining the debate. If someone wants to debate Zero Tolerance, they should do that and not make any bones about it. (I predict it would be a monstrously boring debate, but there you go.) However, someone trying to make Political Correctness a synonym for Zero Tolerance means they are trying to equate Civil Rights with Zero Tolerance, and that is simply dishonest.
This is a bit of a hijack. But I just spent a week in the ancestral village in China with my wife’s extended family. I saw multiple incidents but one was a 10 year old boy and his 4 year old boy cousin were kicking each other. It might have started as playing but they both got pissed off, kept kicking and the little one gave up crying. So the older cuz slapped him in the face pretty hard. When the little boy’s mother finally paid attention, it was just to check there was no blood.
Hanging out in that village for a few days a) reminded me to growing up in bumfuck rural northern california. I still find zero tolerance a bit wierd since I left the US before that became a trend and came back 2 years ago to see if firmly entrenched. At least in my well off 'burb.
My kids came to the conclusion that zero tolerance was better than “law of the jungle.” FWIW.
Yeah, I can’t remember anyone I was in school with ever attempting to hug a teacher once we were past early elementary school. That’s something little kids do, not teenagers. I cannot imagine a 13-14 year old boy (typical age of 8th graders) even wanting to hug a teacher unless he was either mentally handicapped or hot for teacher. I feel sorry for this boy if he does have some sort of mental health problem, or was so upset about the fight that he did something he wouldn’t normally do, but I don’t believe teens hugging their teachers has ever been typical behavior in American schools.
On re-reading the thread, I think that HBomb29 confused the two, not out of dishonesty but out of, I dunno, confusion. My post dealt with both, and I hope clearly so. The case in the OP really has nothing to do with political correctness, and may not even have anything to do with zero tolerance.
As to your point, I’m not sure who the “someone” is that you mean…
In fact, I can’t imagine a 13-14 year old boy wanting to hug *any *adult, including his parents.
There was this one gorgeous teacher in high school I soooo wanted to… hug. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
I hugged my maths teacher when I got full marks in my final exam. I doubt he appreciated it, he had aspergers, poor guy. He probably felt pretty violated, but I was just really happy. Would’ve be really weird if I’d been suspended though. I was just a happy kid.
It’s not stuff you can regulate with generalisations.
Teachers I know in the UK say that you can never, ever, under any circumstances, touch a child. If they’re hurt you need to send them to the nurse, but you can’t touch them. That’s just weird.
This. It’s probably a silly rule, but a rule that would have been unnecessary at my school. I vote for the kid copped a feel, but insists that whatever he touched was an “accident.” Since it can’t be proven either way, but everyone involved thinks that the horny 13 year old probably did it, they nailed him on the underlying “no hugging” rule.
I think this is made a bigger deal than it is. My kids hug their elementary school teachers without any problems. Affection overflows. By the time they are in middle and high school, they are too busy being cool and angsty to want to hug a teacher, so it stops on its own.
Yeah, I’m willing to accept HBomb29 as a confused thermonuclear device. I’m just generally tired of all the unfair and dishonest (and, sometimes, both) bashing Political Correctness gets from the people who (you can tell) were previously unfamiliar with the idea of politeness extending to everyone.