While setting up for adult evening ed class tonight, I chanced upon a discipline report pad, and perused the various ‘offenses’. Many of them are those that you would imagine, yet the last was, to me, incomprehensible: Public Display of Affection! :eek:
Great God Gertie! We’ve got youngsters committing all manner of harm on one another, and holding hands is now a middle school felony? While I don’t subscribe to the notion that students use school as the happy groping grounds, I fear that some measure of insanity has overtaken common sense.
Am I overreacting, or do other dopers feel as do I?
I don’t know where or when you went to school, but PDA has been prohibited at every school I’ve ever known or attended since before I was in junior high. (That would be, since somewhere about the end of the last ice age.) I don’t think it’s a new thing. And I don’t think anybody worries about it too much. But it does give people a handle to keep kids from getting too carried away in the halls.
Well, what term would YOU use for making out in school? And how would you handle it? I can’t really judge the policy without knowing how it’s being enforced. If it’s being applied to things like holding hands, sitting with an arm around each other during lunch or whatever, quick hugs, or similarly tame things, then I don’t think it’s sensible. But middle school students can be horny little buggers sometimes. Remember, middle school usually includes 8th graders, who are usually around 14 or sometimes even 15. They’re by and large young, dumb, full of hormones, and with little notion of what’s allowable in a school environment. I remember what my peers were like at that time. Hell, I remember what I was like at that time. For the sake of Qadgop’s heart I’ll refrain from mentioning anything… but don’t assume that these kids are still at the stage where they think anything past holding hands is icky. (Note to Dad: There was nothing. I thought nothing. I did nothing. Nothing at all. Let’s talk about something else now.) The fact that the school has the no-PDA thing on the discipline report means they’ve probably had problems with it before - whether their policy is appropriate or not can’t be decided without more information.
PDA is more than holding hands; I think it’s a good idea to keep the write 'em up bar pretty low in the already-charged atmosphere of a school. Better to enforce a “three inches of daylight” or “hand-holding only” rule than wind up with a situation like the one at my junior high school. When I was a student there 10 years ago, two eighth graders were caught having sex in the service elevator. Clearly, there should have been more strident lessons about there being a time and a place for displays of affection!
When I was in high school, hand-holding and some hugging was fine. The term “PDA” was slapped on necking, groping, that sort of thing, and yes, it could result in some discipline from the school. I don’t have a problem with schools enforcing that.
As said earlier, when there are cases of children of young ages (exact ages escapes my memory and I dare not do a Google search at work) having oral sex in classroooms, I think teaching about PDA (appropriate/not appropriate) is not such a bad thing.
But yes, holding hands is a PDA violation, then there is a problem. I guess the big question is where is the line drawn.
I think maybe the schools should fine tune the policy though. It should read “Inappropriate Public Display of Affection”. This way a quick hug, or holding hands would be ok.
I’m not sure on kissing, unless it’s a peck on the cheek. Letting the kids kiss opens a can of worms though. Unfortunately, there are kids, and asshatted parents who will take offense if a same sex couple kisses at all.
I wonder if the policy applies to dating couples, or if it’s also applied to friends too? I used to hug my friends to encourage them, or console them. I think the schools need to clearly define in the student handbooks what is acceptable, and what is unacceptable.
Yes, the should. In my opinion, they should list what is acceptable and say everything not listed is unacceptable. I can see some daring students say “Well, rimming isn’t listed as unacceptable. What, it isn’t ok?”
When I was in middle school, two of my friends got in-school suspension for hugging. Now, I wasn’t there, but knowing these two people (yes, they were opposite of gender, but they were best friends and dude, we knew the guy was gay even then) I doubt if it was anything raunchy.
At any rate, from then on, nobody got to hug anybody, ever.
I think it is a case of the school covering its ass by making the rules overly rigid, which I can understand (see Fin_Man’s comments on rimming); however, the problem with this system is that there’s little room for discretion in terms of which offenses are deemed “inappropriate”.
Sometimes throwing your arms around someone and not letting go IS an appropriate display of affection if you’ve been worried about somoene, or you’re upset and need comfort.
Sitting reading a magazine with your arm over your friends shoulder is fine.
Arms around waists, fine.
Pecks on the lips or cheek, fine.
French kissing? Doesn’t bother me if kids (14+) do it, and nobody seems to mind if adults do it in public.
Suburban Philadelphia was the location, and Richard Nixon was our President. Yes, that was shortly after the invention of indoor flush toilets.
As is my daughter in first grade. The school has already said that they think she is ‘too affectionate’. Sorry, but I’ve done my darndest to raise a happy, loving child, one who expresses herself rather than holding things inside, and I view the school’s perspective as a bunch of poop.
I agree with other posters that there is a limit, and part of my original point is: school is the place to educate children, in preparation for adulthood. I submit that part of this process is internalizing values and standards, such that we can’t put kids in rigid little boxes for 12 years and expect them to function well once the box is opened.
Reflecting on my own school years, the facial expression of a teacher, clearing their throat, or “May I speak with you for a moment?” was quite effective, as opposed to a draconian bull.
IMHO.
I do humbly apologize, but I’ve also told a parent that her child is “inappropriately affectionate”. The girl’s father died last summer, so I’ve tried really hard to be aware and sensitive to that, so when she reaches up to hug me, I hug her briefly and try not to make an issue of it. The problem is she’s in Year 7 (aged 11), and the other kids see it as odd. The other kids know I don’t hug them, and not only that, but they know I’m technically “not allowed” to hug them. The school has a general “hands off” policy between teachers and pupils. Remember, it’s not just to protect teachers; it’s also to protect pupils. One of my students was molested last year by a male teacher, and I can’t help but think of the times I saw his hand on her shoulder in the cafeteria…::shudder::. It makes me nauseous.
I know as a parent you want to teach your child that touching is okay and that healthy physical contact is beautiful, but I’m just not sure students should be seeking physical affection from teachers.
As to the OP, PDA does not generally include hand-holding or hugging. I think groping, snogging, and general inappropriateness are the issue. I have to agree though that a meaningful glance or reproachful nod generally does the trick separating kids.
What ever happened to the days of explaining the difference between ‘good touch’ and ‘bad touch’?
At the tutoring center I work at, I generally do not touch the kids at all. Now, if they want to give me a high five, or initiate a hug or something, that’s fine. I’m never in a position where I am alone in the center with a child (and frankly I don’t want to EVER be in that situation.) Being a guy already makes it kind of awkward around children. But I think I’ve done alright with my job so far
Well obviously they were seeking privacy in the elevator: if they’d wanted to be “public”, they’d have done it in the hall!
My school had a “nothing beyond hand-holding” rule, but my friends and I violated it all the time by hugging hello and goodbye every morning and lunch.
I worked as a student teacher at a middle school this past semester. I heard plenty of rumors about the kids having sex in the bathrooms. That is really creepy.
At the high school across the street, the administrators tend to frown at you for extended hugs or gazing into one another’s eyes or kissing. Occasionally they’ll harrass you, but the kids usually just go to the stairwells and do their thing there.
A friend who works in a movie theater found two 14-year-olds having sex in the ‘Piglet’ movie, not long ago. How is that for sick?
I spent my last two years of high school at a co-ed boarding school. Imagine 300 16 to 18 year olds away from home for the first time and you can begin to understand the PDA problems we faced (particularly since we had certain restrictions about who, when, and where we could go off campus).
Our rulebook listed acceptable PDA as a brief hug, kiss on the cheek, and holding hands. Being caught doing anything more was an automatic “level 2” offense and led to, if it was your first one in x number of months, a weekend of in-dorm restriction and demotion to lower privilege plan for the next grading period. What would really get us in trouble though was combining the PDA offense with being in an off-limits area . . . which my boyfriend and I got around by finding a nice little set of steps in an on-limits area and knowing just how often the campus police would come by (we restricted ourselves to kissing because I’m not a big fan of PDA in general and we weren’t really doing too much else anyway).
A few of my classmates went to great lengths to try to have sex in every building on campus (our school was on a college’s campus) – this led to a few getting a “very inappropriate PDA” write-up that got one girl kicked out and others on in dorm for a long time.
That is really creepy.