.From the same state that suspended a 7-year-old for turning his Pop Tart into a Pop Tart shaped like a gun, comes a ban on hugging.
Southern Maryland Newspapers Online reports on the new guidelines for visitors, parents and students for St. Mary’s County public elementary schools:
Birthday invitations should not be handed out at school, because students who are not invited could have their feelings hurt (oh, come on! Ed.) Food for celebrations should be limited to store-bought items that contain ingredient lists so as not to interfere with children’s food allergies (you mean junk food?according to the rules.
Parents visiting the cafeteria should not hug or touch children other than their own, nor should they discipline other children, the guidelines say. Parents should also not walk with their child when he or she leaves the cafeteria.
Other changes, chosen by a panel of parents and teachers over four meetings, include limiting recess visits for parents, prohibiting visits from siblings and a new ban on approaching teachers in person to schedule meetings. Visitors must also now check in with the front desk and have their photo taken (Adapted from a report on Huffington Post).
Either parents and teachers are truly losing any sort of common sense, or schools have been studying Germanic bureaucratic systems – or both. There are over-committed parents who make thoughtless mistakes, but, by and large, good Epicureans prefer a minimum of rules (too many rules mean they are generally ignored). What is troubling is the political correctness about hugging. Such is the paranoia about sexual abuse that warmth, love and spontaneity are disappearing in favour of suspicion and remoteness. We pay a price for that, and the price is often the un-loved sociopath with a gun and a hang-up about the soul-less school he attended.