No touching!

My inaugural post will be about an entirely different subject to what I'd intially planned, as well. Thanks for breaking the seal on that one, Gil.

I'm a former journalism major who has found himself growing more bitter and frustrated as time passes with the current state of the journalistic trade and its place in American culture. Yet, try as I might, I can't resist keeping up on it on a daily basis. Typically, I pick my poison/propaganda carefully. However, today I went to one of the most egregious purveyors of sensationalistic News-As-Entertainment and found this:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/03/31/zachry.ct.no.touching.WFSB

In short, East Shore Middle School in Connecticut has banned physical contact of every sort - for any reason - because two children were fighting and one injured the other right where it counts.

The parents in this video are protesting because the rule is an overreaction to the not-uncommon occurrence of two kids getting into a fight. They pointed out that it's unrealistic to expect their children to restrict their movements and expressions as the new rule calls for. However, I fear that the parents interviewed might be missing the most insidious of the problems with this decision.

Schools have policies against fighting, and I'm sure East Shore Middle School is no different. So why not respond to the individual behavior with the appropriate measures for that situation? Why resurrect Draco and unleash his pedantry on the innocent?

We're talking about kids between the ages of 11 and 14. The entire reason they're at school is because they lack the knowledge and experience to get along independently and successfully in the adult world. The school is our present culture's primary model of providing that knowledge and experience to our children (and becoming more so as holistic parenting skills die out with agrarian, extended family lifestyles). So what these institutions expect of our children should be important to us.

Kids will lose their tempers. They'll fight. They may even hurt each other, physically or emotionally. Every human has the capacity for this. It's part of being human. And regardless of the core reason the school is going to such measures, they are - instead of grasping the opportunity that the fight-in-question provided to teach kids about appropriate touch, respect for others, the need for order, and the regulation of the temper - teaching their students that perfectly natural and legitimate freedoms should be taken from everyone when someone makes a mess in their abuse of those freedoms.

The laws against cell phone use while driving and toenail clippers on 737s, and the laws making motorcycle helmets and lead testing for every single thrift store toy compulsory are smaller examples in our adult world. But it appears that we're passing this problem along in greater doses to our children, if East Shore Middle School is any indication.

We are creating for ourselves a Whiffle Life (thank you P.J. O'Rourke) culture, wherein we must make it illegal to be hurt or made sick or grieved or uncomfortable or inconvenienced by or fail at anything. It's happening.

How far will we go, quixotically insulating ourselves and everyone else from the consequences of our own flaws and everyone else's? How fast will the ever-improving conveniences of our age carry us there? And what will be left of us when we've done so until we can't be bothered with the efforts involved in that pursuit any longer?

If the word dehumanizing has a better definition, I do not know it. East Shore Middle School is certainly well on its way.