Sure you can. Authorized inseminators will perform the dangerous functions, at the discretion of the school superintendent.
Touch football has been replaced by mean stare football.
When they get to friendly stare football, it'll be Ultimate!
5: If they can't hug, then I'm pretty sure that analorgies are right out.
While this shows, once again, the inferiority of Fairfax County, I think that keeping middle schoolers from touching one another is a good idea on general principles.
Until they blind, rather than blindfold, kids to prevent the creation of eye babies, I think it's worthwhile to let local solutions play out.
As long as they use condoms, there's really no touching involved.
7:
But they really do need to build up their immune system.
keeping middle schoolers from touching one another is a good idea
Yeah, leave that responsibility where it belongs: with the teachers.
9: Dude, you are so doing it wrong.
4. Except for the elite open teams. Thanks to this rule, those are banned too.
heh. that's the middle school my sister went to.
I'm surprised Ogged objects to this rule.
Excellent justificatory quote from the principal: "The kids say, 'If he can high-five, then I can do this.' " I like imagining what's going through her mind while she says "do this".
heh. that's the middle school my sister went to.
But you dropped out after sixth grade to work the family farm?
All this reminds me of the small private school I went to during middle school. The headmaster was in a "No Physical Contact" cold war with his youngest son, a senior at the school, who was always blatantly snogging his girlfriend in the school courtyard. It was a wonderful vicious circle where the harder they tried enforcing the NPC rule, the harder the son played tonsil hockey at 9am. That guy was our hero.
"The kids say, 'If he can high-five, then I can do this.' "
But Ms. Hernandez, I was just giving her a low one!
Does the first paragraph of this post make sense? The policy is not a district-wide one, i.e. one that would have been adopted by committee -- it seems from the article like it might be Ms. Hernandez' own pet project. Am I missing something?
At least the rule will keep the ever-growing ranks of autistic kids from feeling left out.
If school officials can't adequately offer an intelligent rationale for a policy which forbids grabbing girls' crotches as they walk down the hall while allowing high-fives, then they should probably be in another line of work.
17 - i went to a magnet middle school a couple towns over. where we could touch all we wanted.
22: And just look how you turned out.
20:
Or get my 15 yr old autistic daughter kicked out of school. I got the autistic kid who loves to hug, kiss, and fondle breasts. One day earlier this year, her greeting to a teacher in her classroom was to rub the teacher's breasts up and down.
The teacher took it in stride.
crowded hallways
What a stupid, stupid rule.
Why the outrage? Middle schools ban crazy things all the time. Like, my middle school banned backpacks, and started requiring all students to carry around little student passports while walking through the halls. "Your papers," as it were.
It's a middle school, fer crying out loud. Their administrators are more authoritarian than Giuliani in his wildest dreamz.
Actually, after reading the article, I kind of approve. This is *middle school*, people.
And I'm kinda pissed at the dad who is backing up his seventh-grade son's right to put his arm around his "girlfriend" at lunch.
B is just jealous that she wasn't getting any in middle school. It was probably because of that unicorn shirt, you know.
29: I know, and the most outrageous part is, the kid wasn't even at his assigned cafeteria table when he did it!
Kids these days, I just don't know...
Arbitrary middle school rule: Lunch everyday (in the cafetorium!) - twenty tables. You had to put your head down on the table and keep it there until they called your table to start eating or get in the lunchline.
I get calling tables one at a time. But keeping your head resting on the table? For fifteen minutes, if you're the last table called? Really?
I was, in fact, getting groped in middle school and learning to be pretty self-conscious and nervous around groups of men, thankyouverymuch. And I didn't complain. Which is why the article's assertion that Counselors have heard from girls who are uncomfortable hugging boys but embarrassed to tell anyone holds more water with me than the poor outraged kid's belief that he and his classmates understand when and how it is appropriate to hug or pat someone on the back in school and that most teenagers respect boundaries set by their peers.
My gf and I knew all the secret snogging spots in seventh grade -- the quonset hut by the hockey rink, the big janitorial closet in the basement, the balcony of the gym where town meetings were held. Snog, snog, snog. It was basically the only worthwhile thing about seventh grade.
32: right, if you call the table of the Troublemakers last, you get a chance to show 'em who's boss. If you give a seventh grader an inch...
Assigned seats in the cafeteria? That's some bullshit there. How else will outsiders be ostracized?
31: The outrageous part is that a seventh-grade boy has a "girlfriend." Call me old-fashioned, but, no.
I was, in fact, getting groped in middle school
Me too. Titty-twisters, anyone? That's when I started wearing very baggy t-shirts. (Also because the classrooms were air-conditioned to freezing temperatures. Very embarrassing to a young Heebie.)
What's the deal with lunch rooms these days? I don't think I ever at my lunch indoors during K-12 unless it was pouring rain or really unbearably cold. But from what I can tell it seems like students at my daughter's school are only allowed to eat in the "cafetorium". Is this a common thing nowadays? Seems fucked up to me.
Things like this make me feel tremendously old when I recall that my (public) high school had an open campus.
The outrageous part is that a seventh-grade boy has a "girlfriend."
I had a girlfriend when I was 13. How is this outrageous?
You're not old-fashioned so much as from Planet Dr. B. Seventh- and eighth-grade is when I, nobody's idea of a romantically precocious tot, started to fumblingly "go out".
Clarification: I had a girlfriend for about two weeks when I was thirteen, with whom I got as far as holding hands and a couple of nervous pecks.
Also, isn't B's utopia where you have your first kid at 16 or 17? Groping at 13 seems right on track.
I'm pretty happy with the rule that you're not old enough to date until you're in high school. And yeah, PK has a crush on a girl in his class, and wants her to be his gf and it's cute and all, but y'know, honestly, it's not like there's not enough pressure on kids to achieve sexual maturity asap!!! Middle school kids are children. Let them stay kids for a while.
I was just remembering---marvelling, really---about how often I got groped in middle school. The hallways were scary places.
The summer following 12th grade bore witness to your humble correspondent's first "dates", so-called. But, he asked a girl out, or thought he was doing so, in eighth grade and another one in his sophomore year of high school.
33, 38: Still, can't you have a draconianly enforced 'no groping' rule without a kind of ridiculous 'no touching' rule? For middle school, I'd be perfectly happy with 'no public displays of affection' as well. But that still doesn't get you to 'no touching at all'.
I really don't like rules that have to be explained away with 'We're not really planning to enforce it literally.'
Middle school kids are children
Middle school kids are teenagers.
Middle school kids are tweens.
Middle school kids are made of people.
Do 47, 38, and 33 help clarify my position a little bit maybe?
without a kind of ridiculous 'no touching' rule?
Indeed, this seems like dealing with kids viewing inappropriate websites by removing all computers from the school.
I get confused, because I went to a 7-12 high school, so I don't remember exactly what I was doing in eighth rather than ninth grade.
I don't think anyone would deny that there can be bad touches in middle school. It's the leap from "some kids touch each other inappropriately" to "NO TOUCHING" that's insane.
"No hurting people" sounds like a perfectly good rule. "No touching anybody because it might hurt" sounds like a perfectly nonsensical rule. If you applied that rule to a child's whole life it would definitely screw them up good; hopefully middle school is a limited and late enough time that it won't have long term effects any more pernicious than the standard "the rules you will have to follow are arbitrary and pointless," an essential lesson if you want to survive in modern America.
dealing with kids viewing inappropriate websites by removing all computers from the school.
is the new
throwing the baby out with the bathwater
Not really, B. I think you can allow 13-year-olds to haltingly practice at rudimentary boy-girl relationships without condoning girls getting mauled in the hallways.
I went home for lunch in Junior High, much of the time. That was at two of the three I went to. At the first, I so wanted to buy snack-food after school with other kids that I saved my lunch money for it, and so seldom ate lunch. There were days too when not eating lunch allowed me to go into hiding.
I too had a pretty chaste "relationship" with a "boyfriend" in eighth grade. I think the girlfriend/boyfriend talk is no biggie, but stopping hallway groping strikes me as a good idea, too.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine used to teach at a middle school where there was a depressing scandal in which it turned out that a girl was giving boys handjobs or blowjobs, I can't remember which, for FIFTY CENTS a go. And! The way that this came to light was that boys kept coming to the office to ask the secretaries for CHANGE FOR A DOLLAR, and finally someone figured out that something weird was going on.
I was 12 when I started going to classmates's parties that were basically just evening-long make-out sessions. I can't imagine what the parents were thinking, but if they'd been like B they'd have ruined all the fun.
53: I've no doubt that groping is a real problem that has not been dealt with properly. I still have a scar on the back of my hand from the sixth grade where a girl scratched me after I grabbed her butt on the bus (not proud of it, just sayin'). But that's a different issue than saying a 7th-grader having a girlfriend/boyfriend is outrageous.
59: See bit in linked article about girls telling counsellors they don't feel comfortable admitting they're not ready for hugs from 'boyfriends.' See also multiple Unfogged threads about sexually inexperienced men being pressured to do things they're not comfortable with. We're all adults here and can presumably stand up to one another--do you wanna assume that that's true of 7th and 8th graders?
33, 38, 47: In retrospect, I think very highly of my nerdy little school. Maybe I just got individually lucky, but I don't think we had anyone getting (nonconsensually) groped in the halls.
Funny thing is that it was very uncontrolled. It's probably changed now, but you could leave school for lunch or if you had a free period, there were always people wandering around the halls; none of this sort of draconian rule making. (There were some attempts that were fervently resented, but nothing by the standards of most schools.)
I think I've said this before, but I love it very much:
Our homeroom period was called "FAME", which stands for Finding Acceptance in a Middle-school Environment.
(They left out "unsuccessfully", as in UFAME, but let's not quibble.)
Middle school kids are children. Let them stay kids for a while.
I was just remembering---marvelling, really---about how often I got groped in middle school. The hallways were scary places.
I'm not saying there should be a rule against middle school or elementary school kids having girlfriends/boyfriends. I'm saying that the father who backs up his seventh grade son's right to hug his "girlfriend" in the cafeteria is kind of a jerk.
53: Not unless they come with the revelation that unwanted sexually touching of your classmates was actually permitted by the written rules of the school. But this is ridiculous; of course there were rules against it, the rules just didn't suffice to stop the practice. And there's no reason to assume this rule will either.
I am interested to find out, though: this went on presumably because you felt like you couldn't tell, not because there was no rule against sexual assault? Either you couldn't tattle because it would be a stigma, or because it was in a time when the teachers wouldn't care?
The assigned tables at lunch is odd to me; maybe this has been going on for some time. I can't quite construct a rationale for it.
But this is 7th grade? Far from dating at that time, I had other kids putting toads in my hair outdoors during gym class (yeah). But that was because I was the new kid in town. The rest of them were all groping each other fumblingly, I imagine.
I don't think we had anyone getting (nonconsensually) groped in the halls
This at my non-nerdy high school, too, and I can't imagine that I wouldn't have heard something about it if it had been going on.
I'm saying that the father who backs up his seventh grade son's right to hug his "girlfriend" in the cafeteria is kind of a jerk.
His son put his arm around someone's shoulder and got in trouble for it. The father doesn't think his son should have gotten in trouble for this. His position is perfectly reasonable. Why is he a jerk for saying so?
71(b) -- surely the two activities are not mutually exclusive?
I think you can allow 13-year-olds to haltingly practice at rudimentary boy-girl relationships without condoning girls getting mauled in the hallways.
I think the 'no touching' rule is silly, but I also don't think that middle schools should be in any way acknowleging or managing romantic relationships between their students (that is, whether the girl the kid in the story hugged is his girlfriend is neither here nor there. Whatever the rule is, the relationship between the kids has no application to whether the rule was broken.)
And for all the reasons Bitch is bringing up, I do think that no sexualized/romantically affectionate touching is a fine rule at this age, and even (during school hours) through high school. Kids can date after school.
69 - I was just so totally embarrassed at having an actual, womanly, corporeal fleshy thing connecting my head and feet. I don't think my middle school mishandled groping if they were aware of the instance.
Middle school is absolutely the closest you ever get to Lord of the Flies. Kids still in the state of nature, and on hormonal hyperdrive. Plus the most dangerous ones haven't been tracked into the juvenile justice / alternative HS system yet.
I didn't get groped, you know, being a guy and all, but I did get abused. Most particularly by a girl who sat in front of me in math class, who repeatedly stabbed me with her mechanical pencil.
Little bits of lead in my thighs and hands = tokens of love!
Right, so the new rule is not going to solve that problem. The only problem it will solve is when a teacher is an eyewitness to abuse but the abuse victim doesn't want to "press charges."
Meanwhile, the force acting against it is that someone who's abused has to tattle on somebody else not for breaking a rule against sexual assault or violence, but against touching. "Jimmy touched me!" It's infantilizing and I expect it'd be counterproductive.
Middle school is absolutely the closest you ever get to Lord of the Flies.
I wonder if 7-12 high schools like mine are a solution for this. When I was in 7th and 8th grade, I knew that my peers were little harmless nerdy pathetic people, because we were scurrying through a building of godlike teenagers. I couldn't imagine being afraid of someone my own age given the environment, and the older kids didn't give us a hard time because they didn't notice us.
Well, think of it this way. Let's say you have a ban on "unwanted touching". How are you going to differentiate between boys roughhousing with friends and boys picking on each other? It's a pretty fine line, and the victim's almost surely going to deny that he was being bullied. Or you want to ban coupley-type PDAs, which I think is reasonable: are you going to include the best girlfriends who hold hands as they walk down the hall? If not, why not?
Middle school is an angsty time, and a lot of stuff goes on that's awkward and uncomfortable for kids. I don't really think it's so bad for grownups to say okay, our job is to ensure that you are protected, as children, while you work some of this stuff out. If the reaction to doing that is that some of the kids experience adolescent anti-authoritarianism and think, "that's not fair!" or "you're trampling on my rights!" is that really such a horrible thing?
#47. I wasn't so down with the punching, either.
I kissed my first girlfriend when I was in the second--third?--somewhere around there--grade. Of course we spent a lot of time at her house playing with her Barbies, too, so I wasn't exactly a poster child for elementary school studliness.
Whatever the rule is, the relationship between the kids has no application to whether the rule was broken.
No application to this silly rule, sure. But surely the relationship would figure into the calculation as to whether a particular touch was inappropriate or not.
In retrospect, I think very highly of my nerdy little school.
Me too.
The reason nobody in junior high school complains to the authorities is that they know--and this article is a very good illustration of the fact--that the authorities will only make it worse.
Signed,
I Suffered In Junior High And Never Got Over It, And Can In Fact Be Rather Annoying On This Topic
As wonderfully as Heebie has turned out, I think that the heads on the desk in the cafetorium rule should be put in effect everywhere. Can't argue with success.
It's a pretty fine line,
Completely different facial expressions.
and the victim's almost surely going to deny that he was being bullied.
And it's his right and prerogative to do so. Kids aren't and shouldn't be completely reliant on adults to sort out their social relationships.
How are you going to differentiate between boys roughhousing with friends and boys picking on each other? It's a pretty fine line, and the victim's almost surely going to deny that he was being bullied.
In most cases it's really not that difficult to distinguish the two.
I guess this is the liberal in me. I'd rather see a hundred guilty huggers go free than see one innocent hugger wrongly punished.
Or you want to ban coupley-type PDAs, which I think is reasonable: are you going to include the best girlfriends who hold hands as they walk down the hall? If not, why not?
Because it's better to enforce a sane rule with vague edges on an 'I know it when I see it' basis than it is to enforce a nutty rule arbitrarily? If the problem is bullying and harassment, the rule should address bullying and harassment, not all touching.
87 - and my forehead has a flat spot from years and years of patient face-planting!
Compromise: touching, but only with condoms.
86. Word. Your teachers idiots? Half of mine were buffons, and completely useless.
84: Really, no. What that sounds like is a presumption that touch is welcome if there's a recognized relationship between the two people involved. I don't want the school making that judgment. If the rule is 'no unwelcome touching', then it's on a case by case basis.
I'm going to go way against the grain and say that I'm not sure this rule is all that weird. Why do kids need to be touching each other at school?
I don't think most offices have "no touching of any kind" policies, they simply have sexual harrassment policies. But I don't touch many coworkers in the course of a routine day. And we're all adults. Relationships among co-workers aren't forbidden, of course (we're adults), but certainly shouldn't be manifesting themselves with hugs and kisses and handholding during the course of the workday. I think this is standard protocol for adult behavior, and I don't see any reason why middle-school is too early for kids to start learning it.
Maybe this analogy is bad for reasons I'm overlooking: what legitimate need do these kids have for touching one another during the course of the school day? I can't think of any, so I'm not sure what's so outrageous about this policy.
I can't imagine that I wouldn't have heard something about it if it had been going on.
When a group of boys pinned me against the wall and grabbed my crotch, the girlfriend I was with (who'd steered free when she saw them approaching) said to me, "didn't you know they were going to do that?" I hadn't heard anything about it until it happened to me, and I sure as shit didn't tell anyone, either.
74: Because he's asserting his son's right to sexual/romantic public displays of affection over the importance of respecting his teachers and school rules. The kid got *sent to the office.* Not suspended. PK's teacher has done things that I didn't agree with, but I do think that it's important for me to make sure he knows that she has the right to set rules in her classroom.
a sane rule with vague edges
Better still would be for the district to encode every minutia of the rule, keep volumes describing the code in the school library, and train the young'uns in legal argument.
what legitimate need do these kids have for touching one another during the course of the school day?
'Cause we're primates and we need touch?
I think that we should forbid kids to stand close to one another too, because it makes sneak touching easier. A three foot rule would just about work.
94: Some of them meant well, some of them were good teachers, at least two had something really, really wrong with them. A couple of them liked to bully the kids who were already bullied, probably because they were working out their own junior high issues.
The trouble is, life when you're twelve is so incredibly different from life as an adult that it's hard for adults to be effective, especially in a large school where they don't really develop strong bonds with the kids. And most people forget their early adolescence, they really do. Especially--as I found when I did my teacher-training--teachers.
what legitimate need do these kids have for touching one another during the course of the school day?
They're human beings.
Maybe this analogy is bad for reasons I'm overlooking: what legitimate need do these kids have for touching one another during the course of the school day?
And what legitimate need do they have to talk to each other?
If the reaction to doing that is that some of the kids experience adolescent anti-authoritarianism and think, "that's not fair!" or "you're trampling on my rights!" is that really such a horrible thing?
Yeah, I think it can be. School is kids major experience to the outside world. A big "hey, welcome to the fucked up world, you'll hate it here!!" isn't psychologically healthy.
95: What that sounds like is a presumption that touch is welcome if there's a recognized relationship between the two people involved.
Does it? Because it's not meant to. That would be a ridiculously naive assumption.
However: guy grabs girl with whom he has no relationship in the hallway? Seems like an obvious bad touch. Guy grabs his girlfriend in the hallway? Possibly bad, possibly good. It matters.
If the reaction to doing that is that some of the kids experience adolescent anti-authoritarianism and think, "that's not fair!" or "you're trampling on my rights!" is that really such a horrible thing?
Yeah, I think it can be. School is kids major experience to the outside world. A big "hey, welcome to the fucked up world, you'll hate it here!!" isn't psychologically healthy.
In rewriting part of 96 I seem to have deleted something I wanted to say and repeated other parts a few times. Sorry. I think the main idea still came through.
I like to draw a circle on the chalkboard and make children stand with their nose in the circle.
96: I suppose it depends on the school atmosphere. Given the nature of my school, we had a lot of unsupervised time hanging around the school building -- what would be a supervised study hall in another school was just a free hour for us, and lunches were similarly unsupervised. It would seem weird to me if during free time at school you couldn't, e.g., help someone with an earring back that got stuck; thumbwrestle; prop your feet up on a friend's legs; whatever.
But in a more controlled school, where you were in class or being supervised every moment you were in the building, I suppose no touching wouldn't be a hardship.
100: Hoop skirts for everybody!
105: the combinative form of "Megan" is "Mega".
I agree with 91. And I think that that's what the administrators in the linked story are trying to get at: okay, here's a clearly articulated rule that we can cite when needed. You know that if there were a "no bullying or harassment" rule and you tried to say "I could tell by his facial expression that he was being bullied" that the bully's parents would do exactly what the dad in this article is doing.
Kids aren't and shouldn't be completely reliant on adults to sort out their social relationships.
No, but they should damn well be able to trust adults to make it clear what is and isn't acceptable behavior.
Rules with discretion built into them, "vague edges" are better than the overly literal to be sure. I certainly wasn't aware of written rules against touching when I was in school, but the boy hugging the girl would have gotten him sent to the office.
My dad was amazed by the amount of parental fighting "on behalf" of kids he saw on coming to this country. I think he came to see it as indicative of a fundamentally different social attitude.
109 -- is this part of the geometry lesson?
On Junior High (7th-8th grades) versus a 7-12 school, not sure.
There was definitely something productive about segregating us 7/8 graders, a species unto ourselves; the message in my Jr. High was very much that we were in training for the, uh, rigors of high school learning. Different structure for classwork and so on. I think we were all freaked out not just because of the hormonal stuff, but by the nature of the work.
I'm not sure I'd have wanted to go directly from 6th grade to jr/sr. high school without a transition.
It seems like what's needed is more talk about touching and groping in sex-ed classes. Girls classes might focus more on talking about this stuff, and boys classes might talk more about what's inappropriate and why. And how hard they'll be spanked if they transgress.
Rules with discretion built into them
Is this really what that is? I don't think so, I think this is a 'zero tolerance' rule that they're making more palatably by promising not to apply it fairly.
Meanwhile, the Kilmer Middle School wrestling team continues to suffer one humiliating defeat after another.
102: Well, but, come on. How often do you touch your coworkers during the day?
LB obviously has a sensible position on this. Yes, you should be able to help someone with her earring or put an arm around a friend or hold hands. But given the incredibly charged psycho/sexual stuff going on in 7th and 8th grade, I think administrators trying to err on the side of caution should be backed up.
What if we just bound the kids' when they weren't in class? Then you wouldn't really have to police them.
My son just finished 5th grade. His mother allowed him to buy flowers for a girl that he likes. (She likes him too.)
When I told him that I thought he was too young to buy flowers for girls, he said, "But I got the idea from you!"
I guess I had better stop grabbing my gf's butt.
116: From what I've read, they're moving back to K-8 schools now. We're starting to send PK to one next year. I think it's a great idea: it gives the 7th and 8th graders a certain adult authority that *isn't* about sex or bullying, but is instead about helping the younger kids. And it doesn't segregate that age group and reinforce the insanity of it all.
Well, but, come on. How often do you touch your coworkers during the day?
I work alone, so I try to keep it to a minimum.
123 -- "helping" is open to debate -- there are probably other verbs that would fit better in the sentence, like maybe "pantsing".
Actually, I would prefer the no-touching Middle School to my son's school where the cheerleaders smack their own butts on stage for the parents.
(Also, my daughter's school is on a schedule that seems a little strange to me: one school for K-2, another school for 3-5, another school for 6-8, then high school.)
And I think that that's what the administrators in the linked story are trying to get at: okay, here's a clearly articulated rule that we can cite when needed. You know that if there were a "no bullying or harassment" rule and you tried to say "I could tell by his facial expression that he was being bullied" that the bully's parents would do exactly what the dad in this article is doing.
The problem is that banning all touching is clearly articulated, but it's also insane. The thing about parents getting upset when their kids are disciplined for good reasons is that one of an administrator's jobs is to resist caving in to that sort of pressure. Sure, that's a job at which many administrators fall short. But no tolerance policies not only fall short but also teach kids all sorts of pernicious things about rules and authority.
It is never too early to teach kids that important school and work rule:
"No touching someone else's vagina!"
127 -- self-spanking is still allowed.
See, 122 is cute. It's nice to give presents to people you like, and there's no reason that boys and girls shouldn't like each other.
At the same time, I also think it's okay that Will told his son he thought he was too young for that. The boy kinda is.
Analogy: it's cute when little kids want mama to paint their nails, and you should do it. At the same time, you should also tell them that makeup isn't really for children. There's a difference between *playing* grownup and actually *being* grownup.
118: Not in this case, apparently. I was picking up LB's distinction between more general rules meant to be applied with discretion and more literal ones, which we seem to have here. Mostly what's wrong here is a dad being an asshole.
The problem is that banning all touching is clearly articulated
It's very un-clearly articulated since they have clearly articulated that the rule will not be enforced as written. Nobody's going to get in trouble for giving the Heimlich maneuver. I'll hazard a guess that the honors students will be able to get away with ignoring the rule altogether while 'bad' students will not.
no tolerance policies not only fall short but also teach kids all sorts of pernicious things about rules and authority.
Agreed, and I think the administrator in the article makes it clear that it isn't a no-tolerance policy.
"here's a clearly articulated rule that we can cite when needed"
This sort of overbroad rule is barely a rule at all; it's just an increase in power to the people who get to enforce it. In the criminal context, it's unconstitutional, and I think rightly so--police & prosecutors cannot be trusted with that power; they could easily use it to e.g. arrest only black people, gay people, or political dissidents. The middle school context is different--and we trust school administrators with a lot of power over teenagers' lives that we wouldn't give the gov't over adults--but I think this one is really too far. Better to have a reasonably rule where you're going to err on the side of believing the girl who said she was groped, or on reporting kids for situations where either party even looks uncomfortable, or on even mild sexual PDA than a blanket rule that would be absurd if fully enforced.
I'm still not sure what's "insane" about the rule. Again, I suppose if poeple were being suspended for helping each other with earrings, then yeah, okay. But somehow I don't see it playing out that way. And come on, yeah sure, we're all human beings, but you're not going to die if you don't touch any other person (affectionately or aggressively or at all) between the hours of 8 and 3 on weekdays.
Would you think a similar ban "insane" in a professional office? (And isn't there more or less one already, at least implicitly?)
I think the administrator in the article makes it clear that it isn't a no-tolerance policy?
You mean Ms. Hernandez? I don't see where you're getting this. She sounded to me like she wanted the rule enforced in every case where it could be enforced. Otherwise kids will say "well he can give a high five, so I can do this" and you get the dark music playing on the soundtrack and the creepy camera angles.
Would you think a similar ban "insane" in a professional office?
One that included handshakes? Yes, absolutely.
102: Well, but, come on. How often do you touch your coworkers during the day?
My co-workers aren't my entire social universe, and I touch my friends a good deal.
I'm undecided on the no-tolerance policy, but unless you're getting cuddled regularly by your partner (which these kids aren't) or your kids/parents (which these kids are just old enough to reject), you're almost certainly not getting enough touch. I don't know what to do about that, but I think our systems have to yield to a need so fundamental to being human.
(As a side note, I am shocked by how completely my baby brother needs to wrestle. He has for years. I can't imagine anyone other than another same-aged boy having the patience to wrestle with him that long.)
You know, y'all could move to Oklahoma if you're really worried about this stuff. I understand that Senator Coburn's cohorts are working hard to make sure that eighth grade girls are monitored when they go to the bathroom together so that they don't engage in any bathroom lesbianism.
Seriously, though, B, it's a different situation for adults for several reasons, some of them obvious. I think that fostering a general discomfort with touching, despite whatever legitimate concerns, is abnormal and unhealthy.
the administrator in the article makes it clear that it isn't a no-tolerance policy.
All touching ... is against the rules ... The rule has been conveyed to students this way: "NO PHYSICAL CONTACT!!!!!" ... "You have to have an absolute rule with students..."
Handshakes, I'll concede. I guess that's what I get for not reading the article. Okay, insane.
Heebie has a lot of insight into child-raising. Writing things 100 times on the blackboard is also an effective punishment.
m-pwned again. Don't touch me, Megan.
143: The epidemic of middle-school lesbianism is the only thing that made Oklahoma even remotely appealing as a destination.
144: I agree, which is why I think it's a *good* idea for school administrators to ban sexual PDAs, including kissing and hand-holding.
Usually an askance look from a teacher or a reminder to move along is enough to stop girls who are holding hands and giggling in a huddle or a boy who pats a buddy on the back
OMG.
Megan and Jesus McQ make an excellent point.
Maybe the middle schools should just treat touching like sex ed. At the beginning of the school year, you can sign a paper opting your child out from touching. You would have to check the box that says "I touch my child at home."
Middle schoolers are so obnoxious and troublesome because they either (a) aren't sure what is appropriate and what's not or (b) do know but are testing out what they can get away with. In both circumstances, the best thing to do with these people is not to take away their responsibility for their actions, which is exactly what unevenly enforced draconian rules like this one do.
B has the larged and most heterogenous collection of very strong opinions that I have ever encountered.
Like it or not, dirty smelly girls are going to have their cootie-infested hands all over PK in a few years, B.
The comment above was brought to you by the number 153 and the letter F.
151 and 145 demonstrate why I think B did not read the linked article, as evidenced by her 135.
134, 135: It's an absolute ban that isn't always enforced as written. I'd lean toward calling that zero tolerance with arbitrary enforcement, but the nomenclature isn't important. What's important is that it's bad, largely for the reasons Katherine cites. Better to have a rule that says "no inappropriate touching" and be very forthright about the idea that teachers and administrators have significant discretion in sorting out what's inappropriate. These are middle school kids. It's way too early to be lawyering everything to death.
I think it's a *good* idea for school administrators to ban sexual PDAs, including kissing and hand-holding.
That's a lot narrower of a ban than what the school has in place, though.
I blame Bush and his backrubbing of women.
159: A lot of middle-school girls are incredibly tense from being groped and just need a good, relaxing rubdown so they can focus on the rest of the school day. Now that I can no longer go with 100 yards of a school, they look tenser than ever through my binoculars.
B has the larged and most heterogenous collection of very strong opinions that I have ever encountered.
Possibly that has ever existed. B is the Borgesian library of surety.
I'd like heebie to make a math joke about 160, please.
blame Bush and his backrubbing of women.
the best thing to do with these people is not to take away their responsibility for their actions
I hate arguments like this. Great, while "these people" are learning to be "responsible for their actions," those other people over there are learning to be afraid and uncomfortable.
161: And yet, I don't lie to children at museums. Funny, that.
Oh, she's got you there.
Good thing b only has one kid -- if she had two they could wait 'till she took them to a museum and then ask which of them is her favorite.
Heh, PK already tries that. "Mama, do you love me as much as you love the cat? Do you love the mice as much as me?"
He gets upset if I say I love him more than the mice, though. The best he can get, though, is for me to agree to just *say* that I love the mice as much as I love him, so that their feelings won't be hurt.
Here is an example of a school no-touching policy that seems to be essentially what B thinks the policy at Fairfax Co. Middle School. It doesn't sound particularly problematic to me -- although I know of it only from the piece I'm linking.
He gets upset if I say I love him more than the mice, though.
The taekwondo clearly isn't working, B.
That's because we haven't gone in two weeks--either he or I is always feeling a little too lazy to push the issue. Bad mama!
Go karate chop him. Kids need to be touched!
And yet the mice remain fit. Who loves who more now?
Why the air quotes? I have no problem with rules against inappropriate contact, which is really what you are objecting to.
People don't learn what is acceptable when there are arbitrary rules, arbitrarily enforced. All that teaches you is that you can do anything you want if have power (or are in the good graces of those in power).
That would rule if "taekwondo class" meant B ambushing PK Kato-style.
Also, isn't Middle School the point in a kid's life where you have to slowly start transitioning some responsibility to the kid, and not leaving parents/teachers/adult-authority-figures in complete 100% control of everything? I mean, I'm not saying that middle school girls should tough out being groped in hallways, but for milder stuff, like maybe the girl's "boyfriend" is overly huggy, don't we WANT to at least give a chance for the girl to develop the reflex of asserting boundaries herself, and only if that fails falling back on adult authority?
I mean, in high school, by Sophomore year at the latest, the kids are going to have the ability to get in cars and escape all adult oversight for at least limited periods of time. I'd think you'd want a couple of years of more gently and controllably breaking in the concept of "you have to take care of yourself." And I don't think that policies like "no touching ever," or even 10% saner versions of the same, are really the way towards getting kids used to looking out for theirselves.
Junior year was the Car year, for us. (Not for me, personally, as not only was I not about to get a car of my own, my mother didn't have a car, either, but for my classmates.)
Sincere question for any who remember: at what age do little girls stop being willing to confront the guy who is bugging them? Little girls (like little boys) seem pretty good at this.
176 -- I had enough friends who were upperclassmen when I was a sophomore to get rides pretty regularly. Not that it did anything for me nookie-wise.
I think, on mature reflection, that junior high school is a bad idea. It's difficult for me to think of any rules/rule-less-ness/active enforcement/lax enforcement which would really lessen the horror of a bunch of young kids isolated from family and older and younger kids, all tyrannized over by a small group of desperately frightened adults.
K-8 would probably be better.
Or perhaps we should lift a page from Aldous Huxley...
Sophomore seems damned early for cars. I turned 16 at the end of my sophomre year, and I was relatively old. That's when you get your learner's permit, with in-car instruction just starting.
I mean, I'm not saying that middle school girls should tough out being groped in hallways, but for milder stuff, like maybe the girl's "boyfriend" is overly huggy, don't we WANT to at least give a chance for the girl to develop the reflex of asserting boundaries herself, and only if that fails falling back on adult authority?
No.
Really, think about this. What are the bad effects you're imagining from the availability of too much adult help -- tell yourself a concrete story, picturing the kids involved.
In your hypo, we're assuming that the boy is the girl's 'boyfriend', and therefore guiltless and only means well -- this isn't mean nasty harassment, he's just 'overly huggy'.
Do you really think that a girl with the option of saying "Quit that, it's against the rules," and being able to go for backup if he won't listen is going to be weaker than one who's in the position of having to say "Quit it, I don't like it" and having no one to go to for help? She's still going to have to express her opinion of what's going on either way, and the first girl is going to be a lot more likely to express her wishes and make them stick than the second.
Well, but, come on. How often do you touch your coworkers during the day?
Well, umm, quite a lot actually. No sex orgies in the hallways, but a casual shoulder pat, handshake or something like that?
Not unusual.
And kids? Kids tend to be a lot more physical than adults, you may have noticed.
It doesn't even have to involve sex!
Meanwhile, the principal mentioned that "a school that was built for 850 students but houses 1,100."
There's the reason for your rule: pure economic pressure and overpopulation means the school can only keep order by this sort of draconian rules.
177: Junior high is a big factor here. All of the sudden you're away from the friends you had, in a room with a bunch of new people who are all, just like you, hostile, afraid and trying to suss out the new norms. Then you're moved around forty-five minutes later to another new room with mostly new people. Plus, hey, it's junior high so you get to take Showers In Gym (well, now that all the kids are learning to the test, they hardly get any gym, but that's how it was back in the day).
Basically, you're taking a bunch of kids away from all the rules and structures they used to know and tossing them in with a bunch of strangers. That's a lot of why it gets so bad so fast.
If the kids want to have sex they should go to the special rooms provided for that purpose.
Sincere question for any who remember: at what age do little girls stop being willing to confront the guy who is bugging them?
I didn't get this sort of harassment, but I'd expect you get a break point around puberty. As Heebie said, it's embarrassing suddenly walking around in a grown woman's body, or at least one with tits.
And of course that's also around the point where boys start being physically intimidating.
I'm glad my kids have gone K-8 rather than Junior High, bad for all of the reasons mentioned. Some years have to be your worst, and it might have been those anyway, but I'm certain that structural reasons helped make those years so bad for me, where they needn't have been.
I leave you alone for a couple of hours, and you let B bait you like this.
Well, but, come on. How often do you touch your coworkers during the day?
I work alone, so I try to keep it to a minimum.
"Honey, what are you doing in there? Are you okay?"
"Oh, just having a 'meeting'."
Another good post today on over-the-top school disciplinarians.
maybe the girl's "boyfriend" is overly huggy, don't we WANT to at least give a chance for the girl to develop the reflex of asserting boundaries herself
What LB's saying. The best way to teach kids to assert their boundaries is to make it clear that you will back them up.
She's still going to have to express her opinion of what's going on either way, and the first girl is going to be a lot more likely to express her wishes and make them stick than the second.
This seems wrong to me: if you teach her to say "Quit it, I don't like that," and then go for backup, you're teaching her that (a) her decision is final, and (b) society will have her back. If you teach her that the rules regulating pseudo-sexual interaction are there for her protection, and those are the rules by which she should determine appropriate behavior--that's just not an outcome I would have thought was a good outcome by most modern lights.
See this? Bunch of troublemakers, that's what.
119 and 191 are totally awesome.
Look, teaching girls (and boys) not to put up with bullshit is pretty easy, really, and the best way to do it isn't to focus explicitly on sexual bullshit. You teach them that when *they* say no, you won't force the issue, that when *you* say no you expect them to stop, you don't poo-poo them when they talk about shit that bugs them, you explain that rough and tumble play is great as long as you make sure the other person wants to horseplay too and that it stops as soon as someone says "get off me" or similar, and you make it clear that if anyone, including family, is asking or pushing for physical contact when the kid's not comfortable with it that the kid is allowed to say no.
I am willing to be that the principal created this rule either a) because of a couple shrieking parents who saw the reality of middle school harassment and then wouldn't let it go, and/or there was a couple who stood outside the office door, clinging to each other between classes, physically g-to-g for the entire length of the passing period.
Yes, I've seen it. I don't like to be a prude, but I absolutely told those two to get off each other. It's not a professional work environment. I have a Master's degree, and dammit, someone better rekkinize.
This reminds me of the 'dirting dancing' debate at school dances. Parents say some shit about 'oh, every generation has its dirty dancing, bla bla' but then we show them pictures, this is your son and his friend sandwiching a girl, this is your daughter bending over and taking it from behind like a dog, etc.
Don't get me started...
185 Kids are maybe more physical because they are less inhibited by the idea that every little touch carries some sort of sexual connotation.
Third worlders, dude. Their all being prepped for our sex-tourism, anyway.
195, 198: In a different comment thread, you'd be making fun of those kids for being homos.
Also I love JP.
If you teach her that the rules regulating pseudo-sexual interaction are there for her protection, and those are the rules by which she should determine appropriate behavior
Dude, we're talking 12 year olds. The rules are there for their protection. They're going to turn into adults and make their own decisions about what's appropriate. But in the meantime, give them a bit of cover.
194: As long as she's got the backup. Where I'm disagreeing with Epoch is that you don't toughen people up by depriving them of help; people learn to stand up for themselves when they learn that standing up for themselves works.
I was a little sarcastic about his hypo, because an 'overly huggy boyfriend' isn't the problem here. Situations where "Golly, if she'd just communicated to me somehow that she was unhappy with what I was doing, I wouldn't ever have done it, honest!" while they're conceivable, aren't the ordinary harassment we're talking about. So we're not talking about girls so pathetically spineless that they can't even convey to the boys touching them that they'd like to be left alone -- we're talking about girls who need tactics for making bigger stronger people who are harassing them stop.
Giving them reliable adult help to go to is an awfully useful tactic here. Depriving them of such reliable adult help is basically teaching them that being harassed is normal and they should shut up and take it.
I was a little sarcastic about his hypo, because an 'overly huggy boyfriend' isn't the problem here.
Wait, isn't the actual situation a not-overly huggy boyfriend?
Among truly Orthodox Jews (including, like, my cousins) all skin-to-skin touching between unrelated males and females is banned after puberty. The only exceptions are Dad, the doctor, and the husband. Touching on clothes can be a little bit of a grey area, though.
They aren't primates like us, though, they were created directly by God about 10,000 years ago.
184: Here's the concrete story I'm imagining:
Girl's relationship with all of her boy peers is governed by her never having to tell anyone "Quit it," because adults intervene before she ever gets uncomfortable enough to say "Quit it."
And then high school happens and adult supervision falls off and insert your horror story here, whether it's as awful as date rape or as mild as becoming the target for lots of malicious teasing from other girls who she never stands up to.
Contrary to what you seem to think, I'm not imagining aggressive junior high kids (boys or girls, and I'd actually like to broaden the focus of the topic from straight up sexual harrassment, because I think that's the extreme end of a spectrum of behaviour) as little angels who are just unaware that they're pushing lots of boundaries. But the point is, at some point, everyone has to learn to not let themselves get pushed around by aggressive people, whether they aggressors are just enthusiastic types or malicious little shits. And I think that it's best for people to at least start to learn that when the aggressive behaviour is relatively mild and relatively un-scarring. Hence, stomp down pre-emptively on mid-hall groping, but at least give people a chance to act on their own initiative with respect to huggy "boyfriends" (or cliquey teasing same-sex friends, or mild bullying), regardless of whether the "boyfriend" or whomever is innocent or not.
I've got no problem with a girl saying, "Quit it, that's against the rules." I've got a problem with a teacher pre-emptively saying, "Quit it, that's against the rules." The girl needs to learn to say "Quit it" herself.
205: No, that's the kid whose parents made the fuss about the rule. He's not (from the article) the kid who is the problem noted in comments 33, 38 and 47.
Girl's relationship with all of her boy peers is governed by her never having to tell anyone "Quit it," because adults intervene before she ever gets uncomfortable enough to say "Quit it."
I'm pretty sure this comes up in, like, preschool, even in our crazy hypersupervised parenting society.
"we're not talking about girls so pathetically spineless that they can't even convey to the boys touching them that they'd like to be left alone"
I don't think a 12-13 year old girl who can't convey this to an aggressive boy is "pathetically spineless", in fact I think it might be pretty natural at that age to be so freaked out you can't respond.
Gswift gets it right inasmuch as rules should be in place to deal with harassment and bullying, and those rules should be enforced. But the "you can't touch anybody ever in any fashion" rule is completely nuts.
208: I strongly disagree. There is no possible school environment that is as locked down as you're imagining -- people will always have the chance to learn to oppose aggressive behavior. If they have enough shelter from it in school, though, they may also get a chance to learn that being harassed isn't inevitable.
210: In preschool the girls can mostly beat the boys up, so they're in a little better position to make it stick. But it's still true that the problem with middle schools generally isn't an excess of caring, competent adult supervision.
in fact I think it might be pretty natural at that age to be so freaked out you can't respond.
Look, this is just crap. Go to Iran and try to push around a twelve-year-old girl. Docility is cultural, and putting adults in charge of watching out for any touch only contributes to infantalization.
The rules are there for their protection. They're going to turn into adults and make their own decisions about what's appropriate.
Except we're genuinely not worried about girls holding hands, or high-fives, or backslaps, or...in 95% of all cases (I'm totally willing to be corrected here), I'd guess...hugs. Two kids who can't let go of each other? Fuck, set 'em on fire if you want. I would think that the way you instruct kids on "appropriate" behavior is by telling them to quit it when the behavior is inappropriate. But banning innocuous behavior strikes me as crazy.
There are real benefits, over the long run, to men (and I assume women) who are comfortable around women, and do not worry that every touching interaction is sexual or must be policed as appropriate or inappropriate.
Really, parents should raise their kids as they like. So if a no touching policy seems sane, so be it. It still seems strange to me.
"Parents say some shit about 'oh, every generation has its dirty dancing, bla bla' but then we show them pictures, this is your son and his friend sandwiching a girl, this is your daughter bending over and taking it from behind like a dog, etc."
Do they smile proudly and say "I taught her that move!"?
Go to Iran and try to push around a twelve-year-old girl.
That's a pretty daunting trip for a busy man like myself. Can't I just order a 12-yr-old Iranian girl over the internet?
212: You think under those circumstances he's confused? That looks like a communication problem?
No, it's not. A boy doing something to a girl that has her 'so freaked out she can't respond' isn't just waiting for her to express her opposition to his actions so that he can say "My apologies, I had no idea you objected to what I was doing." So the problem isn't that she needs to learn to communicate better, it's that she needs help to make him stop.
Merely anecdotally, telling someone "quit it" in a hostile situation just eggs them on. I know, for I told people to quit it and it just made them even surer that they were successfully hurting me. It is not sufficient to say to a twelve-year-old that he/she should stand up for him/herself against a large group of peers.
Go to Iran and try to push around a twelve-year-old girl
Great, the Army recuitment crap has even found its way here now.
220: [Ogged leaves thread to prepare business plan and meet with VCs.]
I've got no problem with a girl saying, "Quit it, that's against the rules." I've got a problem with a teacher pre-emptively saying, "Quit it, that's against the rules." The girl needs to learn to say "Quit it" herself.
Which is a lot easier to do if authority figures don't hang back when they see something inappropriate. Just like for full-grown adults it's a lot easier to say "knock it off" if you don't think that everyone's going to tell you how humorless you're being.
Quit oppressing B, guys.
Go to Iran and try to push around a twelve-year-old girl. Docility is cultural, and putting adults in charge of watching out for any touch only contributes to infantalization.
Right, women in Iran never get harassed or raped, and the culture of what isn't allowed sexually is completely open-ended.
So if a no touching policy seems sane, so be it. It still seems strange to me.
I was thinking more along the lines of LB's "romantic touching" type rule.
But how are people going to realize how humorless they're being if other people don't tell them?
214: That's silly. Of course nobody's ever in a situation so locked down that they can't get out a "Quit it!" in time to beat a teacher saying the same. But plenty of kids are in situations where they can rely on a teacher to jump in and say "Quit it!" for them before bad behaviour becomes intolerable. Or, more dangerously, they think they are in such situations but actually aren't.
I don't even really get how you think this works. Given a kid whose current tendency is to avoid confrontation, you really think that the way to teach them assertiveness is to have authority figures pre-emptively defend them?
221: are you kidding me? What could you possibly have thought I was saying there? That an aggressive boy and a freaked out 12 year old girl is a "communication problem"? Think again.
193: By reminding them that their buffoonish, incompetent, teaching-to-the-test teachers are entitled to make and enforce the rules? No sale.
Right. Look at this again:
I've got a problem with a teacher pre-emptively saying, "Quit it, that's against the rules."
So, you're envisioning a rule against unwanted touching, and a teacher watching one kid physically harassing another. But you don't want the teacher to step in untill the kid being harassed yells for help, because they need to toughen up or something?
If that's not what you're thinking, I'm not clear at all what you don't want teachers to do -- when you think I'd advocate intervention and you wouldn't. (To be clear, I'd favor rules against rough, sexualized, or otherwise unwanted or harassing touching during school (people who want to roughhouse or make out can do it after 3). And I'd expect adults in authority to intervene whenever they saw a violation, to the extent reasonably possible.)
Go to Iran and try to push around a twelve-year-old girl. Docility is cultural
There's definitely some truth to this, but there's got to be some adult supervision. Not everyone is up to this at 12.
I thought this was a pretty interesting article:
http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-4311.html&fromMod=emailed
There are real benefits, over the long run, to men (and I assume women) who are comfortable around women, and do not worry that every touching interaction is sexual or must be policed as appropriate or inappropriate.
Yes. But you also have to consider that what a *lot* of men feel "comfortable" about isn't, actually, okay. Not all men, and making most guys paranoid is why I think passing rules that focus exclusively on m/f touching is problematic. But ignoring the reality that for kids who are just exploring sexual/romantic relationships, there are going to be mistakes is not going to help. Better to have a "no PDA" rule, which gives both girls *and boys* the "right" to say no.
231: Epoch seems to be arguing that we need loosely enforced rules so people at risk of harassment can get harassed enough to build up their confrontation skills, but opened with an example of an 'overly huggy boyfriend', which appeared meant to imply that we were talking about a communication problem rather than harassment. In other words, that part of the problem would be solved by forcing girls to learn to speak up for themselves so that boys (who aren't psychic or anything, you know) would understand when their actions were offensive. That was the context in which my comment about the problem not being girls who were too spineless to speak up for themselves came in.
I think you responded to me without following the context, and we crossed wires after that.
Right, women in Iran never get harassed or raped, and the culture of what isn't allowed sexually is completely open-ended.
Care to wager whether women are more or less likely to be treated badly, in precisely these sorts of ways, in parts of Iran (or anywhere) where "no touching" rules are more severe and more severely enforced? How is this even a question?
232: However incompetent some middle school teachers may be, it's still a pretty good bet that middle school teachers have a better idea where the boundaries are than middle school kids do. It's a shitty age. The goal is to get kids through it without too much long-term harm. Any actual learning that takes place in middle school is pure gravy.
It's a shitty age.
This is the truest thing said so far in this thread. I can't decide whether middle-school teachers are saints or just garden variety masochists.
part of the problem would be solved by forcing girls to learn to speak up for themselves so that boys (who aren't psychic or anything, you know) would understand when their actions were offensive
Right, LB, but you forgot the part where the line between "harmless" and "pushy" is something a 12-year old girl is going to be better able to articulate than a reasonable adult.
Also that most adults aren't reasonable on this issue, and are actually likely to tell girls things like "aww, he likes you!" rather than saying "knock it off."
I thought this was a pretty interesting article:
That is interesting. She sounds like a bit of a crank--even the most mature teens do some stupid shit that they wouldn't do again at 25--but the basic point about infantilization and the presumed naturalness of "adolescent rebellion" and teens' capacity to behave as adults in a lot of situations, is right on.
233: Well, I don't really have a pithy, one-sentence approach the the situation, because I think that there's a kind of complex balance between protecting kids (which definitely needs to happen) and teaching them to protect themselves (which also needs to happen).
So, basically, the rules I'd envision would be hard and fast only for extreme cases, "No fighting, no groping," but would also include hippy-ass rules like "Don't make your classmates uncomfortable, respect them if they tell you to stop doing something."
If the teacher saw some kid doing something that was grossly inappropriate (kid A punches kid B in the nose), the teacher would step in and stop it pre-emptively. If the teacher saw a kid doing something kind of borderline (kid A and kid B are roughhousing), maybe he'd wait a little bit and see whether or not the situation appeared to be escalating or de-escalating, and then step in or not. If a teacher saw a kid doing something that another kid was kind of uncomfortable with, but didn't seem likely to do any real harm (physically or psychologically), maybe the teacher chats with the victim later and says, "You know, if you don't want those kids to do that, just tell them to leave you alone, and I'll back you up 100%." If a teacher sees something basically harmless like high-fiving, he ignores it (I think that we're all in agreement, here).
It's complex, and I have no doubt that sometimes a teacher would make the wrong call. I just think that it's better to make a few wrong calls at the margin of protecting the kid versus letting the kid protect themselves than err entirely on the side of protecting the kid.
241: Um, just checking, but the first sentence of that is sarcasm, and the second is straight, right? Because I agree with the first as sarcasm, but the second is actually annoyingly true -- which on some level cuts against asking adults to police this stuff, but adults are the best we've got.
237: Oh, I was agreeing with you. People in that 10-14 kind of age range can obviously need outside support and modeling in learning how to speak up for themselves. Except in Iran, I guess.
It's a shitty age.
I think the article in 235 is good on this: it doesn't have to be a shitty age. I'll bring up Iran again, since that the only counterexample I know: there's no expectation of teen rebellion--you get to play around some, but by the time you hit puberty, you're expected to act like an adult in most circumstances, and people do. (Note: it was totally shitty for me too, but I grew up here.)
238: Gross oversimplification. I was merely replying to Ogged's narrow (and trollish) point.
There are a lot of places where kids aren't expected to be as compliant and quiet and well-mannered as they are in the U.S. The problem here isn't rules about sexual harassment, though; it's the goddamn nuclear family. Which is the same thing that leads American parents to get all huffy when their kid gets busted at school for hugging his girlfriend.
Well, I do think that U.S. junior high and high schools are uniquely awful compared to other nations. I don't hear the universal Junior High/HS misery stories from people who grew up in a lot of other countries. I think it has something to do with segregating a ton of kids exclusively among their same-age peers. Plus giant comprehensive schools that aren't tracked by social class or homogeniety at all. The weak ones get brutalized.
If a teacher saw a kid doing something that another kid was kind of uncomfortable with, but didn't seem likely to do any real harm (physically or psychologically), maybe the teacher chats with the victim later and says, "You know, if you don't want those kids to do that, just tell them to leave you alone, and I'll back you up 100%."
Have you thought about the fact that this makes the harassed kid even more the sissy? If the teacher intervenes of their own accord, the troublemakers are in trouble for breaking school rules. If the teacher intervenes because the harassed kid begged for help, then the sissy got the troublemakers in trouble, just because he couldn't take a joke.
If you think that a kid getting pushed around already is better off for more of this kind of pressure, I suppose that's a possible position to take. But I don't agree.
The problem here isn't rules about sexual harassment, though; it's the goddamn nuclear family.
I'll admit that I haven't the faintest idea what you're driving at here.
I went to a 6-8 grade middle school, and the harrassment was really the worst in the first year. Nobody knew each other, all the little neighborhood elementary school populations got thrown together, and huge swaths of the new school population were frightening alien. Within a year, most people had formed protective cliques, and one knew whom and where to avoid.
It wasn't clear bullying, not that I remember. It was anonymous ass-pinching or breast-grabbing. It was a general vulnerability that seemed much more environmental than personal; I wouldn't have even known which person to point at and complain about.
One of my older sisters, on the other hand, bit a boy who had "playfully" put her in a headlock. Looking back on it, good for her, but she certainly got a lot of shit for it at the time.
I think that fostering a general discomfort with touching, despite whatever legitimate concerns, is abnormal and unhealthy.
Very late to the thread, but it strikes me that the rule's purpose isn't to protect young girls from hallway harassment, but to have something easy to enforce: I as the teacher or hallway proctor don't have to think. I just see touching and report it.
This strikes me as wrongheaded for the reason listed above. Some kinds of touching are good, some are bad, but throwing them all in the bad category just seems absurd. If you're worried about girls being pressured to hug, have a blanket no-PDA rule. If you're worried about them being groped, follow your rules about assault. But this is of a piece with the 'zero tolerance' violence policies. They make suburbanites feel like their kids are safe when it really hasn't done a blessed thing to improve the school at all.
Middle school sucked. All 11-13 year olds should really be sent to a farm to work for those years. They're not getting anything out of school at that age anyway, so they might as well tire themselves out with some healthy calisthenics. I was an awkward, unattractive, and very bright child. Who got boobs early. Someone only tried to grope me once. I threw him into a locker door. B's absolutely right that girls don't say anything; I certainly didn't.
246: I tend to believe that's true, but you make rules for middle schools in the culture you have, not the one you'd like to have.
247: I think Hawaii (or at least Oahu) tends to be an above-average place for kids to grow up, largely because more people are more rooted and there are more adults around who will call kids on bad behavior.
you make rules for middle schools in the culture you have, not the one you'd like to have
Sure, but that's no reason to exacerbate the problems in your culture. I should probably sit this thread out, given my burning hatred for school administrators. Have fun, y'all!
my burning hatred for school administrators
Where'd that come from? I thought you had a reasonably good time in school, or at least were less bullied than bullying.
Alls I know is:
When I see them making out, I say "making out in the hallway is not very classy." And then I stare at them until they move along.
When I see them sitting on each other, I say "get off of her. God didn't make her to be your furniture." And then I stare at them until they move along.
And when the sophomores have to hug EVERYONE THEY SEE in the hallway between classes, I growl, "get out my way."
No, I'm not chastity patrol. But I shouldn't have to put up with that shit in my workplace. Would non-teachers put up with that?
And don't give me that shit about hating kids or some stuff goes with the job. By the time they are seniors, they are pulling me aside and telling me about how the underclassmen are disgusting, with all their hugging and clinging and making out in the middle of the hallway.
And don't tell me they're just exploring the limits of their affection; those kids are MEAN to each other.
So the "no touching rule." Maybe it's extreme. But I totally get it.
Adolescents are smart, but their heads are full of nonsense, and they are mean. So I'm not sure that we ought to treat them as adults. But I agree that we are doing something desperately wrong in middle schools.
They're not getting anything out of school at that age anyway, so they might as well tire themselves out with some healthy calisthenics.
When my mom taught jr. high, she'd make the boys do push ups when they got unruly.
Sure, but that's no reason to exacerbate the problems in your culture.
That's exactly what we're talking about: what sort of rules are least likely to exacerbate the problems.
Gross oversimplification.
What do you want to bet that your oversimplification is grosser than mine?
I don't know who you people have failed to meet in your lives, but if you think sorting out appropriate/inappropriate touching is hard when you're 14, surrounded by teachers, parents, and friends. and one hopes reasonable rules that get enforced, wait till you meet the guys who are sorting it out at 24. Real charmers.
251: Well, e.g. the praised article linked in 235. I don't think that it's schools and child labor laws that infantalize adolescents. I think it's the idea, which starts as soon as you have a baby, that "you chose to have a child, it's your responsibility to raise it", the corresponding segregation of children from everyday life, and the consequent defensiveness of a lot of parents any time their child is criticized. If I buy into the idea that PK is *my child*, and that everything he does is somehow a referendum on me, then I'm probably going to offer excuses when he acts like a turd.
249: I think that there are two different situations:
1. Kid who's getting teased or harassed or beaten up leaves the present situation, finds a teacher, brings the teacher back, and the harassers get after-the-fact consequences. I think that that may fairly often lead to retribution against the "tattle-tale," more so than if he or she just let it go.
2. Kid is getting teased or harassed or beaten up and the teacher steps in in media res and breaks up the situation/hands out consequences. I think that's less likely to bring retribution to the victim than situation 1.
I also think that, in situation 2, the victim is no more likely to invite retribution if he asserts himself prior to the teacher stepping in, than if he does not assert himself prior to the teacher stepping in.
So, to create a more concrete example: Suppose that a kid is getting called names. He says, "Quit it, go away, I don't want to talk to you." The teaser escalates instead of backing down. The teacher steps in and berates the teaser. I don't think that the victim is any more likely to get retribution than if he quietly "took it" until the teacher stepped in.
I mean, I'm not claiming this is a cure-all. I don't know how to stop all bullying. I'm just pretty sure that ultra-proactiveness is not the way.
What worked for me in elementary school when I was getting bullied was shamelessly buttering up the alpha of the pack of kids who were victimizing me, making friends with him, and then using that dynamic to cut out and isolate anyone who tried to continue the abuse. But I don't think that's necessarily scaleable.
my burning hatred for school administrators
Comity! Had they actually managed to prevent my seventh-grade snogging, I'd hate them even more.
more adults around who will call kids on bad behavior
Bingo. We have a winner. That's a much better way to go, but we don't do it because "kids have to learn sometime" and/or "it's their parents' job."
I also think that, in situation 2, the victim is no more likely to invite retribution if he asserts himself prior to the teacher stepping in, than if he does not assert himself prior to the teacher stepping in.
Really? Even though the harassers know that they only get in trouble if the victim asserts himself; what they were doing would be fine with the teacher if the victim would just suck it up and take it? I think that invites retailiation.
And 257 sounds like exactly what I'd expect a responsible high school teacher to do, with or without this sort of no tolerance rule.
my burning hatred for school administrators
Where'd that come from? I thought you had a reasonably good time in school, or at least were less bullied than bullying.
I kind of have that too. Had some real pieces of work for teachers and admins in jr. high and high school.
Jr. high wasn't bad for me, probably because the first year I beat the living hell out of another guy in front of about 30 other kids. Not really the kind of thing we can use to inform policy.
Also, having adults call kids on what is plainly not bad behavior doesn't help.
I couldn't resist commenting -- not only is the school in the story my alma mater (Class of 1976! Woo hoo!) but my oldest daughter just finished 7th grade.
How about this: Less draconian rules, but more discussion with the kids in adavnce about the rationale and interpretation of rules w/r/t touching. If new hires at most corporations get sexual harassment orientation, then middle school children would do well to get it as well.
I dislike a rule that forbids handshakes and pats on the back. My common sense says that fighting, bullying, & unwanted touching should be forbidden, not ALL touching. However, I don't dismiss the issues raised by this situation. 7th graders are starting to pair off as BF/GF, and some of those relationships are of the cute variety, but in others the participants are pushing the sexual envelope. I have enough to worry about when my daughter goes to the mall or to a friend's house, I need to trust that she is safe and well-supervised while at school.
"I can't decide whether middle-school teachers are saints or just garden variety masochists."
In my limited (but recent) experience, middle school teachers tend to suck. 12-14 year old kids really are pains in the ass, and while I think some people have a passion to teach high schoolers, and others have a passion to teach elementary schoolers, very few have a passion for tweens, so middle-school faculty are the odds and ends. So factor this in to all your calculations. Maybe it means rules should be more explicit, less subject to teachers' interpretation?
I also wonder whether it's more harmful than not for the parent to call the Washington Post b/c he was unhappy with his son's school detention. What kind of lesson is THAT about handling conflict?
266: Really. I guess I think that being willing to stand up to the aggressors, to their faces and not behind their backs, decreases chances of retaliation as much or more than being seen as a contributing cause to teacher punishment increases it. It makes the victim a harder, or a more dangerous, target.
You guys, don't you remember the terrible, fear-based omerta of junior high? You didn't rat to the teachers because that would have made you even more of a target, and even more of a freak. And because, fundamentally, the kind of people who teach junior high usually think it's your fault--not just that you need to learn to stand up for yourself, or that things suck for you at home and you can't figure school out because your home life doesn't make any sense either, but that you're weak and foolish and just need to make the others leave you alone.
Or the teachers think, might I add, that you're a nuisance-y little freak with your books and your bad clothes and your funny vocabulary, and you deserve everything you get.
In teacher-training--or at least in expensive teacher-training at a progressive institution--it was strongly suggested to us that we should take the "just suck it up, you feeble little git" approach in the interest of toughening our charges.
I also wonder whether it's more harmful than not for the parent to call the Washington Post b/c he was unhappy with his son's school detention. What kind of lesson is THAT about handling conflict?
Amen.
One problem with relying solely on teacher enforcement is that the teachers aren't around after school. While I can't imagine a policy that said, "let the picked-on kid get in a few punches before intervening," in my experience of bullying, the bullies don't stop because the teacher said anything, they just get craftier. Girl bullying tends more towards the emotional abuse end anyway, and that's a lot harder to police.
Not that hitting back is always a cure-all. Shivbunny always got in fights as a sixth-grader. He was a short little kid who moved in from out of town. So when he did fight back, he pretty much got creamed after school. Until his cousin, older by six years, six feet tall, and one of the 'bad kids' at school (trenchcoat, carried a knife) intervened by, uh, coming up behind the kid beating shivbunny and picking him up and throwing him.
I should probably sit this thread out, given my burning hatred for school administrators. Have fun, y'all!
Obviously Ogged doesn't know how to stand up for himself.
Speaking of 'his father', from the UPI wire:
"How do kids learn what's right and what's wrong?" Vienna resident Henri Beaulieu asked. "They are all smart kids, and they can draw lines. If they cross them, they can get in trouble. But I don't think it would happen too often."
Her son Hal, who was disciplined recently after hugging his girlfriend in school, agreed with his mother's condemnation of the school's no-touching rule.
That'll teach you to spell your name the sissy French way, Hank!
Junior high sucks, and one of the reasons that it sucks is that junior high teachers are no less susceptible than the kid in the back row who already has the beginnings of a mustache and his older brother's hand-me-down Motley Crue t-shirt to the thrill and comfort of punishing the weak.
275: When I was in high school, we sometimes gave rides to a blind guy who worked near where our school was. He had grown up sighted, and his stories of his youth in New Jersey included a story about getting involved in escalating fights until his parents called in the Mob and had his adversaries put in the hospital. And then nobody ever messed with him again, the end.
It got real quiet in our car of privileged white kids after he told that story. It was not the expected moral to stories of bullying.
279: A friend of mine told me recently that the best advice to the bullied that he ever heard, although he knew that he could never morally repeat it and was relieved that he had not heard it during his own bullied years, was from, of all people, G. Gordon Liddy: "Identify the most dangerous of the bullies. Maim him permanently, then stand your ground against the rest."
280 -- this is, of course, a major plot-point in one of the most popular sci-fi novels among the middle-school-nerd set.
281: I am glad I didn't read Ender's Game until much later. Travis McGee didn't have much practical influence on my junior high self, except for instilling antipathy to pollution, handguns and responsibility.
97 degrees here; I'm not thinking very well.
The infantilization and hugging themes are the most interesting here.
1. US society in general is engaged in infantizilation of the populace, no? Often self-imposed.
2. Way upthread, Megan, I believe, introduced the obvious notion that we do not touch in this society. Forgive me if I blather, but in the last 10 years I've become a hugger. Hug people I like when I meet them. They're often startled.
Since I didn't endure inappropriate groping in school as a teenager, it's a little difficult to focus on that as a serious concern, but the reporting of this puts me in mind of recent talk about the increasing breakdown of civil behavior in this society in general.
I had a fine time throughout my 1-8 school years. No separate Jr. High.
8th grade was sort of fun? I remember a lot of wandering around and not being in class.
I suggest smaller schools, organized better. If you treat schools like prisons, you get what you get.
It is so not right that this thread is already at 284 comments, because I WENT TO JOYCE KILMER MIDDLE SCHOOL and hated, hated, hated it. (Catherine: Word to your poor sister.)
I was there for 8th grade, from 1980-81. We had just moved to Virginia (ugh) from New Jersey (aah). While I was there, the rules included no handholding and no toenail polish. My memory is that the latter was alleged to be "provocative," but I may have invented that explanation. We also had the assigned lunch tables. It seemed very elementary-schoolish to me after the sophisticated scene back in NJ.
But I went on to have much bigger problems there in Fairfax County, like finding out that half of my fellow Kilmerians would be going to Fairfax High School, home of the Rebels. School symbol: Confederate flag. I know now that that wasn't so unusual, but I was completely shocked, poor naive Yankee that I was. Am.
Since I didn't endure inappropriate groping in school as a teenager, it's a little difficult to focus on that as a serious concern, but the reporting of this puts me in mind of recent talk about the increasing breakdown of civil behavior in this society in general.
But none of the fondled middle-schoolers in this thread attended middle school since the 80's, I'd guess.
I think grabbing butts and twisting new titties has gone on for a very long time.
I went to a hippy private middle school and the issue there was that some of the girls were not comfortable with how often a teacher was hugging them.
He hugged the male students too, but probably not in the same way.
275: (trenchcoat, carried a knife)
Did that with one of the kids picking on my daughter. Getting the school involved didn't do anything. Meeting the kid and his friends outside of school, on the bike, wearing the full leather gear, and informing him I was going to do something nasty to him if I ever heard another complaint stopped it. I give really good ominous growl. I got all sorts of hysterical calls from the kid's mother asserting their little darling didn't do stuff like that and we should handle it by talking. I told her we had already handled it by talking and had nothing further to say at all.
New Jersey (aah)
Yay!
Where are youse guys from?
I've got the whole state covered: Grew up in Middletown, lived in Cherry Hill for a couple of years when I was really little, and my parents both grew up in Teaneck.
We live in South Orange.
we had already handled it by talking
Awesome.
Hug people I like when I meet them. They're often startled.
You like uptight people? Hugging is pretty normal, I think. Maybe more out here than back there, but still.
Hey aren't you and M/tch coming to NYC sometime soon?
I think grabbing butts and twisting new titties has gone on for a very long time.
So I gather. I just didn't experience it myself.
Someone said earlier that she was embarassed by her newfound breasts; in my middle school, and into high school, there was, on the contrary, bragging by the girls about who'd gotten a new/bigger bra, who'd gotten her period.
I probably suffered more at the hands of my fellow girls than from the guys. It was all completely under the radar of the adults.
But again, I really have no idea what middle school girls go through these days.
292: I had taken this to read that parsimon startled people by being fierce and bold yet also huggable. I imagine that I'd startle people a great deal myself if I began hugging them because I am standoffish and sarky and it seems implausible when I do it. Maybe I'll start....
292 -- no, they're startled when parsimon slips them the tongue.
Someone said earlier that she was embarassed by her newfound breasts; in my middle school, and into high school, there was, on the contrary, bragging by the girls about who'd gotten a new/bigger bra, who'd gotten her period.
It was me!
I'd be willing to bet you had both kinds of girls. The embarrassed kind wears baggy clothes and aims for a low profile.
As bizarre as this may sound, it had never occurred to me until this thread that titty twisters (in my childhood, more commonly referred to as the purple nurple) happened to girls. I mean, it makes sense when I think about it. But like locker room towel-snapping, this is something I've only ever seen guys do to other guys.
293: Hey aren't you and M/tch coming to NYC sometime soon?
Actually, I'm coming there tomorrow, but just for a brief work trip with little free time, so I didn't try to arrange a meetup. Other plans for a joint and more leisurely trip haven't come together, but August is a possibility.
As bizarre as this may sound, it had never occurred to me until this thread that titty twisters (in my childhood, more commonly referred to as the purple nurple) happened to girls. I mean, it makes sense when I think about it. But like locker room towel-snapping, this is something I've only ever seen guys do to other guys.
Same here.
it had never occurred to me until this thread that titty twisters (in my childhood, more commonly referred to as the purple nurple) happened to girls
Yup, ditto.
295: That's about right. Exactly right, actually.
I'm east-coast raised, west-coast behaviorally.
I had always assumed you were English. Did I just make that up?
i had girls give me titty twisters, secure in teh notion that they were completely safe from retaliation.
In the master narrative, the kid fights back and then things are ok, the kid has made some space and is at least left alone and not bullied. There is probably a large amount of truth to it in many cases.
I should know, because I went to three different Junior Highs, and had to fight in two of them. I disliked the last the most, but was only there for about four months.
I'm big now but must have been smaller than average then, judging from the pictures. I started really growing in eighth grade.
My fights were in the open, on school property—one was actually in the halls—and no adults intervened, although I think they would have if they'd seen. No weapons, thank God, but bare knuckle punches and kicks. Broken glasses, bleeding nose, fat lips, loosened teeth. I'm sure I made up a lame excuse about falling off my bike—I was so clumsy then!—and wasn't closely questioned at home about it. Nothing like this has happened to either of my kids, I'm quite sure.
Was the experience beneficial in any way? It's hard to say. My keenest memories aren't of the fights, or the triumph or relief at holding to a draw. It's of the fear, hatred and humiliation beforehand. The fights improved my status, no question, and I wasn't picked on by anybody else so long as I was there. Before them, I had multiple tormentors, by no means all of whom witnessed the fights, so word must have gotten around somehow. Years later, a college basketball player who was helping coach my brother's son's team, noticing my brother's name and distinctive coloring, described one of my fights he'd seen to my brother.
In Junior High, in the sixties, in working class areas and prosperous suburbs both, because I went to school in both, you often saw fights or their immediate aftermaths where boys were quite bloody. Does this happen as much anymore?
boys were quite bloody. Does this happen as much anymore?
Not at my school. There were fights, but we were basically soft suburban kids, so it was rare that anyone even left much of a mark.
it had never occurred to me until this thread that titty twisters (in my childhood, more commonly referred to as the purple nurple) happened to girls
Yeah, I'd never heard of that happening either. Maybe it was just a weird school.
At the intersection of NOVA and Hyde Park, one finds unfogged, a lunch table of insanely chattering, unicorn t-shirt wearing goons, incessantly hugging one another, sticking their fingers in each other's crappy hamburgers, throwing tater tots, and otherwise imitating the local crack squirrel population.
You'd think it would be pretty easy to bloody someone up, given how easily the face and scalp can cut and how profusely even small cuts from there can bleed. However, my extensive research at psfights.com says not really that much bleeding! Maybe children's skin is thicker now, thanks to the hole in the ozone or something.
Not at my school
Not at mine, either, and we had a good mix of soft suburbanites (some very wealthy) and hard rural poor. Fights were few and rarely got far, which in retrospect I find surprising, especially given the potential for (economic) class antagonism.
313: It was just a weird Heebie.
I really think that this thread should have been mostly about authoritarianism, rigid rules, a seeming disconnection between the school and the community, and what this says about American high schools generally. I think it was a mistake to have the thread be about hugging, boyfriends, harassment, etc.
text is marvelous, though I don't know about the crappy hamburgers. Vegetarian, donchaknow.
I have been, to date, afraid to confess that I was a unicorn girl kid as well. My family couldn't figure out by the time I was 17 or so that I wasn't really interested in that anymore, so there are still some lip-biting glass unicorn figures in the old family home that they got me for birthdays and such and which I completely ignored and left behind.
I made it up just to get attention.
318: Maybe heebie has a seekrit penis. We haven't just been assuming hg is woman, have we? (I am almost positive not.)
I was "called out" in 8th grade by one of a table of dickhead boys (burnouts and third-tier jocks) who would occasionally throw food at me. I had no idea what it meant, so I didn't show up. There were no consquences.
(In my imaginary version of this, I responded, "You're asking me out?" I was not that clever.)
Don't let heebie get within arm's reach of your titties. She's unpredictable.
311: My fighting years were mostly fairly young elementary school. No marks, even, much less blood. At junior high level, maybe a bruise here or there. My high school was small and there was no fighting. Reportedly, at the public schools in the area (Santa Cruz County, California), there were regular knife fights, but I think that those were more inter-gang fights than classic bullying scenarios. This is early-mid 90's, for anyone keeping score.
I was unaware of any fights between students in school at any level of my education. The rumors were more likely to be about some student taking a swing at a teacher.
I guess that means no kid who was bullied ever fought back, at least not to my knowledge. I don't think any of the bullies ever instigated fights with those they were bullying either. A bully was more likely to just push a kid as he walked by.
You guys are making me feel like Tom Brown or Almonzo or somebody. Could it really have been that much worse then?
There was a gang fight at my middle school! I heard that someone had a gun! Weirdly, this meant that we all ran to look.
I think the last time I threw a punch at anyone other than my brother was in sixth grade, but that was during class so it doesn't really count as a fight.
Could it really have been that much worse then?
Schools seem to have become much less tolerant about fighting, maybe because of fear of liability? Kids being kids is now criminal activity in some cases. That said, I'm guess that as you go lower down the economic ladder, fighting is more prevalent.
I am in fact a lovely lady, who always respectfully untwists the titties of other ladies. Lefty loosey, I always say.
When my son was about 14 I read an article about neurological reasons why a sharp blow to the nose will momentarily discombobulate an inexperienced fighter. I read it to my son and sometime in the next few days he tried it out on some guy who was harassing him. It worked.
A drive-by shooting at my high school, but I don't remember any fist or knife fights at any of my schools.
329: Doesn't feel to you that the country as a whole is just less mean, now? We've had relatively good times for a while, now.
Doesn't feel to you that the country as a whole is just less mean, now?
You're so crazy sometimes.
Huh. During the course of my early education there were factions, sure, but it spilled over into violence only outside school hours.
I was beat up once. 3rd grade, if I remember correctly. A bunch of boys, a group led by one kid in particular, cornered me as I was getting off the monkey-bars (remember them? cool swinging!), some held my arms behind my back while the leader punched me in the stomach.
My dad visited the parents of that kid, whose mother said something stupid like "Keep your kid on the right side of the block!" My dad did or said something unknown to me, but threatening; end of story.
Most middle-school dick move ever: At summer camp between 7th and 8th grade, I was watching TV in some common room, two kids came in and started to mess with me. A sort of tense stand-off fight broke out -- little flurries of hitting or grappling to no particular effect, followed by mutual retreat and name-calling. The whole thing came to nothing -- either I just left the room or someone else came in and broke it up, I don't remember.
Then, the next day, I find that the two little jackasses who completely started an inconclusive fight in which nobody got seriously hurt and they outnumbered me two to one, had gone and snitched to the whatever, head camp guy, and I got hauled in and bawled out for fighting.
333 - Actually, one of the things that hit home in the book Freakonomics what the argument that tied legalizing abortions to the drop in crime rates. I don't know whether that is true, but I distinctly remember being afraid that gangs were going to have the run of Los Angeles. It just felt scary in the late eighties.
God knows my gut feelings aren't a reason to justify a controversial theory, but I was totally willing to believe that in the early nineties, a whole cohort of angry young men just... never materialized.
No, SCMT's right. Most of us are a lot more insulated from real violence and intimidation than most people used to be.
340: Yeah, my recollections are roughly like yours.
Most of us are a lot more insulated from real violence and intimidation than most people used to be.
That seems very different from "less mean," but if that's what you meant, ok.
340, 341: I'd chalk it up to personal experience, then. My own experience runs contrary to yours.
That seems very different from "less mean," but if that's what you meant, ok.
If by "mean", you mean "polarized, and fuck the poor", then I also think we are meaner now then we have been since I've been an adult.
At my high-school, the school shooter only killed one person and then drove away. The body counts are certainly higher these days.
My car got stolen from my high school parking lot, while I was in class. That was a very sad day. But I got it back.
Is the insulation from real violence and intimidation a function of growing older and stepping up in economic or educational class?
That sounds odd; I haven't put it well. But what I gather from acquaintances who work in blue colllar areas is that it's still very much live there.
344: I'd describe that as malign indifference rather than meanness. Meanness is more of an up close and personal willingness/eagerness to hurt others.
what I gather from acquaintances who work in blue colllar areas
My data is mostly gathered from watching Cops, but it confirms yours.
But what I gather from acquaintances who work in blue colllar areas is that it's still very much live there.
That may be true, but even if it is, there are a lot fewer Teamster-type blue collar jobs than there used to be.
349: Looking at that, it's really not that funny, but I laughed my ass off.
348: Perhaps it has just receded to smaller locations, but I think it's much more than that. It's not that everyone is happy all the time, but my general sense is that it takes much more before someone's willing to hurt you.
This no-touching rule didn't sound so terrible to me at first, given the frequency of fighting and PDA at my middle school. But then I remembered that middle school administrators always choose to be draconian at precisely the wrong times. No one ever intervened when someone repeatedly tried to choke me while we waited for the school bus home; after all, boys will roughhouse. But one person caught smoking in the bathroom could lead to an entire wing of the school being forbidden to use the bathroom for an entire afternoon. Oh, how I hated middle school.
Then I went to Nerd-Paradise High and lived happily ever after.
i seem to remember bar fights in the hometome with some regularity
353: So I suspected. No, not English.
I'm curious in a variety of ways, but yes, you made it up somehow.
I'm trying not to be intrigued.
You guys are making me feel like Tom Brown or Almonzo or somebody. Could it really have been that much worse then?
Maybe everyone here ran around with the wuss crowd. Several of the fights I saw in jr. high, including one I was in, were much more like you describe. My dad taught us all to fight dirty.
I'm trying not to be intrigued.
I also thought you might be, but I think it was just a couple of spellings that made me suspect.
Parsimon's written voice reminds me of our prior-era commenter mmf!, who lived abroad (though I think she was an American). I don't think I thought parsimon was English, but maybe other people read the same transatlantic flavor.
I've just been talking to my son, who saw some fighting in the middle school he just graduated from. The most spectacular thing he saw was two boys from his school and two from the nearby high school being handcuffed, although apparently not charged, by bicycle cops. This was part of a larger confrontation. Circles of Fight! Fight! only formed once in his three years during school hours, and only a single exchange of punches or two occurred before it was broken up and the participants were hauled off. He saw blood once after school when a kid was thrown and scraped across the bark of a tree, after hours—in the last few months he did a lot of hanging out, as he had graduated to coming home on the el. Reminds me that the worst–damage I ever saw was a kid who'd been thrown against the chain–link, on the first day I went to one of my Junior Highs.
357, 358: I'm charmed.
Probably what you're seeing is my adoption of certain Canadian spellings. Because I like them, simply aesthetically. The chameleon factor is always good.
A friend of my family was beat up so bad in high school in the 80's that he lost all his short-term memory and takes 30 seconds to focus his eyes, which means he functionally can't read.
I found the comment that made me think England in the first place. I can't quite be sure of why, though.
Was it the voice? Did I think "rowhouse" was an Anglicism? Or is it that I can only imagine an English man asking "to be treated like a delicate china teacup?"
I thought parsimon was English at first, partly the name somehow, but I'd changed my impression since, as she's posted more.
This thread is causing a series of ever-lower emotional crashes as long-forgotten memories of junior highschool traumas are brought back to me, not to mention the much more imminent worry for my 12 year old daughter's.
And I'm only up to comment 126.
"Rowhouse" is something I'd never encountered before moving to this mid-Atlantic (US) region. These things are common in Baltimore and Philadelphia. Elsewhere on the east coast we'd call them brownstones. Either way, I don't like them much.
Otherwise, the "delicate china teacup" guy was, yes, kind of transcontinental.
I don't have any stake or interest in sounding american. If I don't, at times, all to the better.
Oh, I like rowhouses much! I think we should all live in rowhouses, sit at outdoor restaurants, and ride a monorail.
One can easily live in a rowhouse and ride a monorail, or live in a rowhouse and eat at an outdoor restaurant simultaneously. In addition, with effort, one may live in a rowhouse, ride a monorail, and eat at an outdoor restaurant. But no, I don't recommend it.
That's why it's called capitalism!
In addition, with effort, one may live in a rowhouse, ride a monorail, and eat at an outdoor restaurant. But no, I don't recommend it.
Why, is the food bad? Is it overpriced? Poor service?
I'm generally okay with capitalism. It's ALLCAPITALISM that I hate and seek to destroy.
Oh sure, you hate ALLCAPITALISM now. But wait till the militia turns against us and every one of you hippies wishes he had his own gun, between his mattress and box springs, with his savings and his woman.
Yeah, the communal gun can be kind of a drag sometimes.
WHERE'S MY WOMAN GOT TO? I WANT MY BOURBON.
hey hey ho ho
ALLCAPITALISM's got to go.
m/tch has joined heebie and e.e. in the graveyard of our civilisation. Where are you, OPINIONATED GRANDMA, when we need you most?
I know someone who isn't going to be very happy about this.
I have a bunch of gold, guns, and women between my box springs and my mattress. I just leave them to themselves and sleep on the couch.
I bought the most awesome pair of shoes today. I'm going to wear them to the bay area meetup just to annoy Ogged.
You know, I'm going to miss the meet-up by about two weeks.
That fucking sucks, because you'd love my shoes.
What The Clown Said
After the buslight dread on smiling braces
After the twisted wedgies in apartments
After the clown car empty silent stasis
The hugging and the crying
390: I just emailed 'em to your lj address. Check 'em out and then tell everyone how awesome they are. I specifically thought of Ogged while I was buying them, too.
Steel-toed shit-kickin fuck-me shoes?
Are Bitch's shoes the new Heebie's ass?
Nope. Completely decadent, glamorous poolboy-fetch-me-a-martini shoes.
Think Ogged will fetch me drinks? He's Mexican, after all.
She can still embed razor blades in the toes if she needs to kick someone seriously.
They do sound like fuck-me shoes, though.
Could Bitch's shoes kick Heebie's ass? Possibly. They're that awesome.
But why would I want to? Plus it might scuff them.
I'm late to this part of the thread, but are they boots?
Hey, I got new shoes too. They are the comfiest but probably not as fashionable as the Bitchly footwear.
B's new shoes, except hers are made from real mice and lined with the skin of stupid men's scrota.
402:
For all I know, you live in Alaska.
I got an adorable vintage plaid cotton dress. It's green.
They're you, B. (Whoever you are, I mean. Not to blow your pseud.)
They seem much more fuck-me than shit-kickin though.
406: I tried on dresses, but nothing worked. I did get a decent pair of jeans though, thank god.
This dress is too big. I have to do the thing that the Fug Girls hate, and wear it over jeans.
john patrick 吉平 needs be congratulated on clear-headed no shit non-nuclear engagement in his school, which probably explains the tone of his comments. Does he wish to speak to how he manages to survive the shitty work environment? If not, y'all just carry on.
404: Dear god, no. Maybe if they made something like that in PK's size.
410: I was specifically looking for over-jeans (or at least over-pants) dresses. Mais non. The problem was the boobies, though, not the butt.
413: I found a really cute one by accident. It's supposed to be a shirt, but, of course, since I am uncool, I tried it on as a dress, w/no pants, and came out to show the clerk who recommended it to me and she laughed. Seriously, it barely covered my ass. She was like, "Uh, pants?" It was funny, not mean.
I don't like the style in general, but the only way I can forgive myself for being so very bare up top (straps only) is because it's sort of shapeless below the tight bosom. It's actually kind of flattering over pants, if not in a way I'm used to thinking about my physical assets.
not as fashionable as the Bitchly footwear
Hey actually, you guys might know: how lame or with it will I look wearing my new duds? They are closed-toed sandals made by Timberlake. What is the fashion statement? They look a little bit like these, but not precisely; for instance they do not have knobby soles like those.
Clown:
I'll bet they look good in a size 22 with a flower on the end.
It depends on your overall look. If everything is in the same ballpark, it's probably fine. If you're wearing those with your buddy holly glasses and sleeve tattoos, I might smirk.
Clown:
the real test is whether you are attractive. If you are hot, then the shoes are fine. If you are not hot, then you will be mocked in those shoes. Or any other shoes.
Guys, those shoes are fine. With frumpy clothes, they'll look suitably middle-aged-I-like-comfort frumpy, with something sharp they'll look I-like-comfort-and-am-cool.
If you're wearing those with your buddy holly glasses and sleeve tattoos, I might smirk.
Is there any article of clothing that this is not true for??
Also if you're going to go for ventilated vaguely-sandal-like shoes, just go all the way.
Oh, man, those are gorgeous. Yes, someone buy those. I'll sleep with you if you do.
419 -- I haven't worn Buddy Holly frames in like 10 or 11 years.
I agree with 421 and 422. But get a french pedicure first.
420 -- Yeah, that's my worry.
Is there any article of clothing that this is not true for??
How bout a nice pearl-snap shirt? There's a whole rockabilly vibe that makes my knees go weak.
424:
You switched to an Elvis Costello look?
Heebie, you can have the rockabilly boys.
are you guys for real about those sandals???!!?
430: Be careful what you wish for. (I refer to the guy in the pink shirt halfway down)
That's not roackabilly so much as I-worship-the-weird-baldwin-that-found-Jesus.
So what, yoyo doesn't like my shoes?
because those things are like the worst of casual shoes (the hiking boot inspired look) and the worst of sandals (monstrous woven leather hoof things) all in one.
I don't like most people shoes, so you'll at least fit in.
Nah, yoyo just lacks tact.
Yoyo, he already bought the shoes.
But somehow they succed in being comfy. Re the hiking boot thing, note hthat I sais my shoes do not have the knobby, boot-style soles. I agree that those soles look pretty silly.
lacks tact
All to the better -- I'm pretty indifferent to whether my clothing is in style, just wear what is comfortable, but I am curious to know what the clothing says about me. So tactful responses that the clothing is lovely based on not wanting to cause me worry, are counterproductive.
I'm pretty indifferent to whether my clothing is in style, just wear what is comfortable,
That's pretty much what the shoes say.
Those are seriously perfectly acceptable shoes.
Is there a name for the rockabilly hairstyle of the girl on the right?
French manicures I can possibly understand but French pedicures are ridiculous.
442: maybe pompadour with 50's ponytail?
I would concur with 440. They're okay. They don't make me want to run screaming into the night.
Although I do have to admire the girl who was getting a French pedicure done in lime green with plum tips next to me at the nail place the other day. It was so "fuck you".
Clownæ, maybe you should shoot for a look that's a little more distressed.
445: Thanks, heeb geeb. That's a good description.
P.S. I like pompadours...
I like Georges Pompidou.
French manicures I can possibly understand but French pedicures are ridiculous.
So smart. It's not exactly a pet peeve, but while French manicures look nice, with the white and the peach making the nails look long, it just baffles me when it's done to toes. Your toes aren't supposed to have long shapely nails.
Hm. Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I think that short nails with a french manicure/pedicure simply look nice and clean. Which, if you have to go the manicured painted nails route, seems fine to me.
Hey heebie, my cute son can play rockabilly and he's one from Elvis. Also much nicer than me.
Your toes aren't supposed to have long shapely nails.
Yuk. Toenail porn. Gross. Give me the fountain girl.
I bet the look in 454 would go great with my new shoes.
It's funny that you have to click "I am 18" to look at those feet.
Oh, c'mon John. Who could resist this?
What's awesome about 458 is the hair on her toes.
I'm genuinely curious what the owner of those feet looks like.
How bout a nice pearl-snap shirt? There's a whole rockabilly vibe that makes my knees go weak.
And here I only have one pearl shirt, and it's more C&W than rockabilly... Oh well.
460: Again, I draw your attention to him.
Also much nicer than me.
Aw, John, I like your snark! That is my type though.
He's not totally nice. I'll send him down that way.
Jammies might have a problem with that.
If they can't hug, then I'm pretty sure that analorgies are right out.
That's what I thought, too, until I read the illuminating Our Bodies, Arse Elves.
whats the difference between cw & rockabilly western shirts?
There's a free Richard Thompson concert on Thursday. I've never, as far as I know, heard anything by Richard Thompson. I should nevertheless attend, yes?
415--
at least they aren't tevas
Yeah richard thompson is a legend, go.
And tevas would be better, unless you have really hobbitish feet.
random annotated excerpts:
As wonderfully as Heebie has turned out, I think that the heads on the desk in the cafetorium rule should be put in effect everywhere
I think Gordon Ramsay is trying to enforce it at the New Connaught Rooms; I'll keep an eye on how things turn out.
Because he's asserting his son's right to sexual/romantic public displays of affection over the importance of respecting his teachers and school rules
yay dad.
It seems like what's needed is more talk about touching and groping in sex-ed classes
less talk, more action.
inappropriate
From the New Dictionary of Modern Euphemism:
"Inappropriate, adj. A word with no real meaning other than to convey the impression that the speaker is an arsehole."
Parents say some shit about 'oh, every generation has its dirty dancing, bla bla' but then we show them pictures, this is your son and his friend sandwiching a girl, this is your daughter bending over and taking it from behind like a dog
I think I would actually then switch the focus of my concern to the bloke who took the pictures.
Not that another response to the OP is necessary ,but:
this is a straight-up power grab by the school. Like others have said, inoffensive contact will remain tolerated unless some admin wants you fucked. This rule conditions youth to accept the authoritarian conditions under which they will be expected to work, Funny how this dynamic is particular to public schools.
also, 466: you've degraded my faith in humanity!
Congratulations; That is truly horrible. St. Bunnyface is cowering in a pathetic heap of tears and droppings.
The other day my older (60 or so) co-worker suggested that our boss is just a bully and that she picks on me, because she sees that I'm afraid of her.
It sort of makes sense. I'm not angling for her job, but she does seem to feel kind of threatened by me. She gets mad now when I leave notes in the log addressed to her--even if it's just that I'm trying to follow up or don't want to forget something. I think she's almost afraid of having a record.
My job is middle school, and that is why it sucks.
I didn't mind middle school so much. I went to a 5-12th grade school with a lower (5-8th) school and an upper school. We had separate school councils and literary magazines and the like. We were also all paired with high school students who were our big sisters.
I was unhappy, because I was a nerd and because I was just an unhappy kid, but I think that the school was very well run. Bingo with teh boys school and 7th grade dances were very well supervised.
