JOHNSON: Ban on hugs is among latest ways to put squeeze on kids

By Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 5, 2007 at midnight

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I would not pay five pennies to be a kid again. Even the devil has to know this now, certain that I would be the last person to answer his call.

Ah, but in a different time, the prospect would have been quite appealing.

Outside of the cluelessness and puberty thing, you see, a kid has no car or mortgage payments, no palms-out-begging children, no ex-wives. As a kid now, I might actually know how to work a video game controller and use a computer as something more than a glorified typewriter.

Yet being a kid today more and more means getting turned into an emotionless automaton, being told just to fit in.

Maybe you have not read the newspapers lately.

And I refer not only to this week's ban on classroom Halloween costumes and parties in one Broomfield school.

The most outrageous of the DON'T-DO-THAT trend happened last week. In Oak Park, Ill., a middle school principal outlawed hugging, of all things.

"Last year, we would see maybe as many as 10 students on one side (of the hallway), 10 on the other and they, going in opposite directions, would sort of have a hug line going on, and you could see where that would be a problem," said Victoria Sharts, principal of Oak Park's Julian Middle School.

Of course you can't have that.

So this year she decided to ban the hug lines by banning hugging by any student on school grounds. Some were doing it for too long, she said. And you know what that leads to.

"Hugging is really more appropriate for airports or for family reunions than passing and seeing each other every few minutes in the halls," Principal Sharts said. Incredible.

Yet to give her a bit of credit, being a principal at any school these days is hardly a stroll through the tulips. It is a wonder anyone signs up for the job.

Rather than deal with those causing the hugging bottlenecks, the easiest thing to do was just to outlaw hugging.

It is the same with Halloween parties, which in Broomfield and elsewhere now follow Christmas parties as being labeled generically as "holiday" parties.

It is impossible, I think these days, to satisfy anyone - much less everyone.

This is what I wanted to tell Cindy Kaier, principal of Kohl Elementary School in Broomfield, who last week made news by sending home a letter to parents informing them that the traditional classroom Halloween parties this year are being replaced by something called a "fall party."

And since it is focused on fall - whatever that means - kids can't wear costumes to school, Cindy Kaier ruled.

It sparked the usual outrage, which I sort of get.

Halloween was always the one day we could get out of the all-year rut of wearing a uniform to school. It also occasioned one of the worst spankings I ever got, the year I cut two eye holes in one of my mother's sheets and went as a ghost.

Cindy Kaier's decision was in response to the small percentage of kids like I was, those whose parents cannot afford costumes. She also was accommodating parents who do not allow their children to celebrate Halloween.

For good or bad, this is 2007 America.

I hate it. Not for lack of sympathy and understanding for the percentage-wise few, but out of disgust that everything that once was the hallmark of being a child is being stripped away the second even one parent complains.

Remember the monkey bars and the seesaw? I'll wager no one under 30 does. The other week in Colorado, a school actually outlawed tag, for heaven's sake.

Cindy Kaier's people did call back. They dispatched me to Briggs Gamblin, a spokesman for Boulder Valley Schools.

"Such decisions are made on a school- by-school basis," he said, clearly uncomfortable with having to defend a decision he had no part in making.

Cindy Kaier, he said, is a highly regarded educator, who was acting only in the best interests of the school, her teachers and students.

"This wasn't a district edict," he said. "The principal runs the school and felt she needed to do this. We fully support her."

I get it, I told him, yet is there a line? Are we soon to outlaw ponytails because some girls can't grow one?

"In the principal's view," Briggs Gamblin said, "the Halloween parties became disruptive."

By that measure, we should outlaw voting. Nothing in America in recent years has become more nasty and divisive than that.

"No," he said, "the last thing anyone wants to do is take anything away from the kids. No one wants to take the fun out of school for them. But at the end of the day, each principal has to make a decision for their school."

Cindy Kaier has been principal at Kohl for six years, and is said to have the strong support of her parents. Some don't agree with her on this, Briggs Gamblin said. She simply did what she felt was right.

"At the district level, you have to trust the principal," he said. "That's what it comes down to."

Ask me, what it comes down to is that this is no time to be a kid.

johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2763

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