This morning, I had the television on whilst I was preparing for work, which is something that I never do.

I'm learning there is a reason... a method to my madness, if you will.

Anyway, one of the featured stories on the morning programme I was watching was about a school policy change in, I believe it was Illinois.

The school is banning hugging.

Yes, you heard me right. Hugging. In fact, the story on TV suggested they are also considering banning hand holding and were threatening to ban "high fives."

This is absolutely the stupidest thing I have ever heard!

It is no wonder there are so many screwed up men and women in this country... since we keep sanctioning crap like this!

It's bad enough that most boys and girls don't get the opportunities to figure out how relationships work in school. Combine this with the unwillingness to actually teach children how relationships with men and women work, and we have a valid explanation for the skyrocketing divorce rate and the hordes of dysfunctional families that stay together "for the children."

Humor me and let me venture out onto this limb. Take your average serial killer. Does anyone think about what made him that way? Is he the guy who learned to cringe when a pretty girl walked by? Did he ask the head cheerleader out to the ball, only to have her laugh and tell the whole school and make him feel like a jackass for doing nothing other than showing interest in someone?

What if he had known what to say and, more importantly, how to say it to her? Think back to your days in high school. Some people had it, others didn't.

Some of it comes down to parenting. Usually I rant about parents who don't know how to be parents, but on the flip side there are also parents that shield their children from every conceivable harm. Perhaps Dad was the guy who spilled his lunch tray in front of the prom queen and never quite got over the laughter. Why even risk putting his sons and daughters through that humiliation.

We have forgotten that in order to succeed we need to endure and learn from failure. One cannot exist without the other one. This is why, for the most part, people are more afraid to succeed than to fail. They don't even try.

Why risk the failure?

Now, I love my parents dearly, but I accept that I was shielded as a child, and I'm just now learning to overcome this bad programming. Risk is your friend. If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always had.

So, did I stray from my rant about the schools banning hugging? No, not really. Schools are already having a problem with de-socializing the students. It's bad enough that teachers can no longer care because of the social misfits looking to profit from someone else's generosity, that any sign of affection for a student... a child who seeks validation, probably because he or she isn't getting it at home... leads to a lawsuit, firing or worse.

Our society is also to blame. A sophomore girl has a terrible day, and her male teacher is the only one around for her to confide in. He can tell that a hug will brighten her day, so he gives her one... but a classmate of hers sees the hug.

This classmate tells her that the hug consisted of inappropriate touching of her breasts, and together they tell her parents, who in turn tell the administration... and the teacher is "presumed" guilty before he even gets to tell his side of the story.

He's damned by the media... just for giving a damn. Sad.

So, if the parents are teaching children to be de-socialized, and the teachers a coerced into de-socializing students... well, what do we prefer: a little PDA in the hallways, or some disturbed kid who can't talk to anyone running through the hallways with a Glock?

Do people even realize they are CREATING these anti-social children?

And now this school is not only against student violence, but they are against any signs of student LOVE?

I'm sorry, but I am not going to let my children be exposed to that... you people need to pull your heads out of your asses!

Another related link. Both are subject to link rot.