A junior high school student in Prattville has been given detention for…

… consoling a friend whose parent recently passed away.

The debate of public displays of affection in school is hitting home in Alabama. The mother of a student in Autauga County says her daughter was disciplined for simply hugging a friend.

“When I went through school, I hugged my friends,” said Lea Muir. Her daughter was given detention Monday at Prattville Junior High School. She called it an overreaction.

“It’s a little bit extreme, I think.”

But according the Autauga County School System’s code of conduct, “inappropriate public displays of affection, including but not limited to embracing and kissing” are not allowed.

And Autauga County isn’t the only one. Just last week, a school in Illinois disciplined a student for the very same thing. And a Texas student got in trouble for holding hands with a friend.

“It was made to be something ugly and it wasn’t,” Muir said.

She says the hug wasn’t meant to be sexual. She says her daughter was consoling a male friend who recently lost a parent.

I might normally feign shock at such foolishness, but I’ve come to expect inanity from our government schools.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 10:23 pm and is filed under Alabama, Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.