In an article published Jan. 20, the Globe and Mail’s Zosia Bielski considers the problems facing school administrators as they try to curb student misbehaviour.

The misbehaviour in question is of a decidedly unexpected sort; not aggression or truancy, but an epidemic of in-school hugging.

Certain schools in the US and Britain have taken aggressive steps to curb demonstrations of student affection. Measures include outright bans of physical contact to more permissive approaches that spare handshakes or allow hugging after scoring a point in basketball.

School administrators present a variety of justifications for enforcing restrictions on physical contact. Some insist that hugging clogs up hallways between classes. Others see absolute touching bans as an easy way to spare teachers from having to police sexual behaviour, especially with older students. It’s easy to understand why this sort of behaviour might make school staff uncomfortable, especially in the case of one school, which had “girls running down hallways to hug, squealing all the way.” However, the responses adopted so far don’t seem well thought out.

Trying to restrict physical contact simply raises other questions: is it appropriate to hug a crying friend? Outright bans get rid of these questions, but present teachers with an exhausting number of potential issues to address on a daily basis—distracting their time and energy from the business of teaching. Aside from these rules being ineffective, some teachers would likely lose interest in constantly policing behaviour they could simply ignore. This would encourage students to further flaunt school policies.

Children of all ages like to find ways of getting around rules, especially those they don’t like. In 2008, students at an Arizona high school staged an extended “hug-a-thon” as a form of protest against physical contact restrictions. One student at a New England high school has begun a petition, rightly pointing out that “interpersonal touch is not inherently sexual.”

Schools exist not only to teach students skills, but also how to function outside the structure of a classroom. One of the realities of the public sphere is the ability to recognize what qualifies as appropriate and inappropriate physical contact.

Schools need to have absolute rules about touching with sexual connotations, but should probably make less intimate contact subject to “soft policies,” which can be enforced on a discretionary basis. This would allow instructors to correct inappropriate behaviour, without giving them a second full-time job.