Recently I found a very fascinating book called "Dangerous Minds" by LouAnne Johnson, a former US marine and nowadays, a teacher. It was really interesting to read a chapter in particular, entitled "One hug or two?". In this chapter, Misses Johnson presents the case of a student who lacked of affection, and so forth failed constantly on achieving good results. After showing him some affection (in terms of hugging and cuddling him), he presented some remarkabe progress. But, is "psysical affection" the answer to solve children's problems? And beyond that, is it correct to keep physical contact with them?
News has shown during this past 10 years how cases of molested children at school have increased. Many of them have been misunderstandings because of teachers who have implemented Misses Johnson's methods. Male are ofted acused of those charges more than women, due to the fact that we live in a chauvinist society, in which women must represent the role of "mothers", with affection, tenderness and kindness, and men are the "father figure", represented as strict and tough. We must agree that male teachers that are too affective with students, especially female students, are constantly "accused" of being flirting, and on the other side, female teachers are seen as fulfilling their natural tasks as (future) mothers.
We must realize that those aspects are totally cultural and not attached to laws. For that, we as members of the society have the required tools to improve or ways of seeing things. The idea is for us to grow and mature as a society in order to see that affection is one of the basis for our children to learn and grow up in a good environment.
Guillermo González M.
Editor in Chief
