The Healing Touch

By James Delisle

At a national meeting of school teachers recently, participants were asked their views on physical contact with students--not corporal punishment, mind you, but rather the reassuring hand-on-the-shoulder contact that connects one human being, literally and figuratively, with another.

"You're careful about touching a student in any way, even an instructional way,'' said an art teacher from Montana. "You don't have any physical contact.'' A Louisiana teacher reported that, in unavoidable situations where he finds himself alone with a student, he will now "open the door wider. I sit more in the middle of the room.''

Who can blame these teachers? Given the too-frequent scenario equating accusation with guilt (especially with male teachers), it comes as no surprise that in the teaching profession, touching has become taboo. Every pat on the back has become suspect, each congratulatory squeeze to the shoulder a source of potential problems. Hugs have been demoted to handshakes. Private meetings with students have regressed to public forums. Teaching, one of the most personal and interactive of all professions, has been sterilized to a point unimaginable...