After reading a recent New York Times article entitled “Swine Flu May Require Restraint in Affectionate Greetings,” I felt a little better about not getting to shake hands with our students, even on the first day of school. While my decision was based on what I thought of as a sensible precaution in wake of the coming flu season, I still felt badly about having to put on hold what has been a longstanding school tradition, particularly in this, our 75th anniversary year. Then I saw the Times article last week that put things into a cross-cultural perspective.
The feared arrival of flu, it turns out “is altering long-established patterns of everyday greeting. Handshakes have been cut short, kisses aborted. Warm embraces have been supplanted by curt pats on the back.” A New York school district is discouraging high-fives, Spanish health officials are warning against “the customary peck on both cheeks,” and “officials from Lebanon to Kuwait have called for Muslims celebrating Ramadan not to hug excessively.”
Interestingly, in certain cultures it is the norm for people not to touch when greeting one another. In Samoa, people engage in a customary recital of each person’s title and social connections; in China, to convey respect and esteem, some people classically wrap the “palm and fingers of one hand around the fist of their other hand” and move both hands up and down. In some Arab cultures, “a gesture of welcome is an upward movement of the hand, touching one’s own chest or face.”
Public health officials offer a hierarchy of “how to express cordiality, friendship, even love -- while staying, as authorities recommend, at least three to five feet away from anyone who coughs, sneezes, or might otherwise show signs of infection.” A pat on the back seems better than “a fist bump which is probably safer than a handshake, which in turn is better than a hug or -- at worst -- a kiss.” Since not shaking hands with or not hugging a person who reaches out “violates a social expectation in a way that is pretty dramatic,” public health officials as well as sociologists and anthropologists suggest being forthright with a line such as, “I am not going to shake your hand because I think I have a cold.”
Then there’s the advice of Philip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and immunology at NYU’s Medical Center and author of The Secret Life of Germs, who often greets people elbow to elbow when his hand are full: “Saluting is good. Bowing is perfectly acceptable. So, too, is just saying hi.”
However you decide to handle the social dilemma of greeting others, please be sure to read the information we emailed home earlier this week regarding The Country School’s response to the flu. We will continue to emphasize hand washing, proper sneezing and coughing “etiquette,” having sick children and staff remain home, ongoing cleaning and disinfecting -- and not shaking hands.