Slashdot Mirror
School Bans 'Tag'
GillBates0 writes "CNN is carrying a story about a school in Boston which has have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable. According to the article, some elementary schools in other states have similarly banned "unsupervised contact sports". A parent was quoted as saying that her son feels safer now and that she'd witnessed enough 'near collisions.'" See, it's not just dangerous virtual games that are harmful to children!
I've always said that we should just chain them up in a basement until they're 18. Avoids most of the hassles associated with kids.
Do these people seriously expect stopping kids touching each other is going to stop them getting hurt?
Kids are very simple life forms, they don't have a firm grasp of logic and hence do stupid things which get them hurt. This is a basic fact of life and if you repress it you make adults who do the same because they never learnt any better.
How the hell can any school know so little about children but have them for so long..
I like muppets.
If it wasn't so sad... :\
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer." -Adolf Hitler
"We are one Nation, we are one People." -The One 'leader'
... of the pussification of America.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
I would think the number of teachers in the U.S. molesting school children would be a bigger priority than protecting them from a game of tag.
When I was in elemetary schoo in the late 80's they wouldn't let us play touch footbal at recess. But then during P.E. they would make us play dodgeball.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
Yes some children are going to play games and get injured, but this is insane.
I chipped two of my front teeth when I fell over in school aged 11, but my parents would have been laughed at had they decided to sue the school.
I'm sure there are probably (too many) rules about schools nowadays relating to who is in charge, or responsible for the pupils, etc. But at the end of the day accidents happen when you're a child.
Its about time people stopped talking to lawyers at the drop of a hat. Sadly it seems that even the UK is going in that direction.
We call this a free country, but lawsuits have scared everyone into ridiculous rules and restrictions. We shouldn't be allowed to talk about freedom when we are imprisoning ourselves even in the areas the government isn't. I'm tired of all the reasonable things I'm not allowed to do because some organization's insurance company doesn't like or some fool sued someone. Maybe I just didn't notice this stuff when I was younger, but it seems ridiculous anymore.
Isn't every game played by small children a contact sport?
Kids these days need stop being little brats. My kids play football, and occasionally come home with a suspicious bruise or two. But I don't ask questions, and in the end it's all ok.
Whats next, banning soccer because you can get hit in the face with the ball?
It's a sad day when children can't play tag. What are these kids going to be like if they grow up without ever playing contact sports. Scraping their knees or getting bruises are good ways for children to learn about the world they live in, and the consequences of their actions. It would be interesting to see how they enforce this, considering they are banning 'unsupervised' contact sports. If they are unsupervised, how are they going to stop it?
`nuff said.
it's parental stupidity that is... :D
man, those dumbasses in the US will never cease to amaze me
I was going to write up a witty retort to all of this, but I think its far simpler just to call these people fucking idiots and get back to work.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
There is a reason their bones are still comprised of a large amount of cartilege at their young age; nature knows they're uncoordinated and clumsy. What kind of overprotective, fearful nation are we becoming? Are we going to force our children to start wearing those padded suits they use to train attack dogs soon? Mother of the nation, you are going to strangle your children with those apron strings!
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Attleboro, MA is not in Boston as the posting states, it is a small city south of Boston.
TODO: Insert witty sig
Since when is tag a "contact sport" like football?
Why not ban recess altogether?
I know this is only one wacky school district, but do they have no common sense at all?
... but we can't, because that would involve taking the stairs, and someone might get hurt.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Please tell me this is an elaborate troll. PLEASE.
I still have a scar on my cheek from a collision in a game of tag in second grade. It builds character, seriously.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
Wouldn't it be nice if someday schools were held liable for kids that couldn't read or do basic math?
Instead they're spending their time worrying about tag, metal jungle gyms, or any perceived threats or sexual harassment between students.
Well, it is funny.. *checking my calender to see if its april 1st*
Come on, the classic game of tag has been played in various forms, seemingly, for ever. With few to almost none getting hurt. My goodness, we are are rasing a bunch of whiny little snots who can't even take a little bruse. What, I wonder will they do, be when they grow up. (best friends with lawyers or a lawyer themselves I suspect, where NOTHING is ever their fault).
Sheez.. stuff like this gets me sick.
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board -- Mark Twain Look for http://Thebar.steelbeachca
Its all a conspiracy to make us even more fat, lazy, and docile I tell you!
In breaking news school ban recess all together on the basis of a student might trip/fall/slide/twist/skid/interact/run/walk/crawl /breathe fresh air/get exercise/physically exert themselves/get tired, and hold the school liable. Next week we will look into the gym class epidemic, yes that is right folks, they are actually trying to make our children non-obese, those horrible people.
We use to play a game in elementary school that was called Suicide. You would throw a tennis ball against a wall. If someone caught it on the fly, you had to run to the wall and tag the wall and says "SUICIDE" before the person who caught the ball could hit you with the ball. If you tried to catch the ball, and dropped it, you had to run to the wall and tag it and say suicide before someone else got the ball and beaned you with it. There were other rules where if you called suicide 3 times, you had to assume the possition (hands against the wall, ass out) and every person got to bean you with the tennis ball. It was a lot of fun.
Why not ban walking? I mean, these kids could walk into walls, or worse, traffic! Lets forbid them from moving at all!
Seriously, we're living in an age of disinfectants and sanatizers. How are kids supposed to develope an immune system if they are never exposed to any germs? How are they supposed to learn to pick themselves up after they fall if you forbid them from running? The US has become a nation of over protective mothers! Let the kids live, otherwise what's the point?
What is this country coming to? Being a kid is ABOUT getting hurt. I can't even count all the times I fell off my bike during games as a kid where we'd just ride around the neighborhood trying to knock/ram each other off our bikes. Or the times I've fallen out of a tree flat on my back unable to get up for 5-10minutes cause the wind was knocked out of me. Kids are SUPPOSED to get hurt, and to either learn from their mistakes or just go right back at it cause it's fun and they learned that the consequences do not outweigh the gain, which is fun and a good time.
They're talking about the spray. Haven't you seen the commericals? The guy practically gets pummeled by women. It's really dangerous and I hope they put a stop to it. Think of the single adults!
That body spray looks very dangerous, if you've seen a tee-vee ad for it, you know what I mean.
Quiet, you're ruining the hyperbole!
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
CNN is carrying a story about a school in Boston which has have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable.
i cannot help but think that it should be the parents holding them liable that the school should fear. maybe it's my failing memory, but i can't seem to recall thinking frequently at the age of 10, "i could take someone wholly unresponsible for this to court and make truckloads of money!"
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
After being inundated with all of those 'TAG' body spray commercials that show various teenage boys getting mobbed by teenage girls and being hit on my the teenage girs' moms, my first thought after reading the title was "Wow, that stuff must really work if they are having to ban it from schools!"
And then I read the article summary and find it is just the schoolyard game. Too bad - I was hoping for some interesting reading describing just how well that stuff worked.
This is an attempt to keep these kids from running from cops when they're older. But it's not like they ever have enough swings or whatever else for all the kids . . . .
So, anything that a parent could reasonably allow, the school could reasonably allow. Anything that would be neglectful for a parent to allow, just so with the school. It was a brilliant notion that prevented a lot of this idiocy, but the concept is being eroded by further and further defining the "responsibilities" of the school. It sounds like it's gone all the way already, in the US...
Meta will eat itself
Dear parent,
From now on, all break periods will be taken by all children filing slowly and silently out to the playground in single file, 1 meter apart. They will then sit in their designated 1m square for a period of 15 minutes and file slowly back into class. If it is raining, they will be given an umbrella. Coats and galoshes must be worn at all times in case any cold- or water-based infection might be possible, even when sunny. Portable fans will be provided in the Summer. Talking will be permitted, but only to those within 1 square of the child doing the talking.
In this way, the school hopes to reduce it's liability risk even further, for your protection. We have consulted parents, and at least one of them said "I prefer my child not to run around, she may fall down and cut herself. I think this is a good idea".
The headmaster.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Otherwise, we'll pass the germs around, and then be liable of getting people a cold!
Jesus. You're not a kid if you haven't split your lip on a metal rail, broken your leg or been hit by a baseball ball in the crotch. It's not even such a big deal if they break all their teeths since they'll lose 'em anyway ! Has there, ever, been an incident of someone ever dying or being permanently crippled as a result of a tag-induced injury ? Touch-football was invented because football was deemed too dangerous without appropriate equipment, and I can agree with that somewhat. Now we are saying that the sport specifically designed to be a non-dangerous version of football is itself dangerous ? "My son feels safer now." Good for him, I bet he wasn't playing in the first place then.
Should have been Wimpy New World.
We can bitch all we want about how wacky them Boston "lib'rals" are, but we'll also wonder why kids are using the same textbooks their parents used. If this isn't already a well known idea, then I want it to be called "Wubby's Axiom": If some one can be sued for something, sooner or later they will be. With a budget only so big if a school district is court ordered to pay out in a lawsuit, then there is only one place they can get it from, and that's everything else they have to pay to give your kids an education.
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..generalizations, I do. But I have a 2.75 yo son and I take him to the playground 3-4 days per week (his mom, the rest of the time). There's a fairly significant divide between how men and women treat their children at the playground. Dads tend to hang back, contributing support and help as kids need them (and to be sure, too many fathers hang on the park bench the whole time and can't be bothered to participate at all). Mom's hover, ensuring the kid never suffers a risky moment.
Those kids tend to have less certain notions of what's possible, what isn't, and what's just plain stupid. Some of those kids certainly got it in the nature-equation - meaning those parents may, in fact, have some reason to be fearful. Plenty of other kids are developing much shallower skills with respect to falling and not falling.
So, to wrap up with another generalization, it's more likely a mother would feel relieved at this ridiculous development than a father.
The new plan to protect our children! Sod bubblewrap, put enough layers of fat on them and they become bouncy!
And you wonder why the United States has an obesity problem that seems to be getting worse with the younger generations. They keep banning everything that gives them any excercise. The reason tag is so great is because it is so simple and meets an immediate need for hyperactive kids (read "all kids") to release all of that energy being balled up while they are sitting still in class and also starts them off young with a good perception of excercise. No wonder so many kids are "diagnosed" with ADD and put in special classes these days. In my day (born in '83) when a kid couldn't sit still in class, they would have him/her do some laps around the playground instead of pumping him full of drugs. After a couple laps the kid was more than happy to sit still and listen. Playing tag on the playground was the only thing keeping those kids attentive. Now they are told that all running and chasing activities are too dangerous, so therefore sports and excercise must be too dangerous, therefore, I should sit inside and simulate it on an xbox or ps[#] eating candy to occupy my time.
Seriously I think my head is going to explode
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
See, it's not just dangerous virtual games that are harmful to children!
:/
Absolutely right! We also have to worry about the harm done to a child's psyche after they run the bewildering gauntlet of contradiction that is a public education!
As with everything at this level of BS, only the lawyers win
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
Has it really come to this? When I was in grade school I remember running around the play structure with one of my friends, and at one point be both ran into each other face first. The playground attendant sent us to the office to get checked out, and the office lady went "boy, looks like you'll have a shiner tomorrow!". I didn't have any permanent injuries, and *gasp*, my parents didn't sue the school.
We're gonna have a country of frickin' pansies in another 30 years when these children become adults.
It's not even a new idea; I first saw it in old newsreels from the 1930s, but it was hard to understand, because the narration was in German.
Finally someone has realized the dangers of school-yard sports...Sigh. I wonder what they'll do when someone chokes to death on a hackey-sack? I'll guess our kids will all be signing waiver forms for hop-scotch and eating with utensils in a couple years.
"Mommy, can you call Betty's Lawyer and see if we can play marbles?"
I mean this as a generality....but kids today - they seem a lot softer than previous generations. My children act like they're freezing when it's 5 degrees outside.
Kids today in general are rarely physically disciplined (something that does have it's place in limited fashion IMHO) and aren't subject to doing the same sorts of labour or work that kids in my generation did.
I am not talking about 'uphill in the snow both ways' kind of crap either. It just seems that most parents today shield their little kids from too much - except of course when it comes to TV and violent video games.
Banning 'tag' is right in line with that sort of weaken the humans concept. What'll our grandkids look like?
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
I can see a similar headline in a few years. Only with the children being taken to school in an automated exo suit that is also a self driving SUV. All so little jimmy and jane are 100% safe all the time and never put in any challenging or character building situations ever. I mean god forbid kids find out how to deal with life's downsides at all. Lets push them into the world thinking its all sugar coated and safe 100% of the time, then watch them go psychotic once they experience the death of a loved one as they are totally emotionally retarded.
You'll get ......... stupid adults!
Not only is this a brilliant idea from a liability standpoint, preventing children from engaging in these sorts of dangerous games can reduce bruising and other possible damage during their critical growth period.
I propose that schoolchildren not be allowed to move at all. They should be hung via sturdy cloth from the ceiling, thus immobilized, and fed heartily whilst at school. I have been assured by a very knowing gentleman of my acquaintance in Boston, that a young healthy schoolchild well-fed is at elementary school age a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled . . .
Now they'll replace tag with mandatory military training, for their "safety". It's really amazing what pussies kids are today. Why, I used to have to walk 3 miles in 40 below weather and we didn't just play tag, we played "smear the queer", in a field of shoddy blacktop with broken glass and children's blood from last week's game.
If you got injured, you were an idiot. It's called natural selection. The problem is that kids are so coddled today. But what's going to happen when today's kids are in their 20's and Mom and/or Dad stops coddling them? That's right, all hell is going to break loose. Because these people have no idea how to take care of themselves, terrorism is just the beginning of the fears that have been instilled in them. These kids are afraid to go outside because their Mothers coddle them so.
I disagree with it, but the school must be covering it's ass--probably an angry parent with the media on their side. Still, you need to let kids be kids, stop trying to teach them to read by age 1 or keep them locked at home in bed. You have to roll the dice and take a few risks to get a great kid. Otherwise, your kid is going to grow up into a psycho.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Excessive over-protection at it's worst. I suspect either a surfeit of political correctness, or fear of legal liability or both. In either case, it's not good for the kids, or for society.
[Insert pithy quote here]
What the hell is the world coming to? Now kids can't play flag football and 'tag' and similar 'chasing' games for fear of liability in case the kids get hurt? Honestly - this all comes down to stupid parents who want nothing but a free meal ticket, and our legal system (in the US anyways) is fostering this type of action.
Kids get hurt - Deal with it! Boys will be boys and all that. Now we are sheltering our children from being... children!? When will it stop? Some people will always have something to complain about and the fear of being sued is slowly turning our younger generation into zombies. Soon enough they will only be allowed to read books 'approved' by the Government (since schools have been sued over non-approved literature) and video games are things of the past for anyone under 18. The sad part is that it's not even our Government doing it to us, its ourselves!
I wish we could screen for integrity and ethics in people before they were allowed to become parents - sure, maybe im overreacting a little bit, but everytime I read a story like this it makes me feel bad for the children that will never get to experience the fun of being a child like I did.
Change is not ALWAYS a good thing.
Its Deluxe, son. Deluxe!
Kids can't be kids any more so why bother with the child labor laws? Just let them become drones at an early age and help their family earn enough to make up for the assualt on the Middle Class.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
In other news, schools ban teachers from failing students and students from dating each other. . Local school cited fears of being sued for emotional distress being the primary reasons behind this bold action.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
I would find this story funny, but this kind of hysteria is happening all the time in the UK. One school made children wear protective helmets when playing conkers and only yesterday a referee was criticised for telling parents that they couldn't take photos of children playing football (soccer) because it was against the child protection act.
Will someone please think of the children?
We can't wrap our kids up in cotton wool, part of being a kid is falling over in the playground and scraping your knees, isn't it?
Summation 2
I've never been in a school that had unsupervised playground time. An adult was ALWAYS watching.
Now, if they are banning kid-organized tag games, that's just plain silly and harmful to their mental, emotional, physical, and social development.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why do this kind of crap? It only shows the deteroriation of our future generations, and they are already terrible due to parents who could care less. I pray that the next generations will wake up to this kind of items and change it.
The ironic thing is, 30 years ago, people of that time were probably saying the same thing about future generations.
Back in grade school, we used to get our swings as high as they could go, and then jump off at the apex. I saw guys doing windmills and spins 10, 12 feet in the air, in front of the principal. They didn't always land gracefully. My school never banned swings.
Back in the good old days, when it used to snow, the plows would pile the snow from the parking lot right up against the edge of the playground. We played king of the hill on hills 8, 10 feet tall. My school never banned king of the hill.
I have a very vivid memory of participating in a soccer game, and the kid with the ball took a full-power kick to the shin from someone trying to steal the ball... snapped his leg in two, right in fron of me. He won an ambulance ride to the hospital and everything. My school never banned soccer games.
You CANNOT protect kids from hurting themselves by playing games. It is an unavoidable fact of nature. In fact, some of my best life lessons were learned due to injuries (either my own, or someone else's). What you CAN do is teach kids how to play properly, and safely, and put some effort in to WATCHING the kids. Banning them from having fun only teaches them distrust and resentment and laziness.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Seriously, we're screwed if things keep going in the direction they are currently headed.
Without touch football at recess I would have absolutely no "glory days" stories to tell whatsoever.
This is a case where, "Won't someone please think of the children??", actually applies as it never has before.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
And no, I'm not referring to the ONE school in Boston.
I'm talking about the millions of people who will view the acts of a few schools around the country as the downfall of American society.
The problem these schools are seeking to resolve is this: They have all the responsibility for what happens to your little angel/monster but none of the parental immunity that comes with it.
Little Susie gets hurt playing a neighborhood game of tag. Nobody sues her parents. If little Susie gets hurt playing a school yard game of tag. The parents can sue the school.
The parents might not win, but who wants to be sued for something that can be avoided?
P.S. The difference between PE & recess is that you usually have to sign a waiver f liability for athletics.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Recess, or what's left of it, is rapidly becoming a period where children are permitted to trudge around in a circle once their doctor signs a note.
Anybody wonder why the U.S. is becoming a nation of fatasses?
This is not my sandwich.
Isn't great we live in a world where doctors have to move to different states or stop practicing altogether and now schools are afraid of liability issues with recess! Punitive damages and personal liablity suits as a whole have gotten beyond out of control. Good luck getting that tort reform bill through congress, maybe if they tack it onto a defense/homeland/national /whatever they are callin it these days/ security bill. Thank god for lawyers....I can't wait for whats next.
It seems that we hear about two kinds of parents now-a-days. Ones who neglect their children so completely that the kids lose all sense of perspective and discipline and then go out and hurt innocent people. On the other hand there's a bunch of ridiculously over-protective parents who try to coddle their children every step of their lives, freaking out if the most minor of misfortune comes across their precious future.
As is often the case, the majority of average, decent, middle of the road parents/children are dealing with the consequences of vocal extremes. On one hand, we have unsupervised kids causing all sorts of problems, and resulting zero-tolerence policies in schools where even a minor, accidental infraction can cause a serious interruption in the education even of a model student. On the other hand, we have over-supervised kids whos parents live in so much fear for their child that neither that kid nor their classmates can act like children are supposed to act.
A normal child with decent parents will take some bumps and bruises as he/she grows up, and will end up stronger for it. While getting hurt is not pleasant, it's often an excellent learning experience. You learn that not only will certain things result in pain, but also that bad things are going to happen in your life, and you need to learn to cope with it. Denying a child the chance to learn such things is not good parenting.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Homeschool .... it's the only way to get an education these days.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
This totally has to have come out of the People's Republic of Cambridge. Cambridge: The City that listens to 1000 viewpoints and satisfies them all. It's definately not the city I grew up in.
I'm actually surprised tag hasn't been reduced to that scene in The Simpsons when they were force to wear school uniforms.
"Tag.......you're it."
"Now you are the one who is it."
We're headed for it folks....here it comes!!! Americans will all be 40 year old virgins soon sitting on our couches singing 'I'm an Oscar Meyer weener'.
WHAT NEXT!!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!
"...the shortest distance between two points may be straight line, but it is by no means the most interesting."
When I was stationed on Okinawa, the Chaplain had regular volunteer visits to local school where us Marines could help teach English to young students. On one occasion less than a year ago, we got to the class room which started out empty. The bell rang, and within seconds an almost literal whirlwind of students came running in chasing each other and playing all kinds of games. I was amazed at how rough, and yet how jovial and friendly all the horse play remained at the same time. At least one kid took a very hard fall on the floor, another busted his head very hard into a wall... the teachers never stopped any of this. The kids looked happy, healthy, energetic, and stress free. It is a far cry from the morbidly obese, stressed out, candy munching, video gaming, slothful children of our country. America is falling behind other countries, and not just in math skills. Our litigious nature is our own downfall. It seriously needs to stop, for the sake of the countries future...
Eenie meenie moinie moe, catch a nigger by the toe, if she loses sleep from emotional stress due to your racist nursery rhyme you you will lose $3 million.
Vendors of murder simulators need to be hanged and left to swing as a warning to others who may Bully our children.
Students must do the responsible thing and take their beating, even when backed into a corner by another student whooping their ass with a baseball bat. Remember we have a zero tolerance policy here and any hitting back will result in expulsion.
What other stupid shit have I heard in the past 10 years....
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I broke my collarbone in fourth grade when heavily tagged by Beth Hemmings, the cutest girl in the class. Happiest moment of my primary school career.
I'm a nerd and my child will be called a tough guy, by default, just cause he can take a little pain without crying. I remember trading pucnches when I was in school.. I guess thats been rules illegal too, if you can't even play tag. America is Doomed if our children become to afraid of pain and harm that they won't take risk..
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
We are living a sheltered life of luxury without any difficulties. Without realizing there is a big bad world out there, we're going to get hurt badly. Look at the Romans... the barbarians destroyed their civilization which started the dark ages. We're heading towards a new dark ages because we won't be strong enough to keep away the barbarian hordes from the middle east.
We can't play tag because we might get a few scrapes and bruises, but they're willing to become suicide bombers. Kind of makes you wonder who'd actually win in a war?
Heaven forbid that these kids should run around. Exercise is now considered dangerous?! Exercise has ALWAYS been
dangerous to some extent. Now instead of these kids running around and trying to stay healthy, they are just going
to stand there. Great! No wonder this country has an obesity problem.
Always being afraid of getting sued for liable, will soon translate into abhorent health care costs when people continue
to die from heart disease at 30!
PLUS, how many people don't have sufficient health care!?
When I was in elementary school they banned all Nerf toys.. we had been playing with a foam Nerf Boomarang and I think it hit someone.... as a result schools ban-stick smote us and our playground fun.
School isnt a place for fun or physcical activity anyway. Students should each be in padded rooms with no hard surfaces or sharp corners. Any "writing" needs to be dont by means of voice recognition to avoid usage of sharp writing utensils. Reading is done from a screen flush in the wall covered by a thick transparent gel coating for maximum cushioning incase of bodily contact.
They aren't like 80 year olds, they get up and they go back to doing whatever it was they were doing. I guess the added mass coming from the childhood obesity I keep hearing about would give them more momentum than the days of old, the reduced top speed more than makes up for it :P
Monstar L
With so many in America taking the route of wanting to put kids in padded rooms so they can not hurt themselves or each other, the backlash from what I would call "normal" America is giving rise to the popularity of the UFC.
u ckheit/060905
This can be seen from the following article.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=b
If kids are not allowed to play tag, where does it end?
Back when I was in elementary school, we used to play tackle football during recess, and we didn't really get hurt that I can recall. The school did make us change to two hand touch part of the way through the school year because they were afraid someone would get hurt.
what sig?
we'd play army dodge ball... sometimes at very close range... with golf balls.
We also played some rough soccer at times, but never were we told to not play tag. Falling down was just part of the day.
It's the parent's job at the playground to help pick the kid up off the ground, tell the kid to shake off the dirt, and get back in the game. After a while they learn to pick themselves up and won't bother crying in your direction. They just get back in the game. For my four year old son this policy has saved us a lot of kleenex.
If your kid doesn't get stitches by the age of 12 then you better buy some rainbow bumper stickers.
Right, we should only allow kids to learn from safe, approved methods. In this fashion they can learn not to do stupid things that can get them hurt when they are 18, then it will be their problem, and no one will have to take responsibility.
Its safer for everyone. Everyone but the kid.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
... a lawsuit by doing this. The more rules they try to make to cover these situations the more they highlight the potentially harmful situations they haven't decided to cover. Unless they make rules to cover every conceivable situation there will always be something a kid can do to hurt themselves. And if they could cover ever possibility (doubtful!) they are looking at a discipline nightmare where kids are eventually expelled for being kids.
They'd be much better off making parents sign an indemnity stating that any child hurt during any activity on school property that is not related to a specific school activity is not the responsibility of the school system. Of course IANAL so I'm sure it could be worded better then that...
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Our stupid government needs to update our corrupt and stupid legal system. White collar criminals walk easy after ripping off the hard work of thousands of families, while schools get sued because that clumsy kid fell down and banged his knee. WTF is this world coming to?
For years I've been sending my child to school in the equivalent of a giant hamster ball made of thick foam. He'll never have to worry about getting hurt or getting a girl pregnant.
This is why the North Attleboro High School football team stomps all over their coddled counterparts from Attleboro High School virtually every Thanksgiving Day. ... NAHS, '75.
A local elementary school I know of has had anti-tag rules for a while already in the SF Bay Area. I imagine it is not the only one.
Someone call child services. I play "chase" with my 2 1/2 year old son. We bounce on the couch. We jump on the bed. We have tickle fights.
In the last week my son has earned him self probably 5 new bruises, a stubbed toe, a face plant on the coffee table, and too many trips, flops, crashes, bangs, ouchies, and other bumps to mention. Mom and Dad are right there, we intervien if he gets into a dangerous situation (ie: playing in the kitchen when we're cooking, climbing the back of the couch/chairs, playing with other heavy/electrified/hot objects, etc...) but for the most part, we let him develop his strengths and learn and challange his limitations.
It's not much unlike my own childhood. In fact, I would challange any one of those board members to imagine their own childhood with out such games. I would also challange them to present any statistically meaningful data that would indicate a link between tag and childhood death or long term disability.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
...will be a bunch of panzy asses at this rate! Will parents stop their kids from helping their father work on the car as a learning experience because they might get hurt? Will they not allow them to use computers and watch any TV at all because it might hurt their eyes? For that matter, maybe they should stop them from reading their textbooks for too long beause it too causes eye strain. What a bunch of fools! Kids need to get hurt to learn. I couldn't imagine life without getting hurt. I broke bones, dislocated joints, strained ligaments, and have been knocked out a couple of times, and I still function quite well if I must say so myself. While I agree the parents may want to avoid serious injuries like I got as a kid (I've been to the ER 11 times and have had 2 ambulance trips in 23 years (most of the ER trips were for XRays though)), what the heck is wrong with a bruise, cut, or the occasional freak accident where a collar-bone is broken by a baseball bat or something along those lines. Loosen up a little and let your kid learn the hard way some times, geeze!
...but I have to let this out...
Oh. My. Friggin. God. Some people are stupid to such extent I can't comprehend with my small brain. Just trying makes me burst out in laughs and cry with falling tears at the same time.
If you people - you know, not you, but you there who make these stupidities - now start making these regulations, then add another one: create an artifial island in the middle of the Pacific, surrounded with ten foot high walls for you kind and deport yourselves thankyouverymuch.
It seems there exist martians, after all. They transformed, and look like us and walk among us. They just lost their brains in the transformation process.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I say, let them go no holds barred and let natural selection do its work!
(original quote is, I believe, "Let's remove all the safety labels and let natural selection do its work!" by I-can't-remember)
God, I'm not even ironic. It's sad that stupid people have power enough through suing to provoke this kind of action.
I'll expect my kids to come home bruised, having learnt important things, not sheltered and pampered, ready to be later eaten up by the first passing fox/politician. But then, I don't currently live in the US of A..
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
Attleborro is basically next to Rhode Island. Clue to poster: there are parts of Massachusetts that don't lie within Boston.
I thought recess always had a teacher supervising the playground. So, how can games of chase/tag be unsupervised?
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
This will really help in the war against childhood obesity.
Just another attempt at crushing any competitive spirit in kids these days. Soon they won't even bother marking tests or assignments. In some schools up here, markers are not allowed to use red ink when marking as it may hurt the children's feelings. I figure if you're stupid, get used to feeling bad!
http://kitties.b-log.ca
How long until one of the kids forks tag and invents "gat" to get around restriction?
This is complete crap. I was talking to a coworker just the other day about public schools here have banned kids from bringing in peanut butter & jelly sandwiches in fear of the many kids who are allergic of peanuts. Kids need to get out there and get banged around a bit. It's a tough world.
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
Safety Meetings... no-one works, no-one gets hurt.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
The school safer from liability? ... wait until someone sues due to encouraged inaction leading to being overweight.
I have my 14yo son, 12yo daughter, 9yo daughter and 7yo son doing Hapkido maybe 4 times a week. If there's one thing they can do is dish out and take pain and keep going
I for one, welcome the chance to walk all over our new Wimpy New World overlords.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Recess is "a time when accidents can happen," said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban.
Sounds like recess needs to be banned. Replace it with some visualization exercises designed to simulate the stimulation of actual playtime.
Actually, any time a kid walks he could trip and fall. Issue wheelchairs for all the kids
prepared for nothing.
You learn by running into things.
The parents job is to make sure the collision isn't too damaging.
...schools have also banned walking due to the fact that some kids may trip and bruise their knees. Instead they are all pushed around in little carts fully equipped with front, side, and rear collision airbags, 5 point seat harness, and a pre-programmed McDonald's call button. We are trying to protect these kids from the real world. Even if it costs them their health in an already overly obese country.
But seriously, i'd rather my kids get bumps and scrapes as children than grow up unhealthily overweight due to lack of exercise. Out of curiousity, i wonder what those kids do play during recess...
Now its been a few years since i've played, maybe the rules have changed.. but I remember running away from each other.
It's their way of trying to fight back against Darwin and his silly theories.
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
I remember all too well getting beaten up and slammed really hard during battle ball. That was one of the worst traumas I ever experienced as a kid. To make matters worse, when I got glasses in the 4th grade, that made me an even better target. Kids would try really hard to hit me in the face just so they could mess up my glasses. I don't see why anyone would allow kids to play such a painful and psychologically traumatic game. The same thing with volleyball. I remember when it was my turn to serve and I had difficulty getting the ball to even go over the net or it would go off to the side. All the kids on my team would take it way too seriously and get angry at me. It was fucking gym class for crying out loud!!! They'd yell at me, call me "wimp" or "idiot" and just generally were horrible to me. I didn't deserve that for just a game. I'd prefer if they banned volleyball too. I still wish basketball was the sport I originally thought it was: You all form an orderly line and take turns trying to make a shot into the basket with every person getting three turns. The person who gets the most shots in after several successive tries in, wins. That way it's more about skill than anything else. All these "macho" posturing games really had me shivering in terror on gym days. Fortunately, I have a daughter, and we don't (yet) expect them to be "macho" when it comes to sports. I still don't get the reason why kids are so mean when you don't have any physical coordination or athletic skill. If the tables were turned and instead of gym class, there was brain glass once a week... and the smart kids got to get angry and disparage the jocks for not understanding the command line, I think the other side would get a taste of how it feels.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Have we become New France?
Please. Like so many other comments have stated, getting hurt while playing is a normal part of growing up. It strengthens kids. Witness studies that show trying to protect children from the dirty, dirty world is creating generations of people who are allergic to everything. http://www.parenthood.com/articles.html?article_id =4230
Teach those kids to live in fear and except restricted freedom while their young and impressionable, yes sir!
Yes, Attleboro, being on the Rhoad Island border, is actually nuch closer to Quahog RI than Boston.
And people wonder why home schooling is growing by leaps and bounds.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
Yeah, apparently it's closer to Providence than to Boston...
Still, I hate that dumb shit like this is happening so close to home...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
In order to play tag now you have to say "I waive all liability, tag, you're the party of the first part." Kind of like saying "They're coming right for us," before pulling the trigger while hunting.
I can't believe crap like this actually happens. I have an 8 (almost 9) month old that is pulling herself up on everything now. She has lost her balance more than once and taken a tumble. Should I remove my coffe table/fireplace/couch/ect just so she won't hurt herself? No. She needs to pull herself up so she can learn to walk. She also needs to learn that letting go can be a bad idea from time to time. I'm not going to let her really hurt herself, but a little tumble now and again isn't bad for any kid.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
My elementary school banned tag ever since I went there, which was 12 years ago. They also assigned us play areas. We could play kickball, basket ball, handball, or volleyball, but it was their choice which one we played and where. If we did something else, we were told to sit on a bench for the remainder of recess or lunch.
If I could rearrange the keyboard, I'd put U and I together.
I grew up north of boston and we played a lovely game called smear the queer aka kill the man with the ball. Now that was a game. 15 kids trying to kick the living shit out of you while you run around with a ball. We also played full contact football and rugby through the 6th grade. Nobody cared, you got hurt...oh well go to the nurse. This was a very affluent area too.
The school administration tried to stop us from playing unsupervised baseball after someone got hit in the head with a bat playing catcher. They banned bats and gloves from recess. So we used big sticks from the woods, tennis balls, and our bare hands. Man I wish I was a kid again, but not in this stupid litigious soceity we live in now.
... are we going to see the first case of a kid getting expelled for playing tag...??
"Dear parents,
It has come to our attention that your child has recently taken part willfully in what the kids call a "game of tag", which as you might now is now banned from our school as a very violent and dangerous activity. We are very concerned about little Billy's behaviour, as he seemed to enjoy running around and performing near collision stunts with other mischievous children. We had at least 4 bad cases of collision last year due to tag alone and this got to stop, so we have no choice to kick your kid out of school as an exemplary measure. We recommend that you pay attention to your child activities as they might involve other violent things like touch football, hide and seek or, god help us, playing doctor with the little girl next door.
Yours etc..
A very concerned principal"
Bleh... wrong solutions to problems that doesn't even exist..
You ban "unsupervised contact sports". By definition, no one is supervising. So how do you enforce the ban?
That's all the USA will be able to field in a few years, if things go on like this.
"Mommy! He shot at me! Waaaaaah!"
To show you how good advertising is, I thought this was about banning TAG body spray untill I read the article. =)
Faith_Healer -- The antethsis to almost everything, and the worlds worst speller.
You have to admit that tagging does lead to a life of gang membership and unruly behavior. It's good that they nipped this problem in the bud! Say NO to tagging!
Oh wait... you mean like FREEZE TAG?? I supposed PE classes will be canceled now too. After all kicking projectiles at one another or attempting to prevent one from hitting your head while dozens of kids are running around you is certainly a lot more dangerous than simply running around without the flying objects. Guess all they've got left is jumping jacks and running laps... heh, I bet teaching them a few songs to sing while doing laps might improve morale.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Did anyone else think this was about the Tag body spray?
I was just thinking "No way! Those commericals where right!"
But thats what we get for living in a world run by people who fear the unknown so greatly. Maybe our next president will be an atheist or something... I'm not say it would be better, but different could always be good. Don't get me wrong and call this flamebait.... I've seen lots of the personal clips of our current president, and he seems like a really fun guy and i'm sure I would have liked hanging out with him... I just don't want him in the seat he is.
wouldn't be an issue if people in America weren't so prone to sue..
Ah yes! Attleboro, Massachusetts. We fondly refer to the town as Paddleboro, Massachusetts after a spank club was run out of town by the cops. This happened after the cops went in undercover to spank a few butts themselves, of course.
Google --> Paddleboro
Anyway, Gaylene (great name) prolly developed an aversion to all forms of human contact after having her ass reddened at such an event. Her handler probably did not hear her use her safeword. There can be no other explanation.
Welcome to America. Where you can punch the lving daylights out of someone in a boxing ring, but can't play tag on a playground - or paddle someone's ass in a warehouse in Attleboro, Massachusetts.
Enjoy.
Stuff like this doesn't happen based on what any of the kids think, and it's really sad. This is more about making sure that no one gets sue happy and goes after the school, which as public schools go have way too little money to begin with
It's bad enough having to live in a padded room once you've gone crazy but to have the world decide to pad the walls of your cage from the very start is enough to drive a person crazy in the first place.
In learning to walk, I failed many times.In learning to ride a bike, I failed many times.
In learning to program, I failed many times.
In learning to socialize, I failed many times.
In learning to love, I failed many times.
But guess what? I didn't let the pain stop me and kept going and became a stronger person because of all of it, and I'd be very surprised if there isn't another person on Slashdot who can't say the same.
Limiting contact sports in schools, ESPECIALLY inner-city schools will start to see an increase in obesity among those children as they get older.
Those kids must be playing some rough tag if a kid ends up with a broken bone. I played those games and the worst I got were scrapes and bruises. I am fit as a whistle thanks to a childhood that involved sports, with some videogames, but just going outside and playing with neighborhood kids. All it is now is a blame game. If your kid is messed up, its not your fault, it is the schools, your parents, their friends parents, etc. This country needs to get rid of these politically correct people. Too much PC an it can destroy this country inside-out. Have some common sense!
I will make sure that my kids have an active and healthy lifestyle. Not a lifestyle people like these want you to have where you kids sits on their ass all day and get fat and die from a heart attack at age 40.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
That's right. No physical contact of any kind between children at recess. Nothing.
I was stunned when I heard that. I thought banning peanut butter was bad, but I can at least see the health issue (kids trade sandwiches at lunch etc).
But no touching? That's gotta have some serious impact on social development, don't you think?
And its all because of shrieking parents. Every one of these measures can be traced back to some hysterical (rightly or no, depends on situation) parent who reacts strongly. Schools basically can do fuck all about parents who act irrationally, other than buckle and ban things.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Hey! I'm confined to wheelchair due to a freak accident involving tag, two goats and a broken jar of vaseline, you insensitive clod!!
My blog
...as "Jessica Alba and Muhammed" which made me double-take.;-)
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
I think this is ridiculous. The United States of America didn't become one of the strongest countries in the world because we were afraid of kids occationally getting hurt. I don't want the next generation of Americans growing up telling the next Hitler, "I'm sorry, I can't deal with you because I'm not allowed to deal with situations in life... I might get sued."
I mean come on! Touch football teaches you how to work on a team, how to strategize, make friends, etc. If some bully comes along and starts getting rough, then the school can revoke his right to play Touch football. That will teach concequences... Or has the education system lost any backbone it had?
And guess what, kids get hurt! It happens. In the future, if I have to sign a paper telling the lawyers that I won't sue the school if my kid gets hurt for playing touch football, then I would. I think any Judge SHOULD (doesn't mean will) see that holding schools accountable for kids getting hurt in normal acts of playing during recess, is like telling a writer they will be sued if they use incorrect grammer or misspell anything!
Kids need to have experinces and work through a few tough situations while they are growing up. I'm not saying they should have to deal with school shootings. I'm just saying a little touch football is probably going to do them more good then bad.
By the way, did I meantion taking away touch football is more likely to teach them revoking peoples freedoms is not only ok, but expected and therefore tollerable. Schools should be trying to teach the next generation of Americans to live life and understand why we live in such a great country, the importance of freedom, and why it should continue to be a free country... I fear for the future of our country when kids can't play touch football during recess. What is this country coming too?
I wish people could think about the long term consequences/benifits of making major decisions. Oh, that's right, everyones blinded by "I might get sued.", rather than, "You know, there are many benifits to a game like touch football." (Assuming it doesn't get out of hand, but that's why they send teachers out during recess to monitor situations like this.)
Home schooling and other alternative education programs (EG: charter schools, distance education, etc) are growing at exponential rates, approaching 50% per year in many areas.
With absurdities like this, is it any wonder why?
Take a look at the new Los Angeles Unified Director - he wants to "crack down" on children, make them all wear "regulation uniforms", adopt a "zero tolerance" set of rules, etc. None of which encourage anything like creativity, individuality, or happiness. And so the march of students into alternative programs grows ever stronger every year.
In my own home town of Chico, CA, there's a newspaper piece a few times per year, something like "Where are all the kids?". The census demographics indicate that Chico has a young population, inclined to produce lots of children. So for years, they've braced for this tidal wave of kids, that never came. Enrollments are lower than ever, and they're dealing with some fairly serious budget shortfalls.
So, they closed down the most remote school - a small school with like 50-60 kids - with the idea of bussing the children to a larger school closer in to save operating costs. Guess what happened? The parents of the school that closed down got a charter and opened up their own alternative education program in the same building as the old school. And *that* school now has almost 100 students! Closing the school actually *cost* the district money since now they no longer get the funding from either the kids they already had, nor the additional kids now enrolled in the new educational program!
It's choice in action - I wonder how long it will be until they get a clue and start competing?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Virtually all of the state's skate parks were shut down after a ruling by the state Supreme Court that overturned twenty years of case law by voiding the protection from liability lawsuits previously afforded to public parks. No word yet on whether the public pools will open next summer.
Sucks to be a kid here -- I may move to save my daughter the trauma. Too bad Wyoming doesn't have better broadband coverage...
Just junk food for thought...
I think it's a pretty smart move. Now the cool kids will be playing tag behind the bike sheds instead of smoking.
Sometimes I wonder how the previous generations managed to make it this far, allowing their kids to play tag, not locking up kids who taunt others, etc..
If this trend keeps going we are truly going to raise a generation of fat wimps.
I remember doing all a manner of life-threatening things as a kid. There was the obligatory sledding down near-vertical slopes at a construction site (closed for the winter!), as well as the usual stick fighting, jumping off moving swings, playing chicken, and jumping your bike over creeks full of broken glass. One time my friends and I had the brilliant idea of having a brick fight, which I lost after taking one square to the head.
My point, aside from noting how incredibly stupid I was as a child, is that children are pretty durable. In retrospect, the brick fight was probably a bad idea, but children aren't really going to hurt themselves running full speed into each other playing tag.
Of course, in this day and age of 100 pound 8 year olds, is that even true anymore?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Dodge ball creates self esteem issues.... Kids might fall if the play tag....
For the record living is a dangeous business. Injuries happen, you do the best you can to protect the kids in whatever they do but ultimately accidents can and will happen.
We're going to see more absurd stuff happening unless some of these trends get reversed.
So if schools are banning games like tag, could we have an increase in childhood obesity? We should be encouraging children to exercise during recess, not preventing them from doing physical activities entirely. I can't imagine safety being such a huge problem that it justifies this sort of ban.
Maybe the two are related - when the good teachers are fed up living in a climate of fear, who's going to take the risks?
Life is an unsupervised contact sport.
Looking for something to do? http://www.grinion.com
...since no man accepts leadership without the challenge of combat. Try and engineer social darwinism into elementary school and we'll end up with a bunch of pussies come high school.
my school banned tag when i was in grade school as well. that was like 20 years ago in Los Angeles
Almost no one has heard of Attleboro
A lot more people have heard of Boston.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I once read that pain is the sign of stupidity leaving your body. If this is true, then considering the (stupid) laws being passed by my generation, and considering how my generation is coddling their children, I'm really afraid of how the next generation is going to turn out
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Another parent was quoted as saying that the other woman's kid was a whiny little pussy.
This is the same damned town, that back about 5 years ago, kicked in the door fo a private S&M party and arrested everyone for sex crimes. This really doesn't supprise me.
This is worse than what happened at my old high school... In my senior year, they banned burn.. all because one kid fell and scraped his knee. Geez the kid was fine, and didn't complain hell he kept going an got hit by the ball in the knee and didn't even flinch. God this world is becoming so screwed up. PARENTS WATCH YOUR KIDS! KIDS FIGHT BACK AGAINST THIS! Do what we did at Rockville, we fought back. we got over 300 signatures from fellow students and teachers. Show the school what you want! don't let them push you around!
I'm the kid who does dragon wallpapers for Linux Users.
Fin.
Game... blouses.
...raising them in a goddamned bubble.
I bought some Italian motorcycle boots today. The label tells me that motorcycling is an "ultra-hazardous activity" and that the boots won't protect me from all possible injuries (up to and including death). This is mildly patronising, but I can understand why the manufacturer would want to place a limit on their liability.
I bought some American snowboard boots last year. The label told me the same as above. It also told me that, if fitted with an avalnche transponder the product will not actually stop an avalanche.
One is patronising. The other is just plain stupid.
...about kids sitting around in front of the TV, console or computer all day on their lard ass than when they're actually in activity? Of course, with the current hysteria over how dangerous everything is, I guess many people feel "safe" that way. I don't recall my childhood as being particularly active, but I do remember playing soccer during breaks, king of the hill (push others down in winter, when it was covered in ice), basketball, tag, a game that was basicly like wrestling on a bar pushing the other down first and so on. I think the closest I got to hurt was when I fell down from a tree I was climbing, hit a lower branch belly first, then fell on my ass to the ground. I was black and blue and gasping for air, but not seriously hurt. Even the crazy winter soccer we used to play (small orange ball, plenty sliding tackles, no referees and decisions by snow wrestling) didn't lead to any big injuries. Supervised play is overrated, most of the time the supervisor has no chance to stop any accidental injuries anyway unless someone is being completely reckless.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What bothers me is that America's lawsuit happy ways are coming home to roost. Perhaps, the schools should get the parents to sign a waiver that says that they will not sue under a number of conditions. Then create a website to allow parents to check off on what there kid can/can not do. For those without computers, they can offer a computer at school for parental useage.
Sad thing is, we as a nation are getting obese. The solution for this is more playtime/gym. At the same time, we are killing it off in the interest of money. We have become a nation that pays lip service to the future.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
geez thats lame, whats next? ban any activity involving balls to avoid kids getting hit with them?
;), no cell phones, kids today are never out of sight of a parent of caregiver. its very unusual to me.
lets ban running too just incase kids might trip
you know what lets just ban outdoor activity alltogether, i mean there are bugs that could sting them
its weird seeing how kids today grow up, its nothing like when i was a kid, i had freedom, i was 'supervised (school)' barely a quarter of the day, i rode my bike wherever the hell i wanted to go
Consider brightly-colord safety chains for kids:
http://www.greatcompanions.com/images/GC1013_.JPG
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Is there an Open Source Air Traffic Control System that could be hacked to work on a playground? Of course, the screens would be manned by under-paid, drug abusing, union workers, but that can't be all bad. Can it?
It's about time someone put a stop to this web 2.0 bullshit.
...this crap is being foisted on us by the twin horrors of insurance liability and the femininization of the education system.
Take my son's school in Ontario, Canada for example.
The mother of one of my son's female classmates succeeded in getting the school to ban the playing of ballgames at recess because "her daughter has the right" to stand in the middle of the basketball court while a pickup game is in progress.
However what can you expect from a school board that has banned kids from packing juice in their lunch bags, because juice "attracts bees and wasps, and some children are allergic to bee stings."
I did the same thing with my kids, but during a small earthquake they fell off and shattered. I'm suing someone over this, btw.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Where I come from, we call it 'Tig'
All this PC BS is rendering our kids unbale to cope with the stress of the real world. My little brother and sister have panic attacks any time the slightest thing goes wrong. They both lived with my mom until they were like 22. What the hell is going?
"The Greatest Generation" got that name because of what there were able to achieve in the face of so much adversity.
I broke 2 front teeth because of a collision playing dodge ball on the play ground. I was in first grade at the time, and can remember the pain and denist visit vividly. I've had to endure significant pain over the years as the teeth re-broke and each time the dentist had to drill more of the nerve away. I now have my front teeth capped, and if the caps come off I have to get false teeth screwed in.
Thousands and Thousands of dollars and lots of pain all down the drain because I ran into someone playing a stupid game of dodge ball.
And you know what? I still love playing dodge ball and tag 22 years later. They are idiots for banning tag. Kids get hurt. They cry, they bleed, they heal. Its part of growing up.
When these kids start to drive.
Yipe!
C'mon, America! It's time to stop being pussies.
Really.
Shouldn't we be more concerned about our children getting adequate health care? How about decent employment opportunities when they grow up?
Like Dennis Miller used to say back when he was still cool, "Life is tough. Wear a cup." Our kids will be ill-prepared for the real world if they can't survive a 15-minute game of tag. It's not like it's mandatory, either. If you get picked on, don't play. That's another important lesson: how to opt-out of shit you don't like.
I am a very liberal person. Well, not really, in that I support the right to own weaponry, and I believe the constitution should be upheld on all levels. I believe the federal government should be small, and stay the fuck out of the states' internal affairs.
I believe there should be universal, free health care. I believe there should be programs to help those with very little to get a little bit more. I believe corporations are intentionally fucking over our nation and our society, with the help of the government, to line their pockets with booty and power. I believe President Bush and his cabinet have fucked over America worse than any President ever, and have done so with clear eyes and an easy conscience, and that those who still support him are pussies.
And I believe kids should grow up not being pussies. I was a geek when I was a kid, but I was never a pussy. Okay, I shouldn't say never. But I was generally not a pussy. Kids can be cruel, and mean, and downright nasty little fucks.
But if you don't learn to survive a game of tag, how the hell do you expect to survive the real world?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
We played a game called "British Bulldogs", I'm sure variants exist worldwide. Similar to tag only two teams and one person is "it". Each team has a base, you charge the other teams base and the "it" tries to tag as many people as possible. Last one standing at the other teams base wins. Great fun, and:
* Promotes teamwork
* Promotes excercise
* Promotes tactical thinking
Sure, sometimes kids get hurt. Kids are going to get hurt no matter what you do, it's part of growing up. Deal with it.
As a high school teacher, I completely misread the subject of this post. I took it to mean the body spray. As a person with a lot of allergies, I was pretty exicted to read the article!
Boy, what a let down that was.
My nephew lost all of his front teeth while playing tag last year. He lost a few more teeth playing baseball this year. However, there's no way we would hold the school or baseball league responsible. Kids get hurt, it's part of growing up. Any parent that sues for this is just looking for an easy way to screw the system for money instead of actually earning it.
Seems to me we're on the road to blaming everyone else for our own mistakes. I'm glad I signed the petition to stop frivolous lawsuits, too bad it didn't go through.
I never got hurt playing tag but while they're at it they should ban those frickin see-saws, I don't know how many times I jammed my damn spine and nearly ended up in a wheel chair because of see-saw antics.
This keeps coming back to the Col. Dave Grossman (On Killing, On Combat) Sheep, Wolf, Sheepdog analogy.
I'll paraphrase:
Most people are Sheep - not in the pejurative sense, but rather in the sense that they are utterly incapable of doing violence to another human being. Most people will go through their entire adult lives without ever comitting - or even witnessing - an act of violence (not counting TV etc, which isn't "real" violence)
Sadly, there are Wolves, who prey on Sheep. Wolves seek out sheep to fuck them up, because they know that sheep cannot protect themselves.
Happily, there are also Sheepdogs; those who place themselves between the Sheep and the Wolves.
But to a Sheep, a Sheepdog looks a lot like a Wolf - same shape, same teeth, same snarl. So sheep are very uncomfortable around sheepdogs, because sheepdogs trade in violence, and it is violence (not intent) that most upsets sheep.
Sheep are always trying to make sheepdogs more like sheep, even when that is counter to their own long-term interests, because the ideal SheepWorld is a nice, safe, non-violent bubble where nothing bad ever happens to anybody.
So Sheepdogs must remain vigilant and active - not only counter the Wolves, but also counter the Sheep. It falls to the Sheepdogs of the world to prevent the sheep from defanging their own protectors.
As an aside, there's a local radio commercial here that just drives me absolutely insane - it's an ad for a jewelry chain, in which a soccer mom (with the most teeth-gratingly patronizing voice ever) congradulates her husband on his "evolution" - he packs lunches, he makes playdates, he cleans the house - but when it comes to buying gifts, he still sucks. So go to Jeweler X and don't screw it up this time. Oh, and don't forget to pick up the daughter and get her (irony alert!) to Tae Kwon Do by 5:00....
This is a PRIME example of the sheep trying to sheep-ify the sheepdogs.
But here's the real question: if you are a Sheepdog, what are YOU going to do about it?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
When I was a kid, we played war with real rocks- probably 4-6 ounces (kid fist size).
Probably could have been seriously hurt.
Last year, at the voodoo concert in NO a mosh pit formed and I got to get slammed. It was *very* enjoyable (didn't get out in the middle- which was a good decision since there was a broken thumb and a broken ankle-- these were marines on break from afganistan it turned out later in the parking lot.)
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Kids do break bones running into each other. Some parents are very overprotective.
Makes me think of the games we used to play, one was to line up holding hands and people would try to run through your line, I'm pretty sure a game like that is banned.
I don't know what it will take for people to realize that there is a problem with banning risky behaviour.
As a child the penalty for misjudgements is a minor injury.
Unfortunately we've turned into a society of not-my-fault and lawsuits.
I watch out when I approach a door because I know it will hurt if I get hit by it. I'm sure someone has sued when they weren't careful approaching a closed door.
How's about we focus a wee little more on the unsupervised contact of fist-to-cheek, which happens often enough in our schools as I'm sure some Slashdotters can attest, and a little less on the unsupervised contact of palm-to-shoulder? I remember plenty of days when I went home bruised and/or crying and exactly none of them were caused my tag (or dodgeball, for that matter). Somebody slip our litigation-adverse administrators a memo that the kid getting picked on has hired Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
It is very simple. Kids get hurt. They may break bones. A rare some may unfortunatly die. What the kid gets out of playing tag (Connection physical activity with Fun, Exercise, Getting it out of their system so they are more behaved durring class) is worth a lot more then a broken bone (normally at worse).
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As when they banned tag recess because the "fat" children were feeling leftout as they were not able to enjpy the fun filled activites.
You mad
We'd hit the playground with a nerf football and play tag with it. Really needed to work on the hand/eye coordination and agility, plus little wind sprints to retrieve the ball after a miss.
Genuninely wish I could feel surprise that the state which has elected T. Kennedy, Kerry, Dukakis, Studds, and Romney would take such a tack.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Society is too dangerous... let's keep them from speaking with other kids, too...
... why people are leaving Massachusetts in droves. Having lived here most of my life (much to my embarrassment), I think the state should be renamed Nannychusetts.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Just imagine what would happen if word of this ever got out ... the sniggering, the laughter ... the disrespect ... the loss of credibility. Imagine how the French would ridicule us if they knew. Now estimate how much this could cost in lost contracts and in Political Capital. Political Capital that is needed more than ever to combat Terrorism.
I propose an immediate news blackout and containment of all persons involved. This story cannot be allowed to leak out.
I played with lawn darts as a child, and we didn't sue anyone!
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
So when child obesity grows to even more extreme levels, because government schools don't let kids engage in "potentially dangerous" physical activities, and when kids are harrassed by police when they play ball in the vacant lot or ride their bikes in the street... and pretty much the only thing kids are allowed to do are supervised indoor activities... how will we blame child obesity on the cola companies and capitalism? Who are the American people going to sue for this?
I can hear the thousands of geeks, nerds and dorks reading slashdot yell a collective 'why didn't they do that when I was in school'!!!
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
"The Underground History Of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto
If you're thinking about homeschooling your children, go read it. The entire book is there, online, for free. (just try not to slashdot it !)
Unfortunate, but true.
This type of trend begs for analysis as to the true cause. Many would say it's the neverending lawsuits. I believe that's part of the equation, but I believe another contributer to be the parents of today which came from the baby boomer and flower child timeframes. I believe their 'openmindedness', 'free spirit', and general lack of personal accountability have resulted in weak overall parenting. Parents today no longer seem to hold their child accountable for anything and no longer support other adults (i.e. teachers) in disciplining their children properly. If a child gets poor grades, it must be the teacher's fault afterall. And if the teacher scolds or disciplines the precious child, the parent doesn't say 'Well, you got what you deserved', they go after the teacher and then the principal.
I know I was taught much differently by my parents...who, thankfully, became adults and parents just prior to the late 60's/early 70's ridiculousness. I am a child of the 80s. Mine was a disciplined, sometimes physically enforced, upbringing. I had respect for my parents, partially out of simple fear of threats given for negative behavior. I had respect for all adults for the very same reason. I no longer see this same respect given to adults by children today, and I believe part of it is due to the lack of any martial discipline being employed. Poor parenting, with no manner of enforcement used to back up threats, only leads to poor children.
And to those naysayers who label martial discipline as somehow inhumane: I say little Johnny can only be manipulated so much via psychological techniques and timeouts before he becomes a master manipulator himself.
if you are a Sheepdog, what are YOU going to do about it?
... that's not it.
Eat the Sheep, invite the Wolves over, have a party?
Oh, wait
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
There was a particularly violent varient of tag played at British playgrounds throughout the eighties called British Bulldog:
m e)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Bulldogs_(ga
It was banned from all the schools in our borough (district) after two kids were taken to hospital with head injuries! It probably wouldn't have been so bad if they'd allowed us to play on the field out back but there weren't enough staff to keep an eye on us there so we played on the concrete playground instead.
Personally I hated sports at school (I was never very atheletic) but this game was liberating 'cause there was no pressure to win for your team (the 'team' changed after every round of the game).
It did have the unfortunate side effect of putting pupils in A&E on a regular basis but that was all part of growing up back in my day, no parent would have sued over it.
Heh, that's funny, in my school it was called "high water". The "it" kids would yell, more or less in unison, "HIGH WATER!" which was the call to run. We did it on a big concrete parking lot, so there was a lot of running and pushing with all that momentum behind it. Lots of falls to the ground, some tears, but good times and fond memories...I don't know of anyone who ended up getting walked to the nurse who wasn't out playing it again the next day.
Is it her son who feels safer or her?
Seriously I doubt her kid is so fearful that he's afraid of playing tag. Or if he is then it's his mother who has issues. I had a friend like that in school. His mother made him wash his hands ten times a day to guard himself agains anything and everything. As a result he became a nervous wreck that she then felt the need to fill with (prescription) drugs so he would 'relax'. At that point it became a vicious cycle. She got nervious, he got nervous, she got more nervious because he was nervous, etc.
IMHO some parents need to realize that their kids are far less fragile than they are, especially once they get out of diapers (nappys) if their parents ever let that happen.
When I saw the title of the article I thought they meant the body spray. ;-)
I just recently learned that our school district (Greeley, Colorado) has done away with recess altogether. Apparently the superintendent feels that the time should be better used in the classroom.
I know a teacher in the district (in fact, as I recall, she was recently named "Teacher of the Year" for the district, if not the state), and her experience confirms what most people would find obvious about the system: the kids hate it, the teachers hate it, the parents hate it, and student's ability to concentrate (especially in the afternoon hours) has taken a nosedive.
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
Local school Bans movement.
It is deemed that movement is deemed and unecessary risk and will be banned at all schools.
In other news.... Schoolage kids' health in declined. It seems that kids these days are just too sedentary
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
I agree with your post. Except for this small part:::
Now, in highschool, I was of the same idea that there shouldn't be any "uniforms" for school. Just... let me wear whatever I want.
BUT! My school had really, really great teachers and administration "people". Grown-ups.
Once, my entire class was discussing various issues with some faculty/administration members, and we brought up the "uniform" topic.
We were ALL behind the fact that we should NOT have to wear uniforms.
Well, I got convinced very fast with their arguments.
Why did they prohibit "casual" clothes instead of uniforms?
Because the school I went to was, erm, really costly.
Affluent families and such.
The school provides (to this day it does, funded 100% be ex-students donating $) scholarships to kids that don't have the economic means to attending.
So, if we started wearing casual clothes, the kids with $-affluent families would start wearing fancy clothes... and such.
Fine with that.
But, us being kids, for sure there were going to be problems of "making fun" of kids that used the same shirt (OMGWTFBBQ!) two times the same week.
Or the kid that probably had a limited closet of clothes.
So, I agree with having "uniforms"... although it sucks if you're trying to be Mr. I'm-the-most-rebelious-teenager-in-the-planet-arg
Nothing, I see this "playing tag band" really stupid.
And to those people::: YOU STUPID FUCKS.
But anyways, I thought I loose my daily 10minutes of life here on
God knows I don't want to contribute to 70 days of my life playing WoW.
Peace and love
Taco's Long Lost Anon Poster
... To ban all light exercise that may result in a slight injury or grazed,knee. Might as well ban walking too.
God Be Gone
I got in serious trouble in 3rd grade (early 90s) for having a snowball fight at recess. They had told us not to (something about ice chunks hiding in snowballs), but come on! We were little kids and there was a foot of snow on the field. What did they think was going to happen?
People are over protective of their kids. Yes, I know it hurts to see your kid scrape his knee, but he probably had a lot of fun doing it. It's a risk he takes playing tag (or whatever). Teach him how to identify risk and recognize when it's not worth it. Unless it's something that could kill or seriously injure them, show them how to do it safely.
I realize it's probably harder than I'm making it out to be (I don't have kids), but the amount of trust you have in your kid's judgement needs to increase with time or they'll never learn to trust themselves. My parents responded very well to my snowball incident. I got the "you broke the rule and the punishment is fair" kind of talk, but they didn't care that I got in a snowball fight. They trusted me to know not to throw ice at people and to leave if people started throwing it at me.
The world is a dangerous place, but there's a lot of situations that aren't nearly as dangerous as people pretend.
They should be very well protected....if they survive the freezing process.
I think we can all agree this is silly. TFA makes it to be a liability issue. So though it may be silly to try to protect kids from simple games, it's worse having to do it because someone could sue and possibly win substantial money for what we know are scrapes and bruses and such that are a part of childhood.
so, that's what's going on? We complain that children are obese because they eat mcdonalds three times a day, then ban tag and other sports/activities that actually get them moving around. The hipocrisy is so deep, I think I hav to start holding my breath.
J. Ginsberg Wholly Gamer The Path Leads Upwards
God forbid an animal ever chases them... they won't know what to do then.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
... and we are wondering why kids are becoming more fat these days. Solely taking away "unhealthy" foods will not help. There needs to exist a balance between the healthy and unhealthy stuff.
Because they're going to learn; if not in the classroom than from example. If they learn that all risk is bad, then they're going to become adults willing to throw everything away, just because of the possibility of harm.
If we live constantly in fear, then they are going to learn that living in fear is normal, and our responses to it are the correct ones.
The question is never just "are we teaching," it's "what are we teaching."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm glad to see this happen, for too long children have been able to do "stuff" and see "things". With rulings like this and future parents suing for what their children eat, to who they talk to, to what they do when they ditch school even, I am really looking forward to a school system that is instead run by fear and looks a lot like a penitentury or a nursing home.
s chool-bans-tag-and-other-unsupervised-contact-spor ts/
As long as kids are held back from experiencing anything, then I feel safe. And as long as I feel safe, that's all that matters... or I'll sue you.
http://www.breakitdownblog.com/2006/10/18/boston-
This nambification has been going on for ages. When I was at schoolu lldog
everyone used to play British Bulldogs [on tarmac], but that was banned
(and this was decades ago) since it caused too many injuries
[about one broken nose or equivalent per day].
Bloody fun game though - a bit like rugby, but not nearly as
safe http://web.ukonline.co.uk/conker/games/sept.htm#b
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Yeah but the neighbour got pretty pissed at what they did to his nice new deck.
I remember lawn darts being banned, but everyone I knew was careful because they could hurt you.
Then we got these safety darts, and people stopped worring and got hurt MORE.
As someone who had to wear 'regulation uniform' years back at school, I can tell you that it probably fosters your individuality more than not having one. The natural response of any kid is to rebel against such restrictions, and therefore it encourages creativity and individuality rather than extinguish it. :)
As the clothes aren't stuff you'd like to wear, you don't give a shit about covering them in mud, grass-stains and blood.
Everyone subverts the rules, you just have to know how far to push it without getting bollocked. I think we all agree that is a key learning experience...
The kids all have their own uniforms, even if there's not a 'regulation uniform'. It just depends on how much cash they've got, who their friends are, what music they're into, etc. Ironically their own desire to belong to a group is actually stronger than 'being an individual'.
Brian - You are all individuals!
crowd- Yes! We are all individuals!
bloke - I'm not.
You have to feel sorry for the kids.
Natural selection will ultimately fix this, but it will take a few generations.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
In most states those release forms are meaningless, because you can't sign away the rights of a minor child, and neither can they.
They exist more as a discouragement against people bringing suits, than any real defense in court if they did. If your child is injured while in someone else's care, and you can demonstrate that they were negligent and convince a jury of this, a release form isn't going to stop you from collecting. And of course, ususally you can just threaten to create enough of a hassle in court to force a cheaper out-of-court settlement with the insurance company. Avoids the trial but still means higher insurance premiums for everybody.
Varies state by state, I'm sure.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
In other news, Joe Pedophile, Principal of the local elementary school announced that his decision to ban paper in school was NOT made in haste. "Listen up people. This stuff is dangerous. Just this morning I cut myself and I've been involved in education for over 30 years! There's no money in the budget to train people to safely use it, so I'm forced to ban it. The good news is that sissors are out too. We no longer need them." This just in breaking news, 300,000,000 Americans sign a class-action lawsuit against the paper industry, citing the industry's history of marketing an unsafe product to minors. Sissor and paste makers were listed as co-conspirators. I'd smile, but I can see this happening.
Yes.. Telephone poles held together by steel tubes. The best thing in the world for a child at recess. They could crack heads, dislodge teeth, and tear flesh. For decades the BigToy playground equipment taught kids the things they could not learn from teachers... What hurts and why not to do that again. All the BigToy equipment in my home town has been replaced with rubber coated shapes which have no right angles or sharp edges of any sort. Children are being coddled by the schools because they are afraid of being sued by parents who would rather place blame than take accountability for their children. We're teaching kids to be soft and showing them that their actions don't have consequences.
Lessee... in elementary school we played Tag, Smear the Queer, Dodgeball, Kick the Girls (!!), and some rather brutal tackle snow football. I was a small scrawny nerd and got plenty of scrapes, bruises, and blows to the head. In retrospect, that was all good cause I needed some toughening up.
:-)
Smear the Queer is obviously too politically incorrect to be played anymore, Kick the Girls is not very nice, global warming is going to eliminate snow football, Dodgeball can cause concussions... the only one left is Tag, which is a ridiculously non-dangerous game. Banning tag is going to be unenforceable. Any time one kid starts running, and another starts chasing--there's a game of tag going. Playing games like tag is so primeval and innate that even animals do it.
This reminds me of how my liberal mom decided I shouldn't have any toy guns. I guess she figured if I didn't have toy guns I would be a non-violent, upstanding person! Of course, this just caused me to make my own toy guns, and spend lots of time tinkering with them and thinking about them. Then my friend's dad, who made his own archery equipment, carved us a pair of super awesome rubber-band rifles... and my mom pretty much threw in the towel
My bicyles
I thought the article was referring to Tag Body Spray...
These are the idiots teaching the generation of kids growing up? Gee.. give me a break! Every kid deserved the right to play tag. My kids were playing hide and seek the other day, except now kids call it "Manhunt". How about Whip! Have you ever played a good old neighborhood game of Whip when you were little? That's when you get 10 or more players on each side, hold hands and put together a gauntlet, run into each others opposing teams and knock each other down. That's a game for 6 year olds... it evolved into a rushing game, no hand holding, just run into each other's opposing team in a tight formation and knock everyone down. That evolved into a game we called "Last Man Standing". Hey.. I still have all my teeth. what I'm getting at is tag is nothing. next thing you know the kiddies won't be able to play "Duck, Duck, Duck, Duck, Goose!"
I only had to stop my 14, 17, and 20 year old sons to stop one game , it was dodgeball, with a 5lb medicine ball!
It was my 14 year olds idea.
Here is the school's website...
http://wes.attleboroschools.com/
ya know.. just in case you want to click on it a few times to let them know we are out here.
AC because I already moderated in this story
What a liberal is may have been distorted by talk show hosts. The people whining about liberals here may be acting like name calling brats (and have done nothing to help the situation). They still have a point that this trend was started by people who fit the liberal mold. Yes, I consider myself a liberal, but I just want to throw pies at these people who want these stupid useless restrictions. It shames, but I think the current crop of 'safety' pushers is beyond liberal or conservative.
These are the 'swing' voters who run from party to party trying to find that will protect them the most. These are the 'security moms', the people who fear Columbines or terrorist missiles aimed at their childrens' schools and will vote accordingly. This is the descendent of the 'temperance' movement and the anti-gambling and anti-prostitution movements.
I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for schoolmasters, who, as they have already devoured most of the child's mind, seem to have the best title to the body.
I wish I had mod points for the parent today, but such is life. For geeks will a rather modest literary exposure, the allusion is to Johnathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. Highly recommended reading.
We used to play British Bulldog on a grassy field at my elementary school till they cancelled it.
:(
I guess it was pretty dangerous, especially in winter when the field was 4cm thick ice...
It was fun though, people are too strong to really play British Bulldog anymore, last time I tried to get people to play 5 young adults got hurt
Where i come from some schools have banned Children from running... anywhere.
Partly because the dont have space for them to run, partly because they dont have enough teachers to supervise, and mostly because of fear of getting sued.
Why not just ban excercise completly and give in to obesity.
This is dedicated to
Those Born From 1930-1979!
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because .
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day.
And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound, CD's or Ipods, no cell phones!, no personal comput ers , no Internet or chat rooms.......! WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,
made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!
These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned
HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!
This is wicked fuckin retarded.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
... to the Keanu Reeves.
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
When you keep kids from playing activities like that where theres a chance that they'll hurt themselves, you breed in weakness. I think it's better to let a child get hurt a little playing some game like tag (it builds muscles and endurance too) than having them get the shit beaten out of them in later life because theyre too naive and know nothing of pain and strength. seriously, make the parents sign a disclaimer or something, I bet most would, but I think it's unfair to not allow children to play tag or other physical sports.
The question is, in banning tag at recess, have they made playing safer or merely prevented the harm of lack of supervision? Here's a genius idea, maybe we can ask a few teachers to take their breaks outside. It seemed to work pretty well for us. Teachers stand around and chat during the break and just make sure that nobody gets hurt. What "real" teacher wouldn't want to make sure that their students weren't supervised? At least that way when a kid gets told that they can't play by one of the teachers then they can engage in the favorite past time of "I hate Mr/Mrs. so-and-so."
What is this thing called "tag"? I thought it was something Technorati invented because people couldn't think well enough to organize their thoughts around 3 categories: sex, food, and toys...
Maybe its because I come from a middle eastern country, maybe not, but banning tag is just sad!
So what if the child falls! Isnt that a part of growing up?
If the parents are afraid that thier children are going to get hurt then I recomend they home school them
Clearly, we can't allow any pain or injury at all. Therefor, all children should have all sensory nerves severed before entering school. To prevent injury we can epoxy a big wrapping of foam rubber on to them. They can breathe through tubes connected to HEPA filters.
Then, when they turn 18, we can send them to Iraq. If they live through that for at least 3 years we can let them drink in lieu of actual psychological help but we must all agree to disapprove on the record and wonder aloud why they can't just be productive little consumers like their parents.
I suppose we COULD insist that our civil law system acknoledge once and for all that sometimes stuff just happens and that it's really not reasonable or just to randomly subject people to thousands in legal bills they can't afford just to affirm that. Then....NAAAH! It'll never happen, pass the epoxy and a scalple!
Now if we could just figure out where they get the idea that popping some pills is a reasonable answer to life's little problems.
I thought this was going to be about a school banning the Tag spray because young men were getting raped, like on the commercials. But yeah, this sounds pretty dumb.
By just reading TFH at first, I thought they were refering to the lame guys cologne that smells like ass and has equally bad commecials. I was going to praise them for a ban on that... in good taste, but now I see its the game tag and well banning it is just stupid. *tag* You are it.. ahh *walks to feet to lightly tap docile school patron **tag* Now it is you who are it
Our variation of that game, was called Assball, if you miss, you get an "A". You miss again you get an "S", until you spell A-S-S. At that point, you go up against the wall, bend over and everyone pelts you with the ball.
When I was a kid we used to beat up boys who wore perfume.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
School is where you learn to interact with the real, big (sometimes painful) world, you don't learn that at home.
My secondary (11-16) school here in the UK banned contact sports a long time before I arrived in 2001. It seems to have worked somewhat, although the smoking chavs haven't yet been noticed...
All 6 years ago, we used to play British Bulldog in the dark. This involved two teams of about 30 kids in the sports hall, no lighting whatsoever and we'd just run at each other in the pitch black. Whoever had the most people still standing was declared the winning team. We'd also play rugby thrice a week and not a single week would go by without a broken bone for someone in my year.
This was at an exclusive private school and i have to say that most of those people in my year grew up to go into law, medicine, business or sports. I firmly believe that had we not had the freedom to do such things, we probably would not have had the independance, drive and ambition to strive for goals in life. When you're constantly told aren't allowed to do something, you start to wonder just what you can do.
It seems to me that the problem isn't with the education system per se but with the state education system, where ridiculous lawsuits often do happen. Admittedly we're some way off from this situation here in the UK but i can see a ban on contact sports happening within the decade and that will be a very sad day for traditional sports.
"No, no, no, don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to."
Ridiculousness should be met with ridiculousness.
Lack of touch seriously hinders emotional development (by that I mean innocent touch, such as when playing tag (!)). The school are acting in order to avoid liability. The lesson should be that they cannot avoid liability in quite such a brain-dead and controlling fashion. With a good lawyer, a potential liability can be made near-certain, and this piece of brain-dead control-freakery can be reversed.
Wikileaks, no DNS
One thing that's happened over the past few decades is that families are getting smaller. When you've got 4 kids, if something bad happens to one, it's easier to write it off as there's backups. But, when parents are putting all their eggs (make that egg) in one basket, they're going to be a lot more protective. Not sure there's an easy way to solve this.
School bans 'Tag'... Nazbatag unavailable for comment.
victory for USA lawyers! Pretty soon we'll have to bubble wrap our kids up and send them off to school.
This is my signature.
My 8 year old is on an organized football team. Aside from the comic relief provided by a 64 pound (in full gear) defensive end, there are no problems. Kids twist ankles, get bruises, and get their hands stepped on by other kids in cleats. Nobody has been sued yet.
He's also active in cub scouts. We've got lots of rules from the national level that folks out here in America just can't understand. Being a recent transplant, I try to explain some of the rules (e.g. we can't ride on a float in next week's parade, or carpool kids to a campout w/out prior permission, insurance verification, and signed parental permission slips). The people who have lived here their whole life can't believe that a parent would/could sue when a kid falls down and gets hurt. Some of them probably think I'm making stuff up when I tell them the way it is "back east".
Out here it's not a federal case when a kid splits his head open on the monkey bars or sprains something falling off a swing. It's considered part of growing up, and a learning experience. Most of the kids aren't obese, they have chores and sports and other activities. There seems to be a lot more really tough, really old people around here also. Hmmm..
Besides the fact that we're stubborn, I think it also has something to do with the fact that a degree Fahrenheit is a much finer unit than a degree Celsius. Sure, you can say (roughly-speaking) 4.5, 5 or 5.5 degrees Celsius, but it's a lot neater to say 40, 41 or 42 degrees Fahrenheit. Sure, an extra couple of degrees really doesn't make a noticeable difference, but we 'mericans like to be exacting like that sometimes, even when it doesn't matter all that much.
:P
As in, "gee, it's supposed to be colder today than yesterday," even if the difference is only 1 degree F.
Anyway, why should we change? Can't the rest of the world change for us?
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer." -Adolf Hitler
"We are one Nation, we are one People." -The One 'leader'
In other news, school children will be bubble wrapped as of next year.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
So as I understand it, to keep the children safe they're restricting their physical activity at recess and shoving glorified fast-foods down their throat at lunch time? Beautiful. The Good ol' USA - land of the lard.
Life is such a sweet insanity. The more you learn, the less you know.
While I can understand the need for schools to protect themselves from the litigious nature of society, this goes too far, and also does not take into account the long term downsides. I fear for our youth who will grow up obese, diabetic, on Ridalin, and are unsocialized. When the youth of today grow up and are walking down the streets of New York are they going to sue everyone that dares to nudge them on the busy sidewalks? Oh wait - they won't be on the sidewals because the city will have banned walking in public for fear of being sued!
Just another nameless binary in a crowd of 1's and 0's
comes not from punitive awards (at least not as the root cause) but from the ability of lawyers to take a "cut" of the cash. If lawyers were required to charge a set fee, you'd never see class action suits where the lawyers ask for $1 billion dollars and each plaintif gets $0.38 while each lawyer gets $1 million.
I don't know what the solution is, as all the proposed remedies have downsides (loser pays, etc). But the current system sucks.
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When I was a kid, think late 60s, we invented our own game at school. We played it for 3 weeks till they banned it. The infirmary was way to busy.
... Standards and Practices !
Take two hard rubber balls, a bit bigger than fist sized is nice. 3/4" nylon rope about 4' long. Drill holes in the balls for the rope and knot it both sides of the balls to make a "bolo" 'bout 3' long.
Broken hockey stick handels 'bout 3' - 4', tape the ends eh', and a football field is all you need for "Bolo Ball".
No rules except to score you gotta wrap the bolo round some part of the opposing team's goal.
We played full contact tackle, rugby with sticks, and the whole school would come out and watch. It was mayhem with fairly serious injuries in every game. Damn it was fun.
PenGun
Do What Now ???
I'm doing work experience. Beleive me, the kids here play all the time and get hurt sometimes. Its part of growing up, they never have serious injuries. There just isn't a climate here in semi-rural england for lawsuits, people don't do that sort of thing. Every parent has enough sense to know what the school does all it can to keep children out of harms way without ruining their education
And you've got to remember than when you first start primary/elementary school, there is almost no devisions between "working" in a classroom and "playing" outside. Most of the stuff done in the classroom is play-related.
We are ending up with a society that is afraid of its own shadow, that cannot make real life and death decisions, and that wants to be protected from all harm. Without being exposed to activities where one could possibly be hurt in a minor fashion, people do not have a frame of reference to make decisions when things really do matter. Instead when someone does get hurt, there is a huge outcry to ban whatever activity caused the injury, no matter how minor.
I hate seeing anyone hurt, especially kids, but the lessons that can be learned from a minor mishap can hopefully be applied later when making a decision that has real consequences. Some of natures more harsher tests are a pass/fail grade with no chance to take the test again, it's much better being able to take some of the smaller pop quizes.
That's fine until your children tell their teacher their parents are not feeding them, and the DCFS comes and takes your children away...
Your analogy doesn't have enough animals; try this one. The problem is not with the sheep or the dogs, it's the pigs.
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.......Nor is it really the running. Its the impacts.
Getting your skull cracked is probably THE best way to reinforce, in the mind of a child, the whole idea of LOOKING where you are running. I don't know how many times I have seen some pretty spectacular kiddie collisions on the playground, usually the result of Dodgeball game A overlapping into Tag game B, cause some pretty good hurtin'.
But the real issue is that we are raising our kids to be pampered, padded and ill-equiped to deal with NORMAL activities, such as running through the park without braining some poor little ol' lady on her way to her bridge game.
We are subverting the whole premise of "survival of the fittest" and allowing our kids to be less and less capable of the demands we put on them as adults, later in life.
It's become a mamby-pamby world.
I blame the lawyers. The US makes up about 1/20th of the world's population, yet we have 70% of the world's lawyers.
Shakespeare's Jack Cade had the right idea.
-CR
"So is the BSD licence even more 'free' (than GPLv2)? Yes. Unquestionably." --Linus Torvalds (TinyURL.com/2vugzl)
the issue is not child safety, or health and fitness. it is an issue of living in a litigious society.
I think most of us live in far more fear of civil courts than we do of terrorists. Likely soldiers in Iraq are more afraid of getting hauled into court on trumped up charges than they do the insurgents.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Far too true. The point here isn't to shield your children from all of the ugliness and potential (non-serious) dangers of the world. I know I learned a lot about people, the world, and how it all goes around from my time in school - things that my protective parents would never have exposed me to had they homeschooled me.
Not to mention the fact that school is a wonderful place for kids to have fun and make friends (and enemies, but such is a lesson of life that must be learned). Little Johnny might get to know some kids from soccer practice, but that's nothing compared to being able to hop on a bike down the street to Timmy's house.
Schools get sued more than you think. Just the act of defending yourself is enough to drain valuable funds from a town. And one big successful lawsuit, especially if the town's insurer deems it not covered, can really impoversh a town. The threat of a lawsuit alone is enough to turn government agencies and businesses into pathetic nannies who have to point out the obvious dangers of everything so someone can't claim they didn't know better in court.
Now you can get sued if the curriculum doesn't make every single parent happy. Good luck with that! Lexington MA Lawsuit
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
is letting these kids go to school with these administrators something a parent should even do?
seems more dangerous to be taught by morons than getting hurt playing tag
just keep the kids home. the tv will take care of them.
Oh man, this reminds me of when I was in elementary school. Yoyo's got banned because kids were hitting each other with them. Then the pokemon card craze hit and those were banned because the older kids were ripping off the younger ones (buying a holo charizard for $1 or something like that). Then in high school we had some super-safety PE teachers, so we never played dodgeball (which happened to be on of my favorite games) or any other sport like it. It's way to easy to over stupid things in America. Let the kids have fun! I had stitches 3 time when I was younger (mostly from doing stupid kid things) and I don't wish I would have been "safer". Stitches build character!
and they wonder why our kids are getting fatter and they're hyper in class... they're not getting exercise! i guess they just expect us to feed 'em diet pills and ritalin.
it's not IN boston. It's attelboro, about 30 miles south of boston.
I never did understand the reason people use "teaching to the test" as a reason against uniform testing. Either the students know the material or they do not. And I'm not sure why teachers can't make the experience of learning the material that is on the tests interesting. I suspect it is because teachers resent being held to account and told exactly what their curriculum must include (not that they couldn't ADD any other materials they wanted to). Or, the fact that they were not teaching the basics to everyone from the beginning and letting certain students slip behind and only paying attention to the "curious" students. This ultimately results in problems for the whole class when all of a sudden they are holding Johnny and Jim Bob to the same standards as everyone else. Since teachers are "graded" on the overall performance of their students they now must give Johnny and Jim Bob that extra effort, reducing time spent with the curious students and making those students life boring (just teachning to the test).
In my opinion it is all the fault of the public school teachers and their unions. If they were teaching the BASICS to EVERYONE in the first place then Johnny and Jim Bob would have no problem passing those standardized tests, the teachers wouldn't need to spend extra time with them, and could still make their instructions interesting for everyone.
Of course my perspective comes from being taught in private Catholic schools until the College years, and at least in my case our teachers blew away the public school teachers in the area. They made things interesting and they would actually fail students who didn't pass our tests. Granted that may be the exception even in private schools, and our tests were not standardized like now, but since we were learning at such a high level above the same grade in public school I can't come to any other conclusions.
Each time I get a new breath of hope for the USA, some story like this pops up and non-sense takes yet another dimension.
I for once welcome our future asocial coach potatoes overlords! At least I feel safer in being less moronic.
as a MA native, rest assured, this kind of thing is incrediby common. Political correctness rules the state. There is no one to oppose thin kind of stuff because it is the only one party state in the US.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Tag is just practice for running away from the kid the AK-47 and grenades. We are stripping our children of all their defenses!
To translate the Team America metaphor into this, the point needs to be made that the only people watching the Sheepdogs are the Sheep. It's up to the Sheep to keep the Sheepdogs from getting out of line and attacking everything, just as its up to the Sheepdog from letting the Sheep get too idealistic and defang the Sheepdogs.
However, Sheep can't turn into Wolves. That's where I can't translate it, but that's primarily because the Team America metaphor fails here. The Dic... er, Sheepdog has a much better chance of becoming an As... um, Wolf than the Sheep. The Sheepdog has the means and the power to do the same things the Wolf; the only thing he's missing is intent. Add misguided or bad intent like, say, controlling the Sheep by killing the "bad" Sheep or trying to make the Sheep lives better by taking the land of other Sheep/Sheepdogs, and voila. Wolf.
But both metaphors are still off for being far too simple. And self-serving.
They tried to ban baseball at my elementary school in the early 80s because of the risk of injury from the relatively hard baseball. Of course we just ignored the ban because there was only one teacher on the field observing during recess and lunch. Then they announced that we could no longer play British Bulldog or Red Rover, and again we just ingnored it and went on our merry way.
I played tag when I was little, and sure I did ran into a few things. However, I was never seriously injured. Heck I still have most of my teeth left. :)
All right, let's take a quick look at common law here:
Volenti Non Fit Injuria
Basically, "There can be no injury to the willing." If you're partaking in a dangerous activity, you cannot blame anyone but yourself for your injuries.
But it's fucking TAG. Is the US populated by hemophiliacs with osteogenesis imperfecta?
Kids get hurt. I know; I was a kid and I have two of my own. I got hurt by other kids, often, and on purpose. You know what? Life hurts and has no mercy.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Stick a fork in U.S., we're done
There was a big hoopla over dodgeball (and its removal from schools) a while back... it's sad to see that the slippery-slope that we were thinking about back then is coming to pass now. However, I did not imagine that it would be our litigious society that would be the impetus behind the downward slide. Is this how we are going to teach our kids? That if you have a problem, you have to sue? Or that we should be afraid of lawsuits all our lives? I suppose if you want them to grow up to become doctors, it would be a good life lesson. *sigh*
My stupid ass elementary school in Cincinnati Ohio had banned all that stuff way back in the 80s as well, I'm 25 now, do the math. How is this news again??
grep -iw skynet
If people are afraid of their kids falling down, then why do they bother to teach them how to walk? After all, falling is part of learning to walk and learning to persevere.
It's amazing that some people are so risk-adverse that they try to protect their kids from everything.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Who thought this article was refering to Tag deoderant?
Damn, now all those school kids can't use the beta tagging on /.
Maybe it isn't even played anymore...but in the early 70's, it set the playgrounds in Wyoming on fire!
Smear the Queer was a reverse-tag kind of game, played with a nerf football on a snow covered grassy area. Whoever had the football was the queer, and everone else tackled, piled on, and generally abused this worthy until somebody could wrench all or most of the nerf football from them, thus becoming the queer.
Score wasn't kept. Nobody won. To my mind, it was the purest distillation of football ever devised. It was a blast!
Has anyone else heard of this game? I'd be interest in knowing if it was just a local phenomenon.
If this were not a true story, then I'd say this could fit under the category of "It's funny. Laugh."
However since it is a true story, this is not funny. This is very sad and scary.
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Ok I'm wasn't a big on not being safe when I was younger but isn't the whole point of playing these games to have fun and if you get hurt you get up a walk it off. Enorder to make you tougher then were before? I can see the next ban on the playground no jungle gyms, why are people so dam sue happy? let your get hurt thats the point of being a parent is that you can teach them on how to pick themselves up and try again but harder.
Man, when we were kids our parents practically encouraged us to get hurt.
They gave us *woodburning pencils* for Christmas. Oh, it wasn't enough to give a little boy a sharp object - it wasn't a real toy unless it also heated to 500 degrees.
A conversation at my friend's house:
Q: "Dad, we need some nails to build a rocket ship."
A: "You kids can use anything you find in the junk pile. Just don't use my fresh lumber."
In the end he even provided a rusty saw we could use to cut panels for the nose cone.
Do they even sell band-aids anymore?
... they ban the only exercise these kids probably get all day. O.o
Would now be a federal hate crime and get you expelled.
Oh how times have changed. Not saying whether for better or worse, just wow...
In fact, it's 40 miles south. (no, that's not 40 miles somewhere out in the middle of nowhere where you'll maybe pass a cow or two and a couple of mile markers - that's 40 miles where you leave the Boston metro area and its suburbs, and enter the Providence RI suburbs. About the same as the distance from Manhattan to Edison, NJ)
Actually, what's weird is that this isn't a suburban soccer-mom school where I would expect something like that. It's an old, small city, and a look at the state stats for the school shows that it has a significant proportion of low income and minorities, as well as relatively low test scores. Plus (unlike most schools in Boston) from the pictures on their website it looks like they have grass to run around on during recess, instead of asphalt.
I wonder if there's something going on here that they're not saying anything about.
That Guy: Let's cut to the chase. There are two kinds of people: Sheep and sharks. Anyone who's a sheep is fired. Who's a sheep?
... of--
Zoidberg: Uh, excuse me? Which is the one people like to hug?
That Guy: Gutsy question. You're a shark. Sharks are winners and they don't look back 'cause they don't have necks. Necks are for sheep. [Everyone sinks down and covers their necks.] I am proud to be the shepherd of this herd of sharks and I am gonna lead you to the top in this industry of
Fry: (whispering) Package delivery.
Ceci n'est pas une sig
The other difference is that you only had to be touched by the "catcher" and then you had to stand still where you were caught, and try and reach people running past to add them to the captives. Its quite fun because of this rule, you get walls of people on the field as of course people can only catch those running past them. Eventually they mostly cover the entire width of the field and make the runners have to worry about getting past these AND the guy who is moving, who could pretend to be a stationary catcher.... :)
---
Bubble Suits for everyone! Careful, the zipper might snag u!
When you say WMD do you mean: most powerful military in the world lead by commander-in-chief that has dismantled any check on his power and agenda? or do you mean the chemical weapons we never found?
We are all just people.
It seems like they left out a few obvious things to ban for fear of injury like:
/.ers can help me think of a few more.
Stairs - Broken bones from falls
Knives - cuts and accidental (or not) stabbing
Shop Class - just too many to mention
Music Class - Possible hyperventilation due to lack of outdoor exercise like "Tag"
Come on, I'm sure
Are you sure they didn't mean the body spray. Those adds are annoying enough to merit banning IMHO.
But since exercise is important for health, instead of something dangerous like tag, they can do something completely safe ... let them run around and look for WMDs!
All sigs should be as funny as possible, but no funnier.
Or maybe the kids will just play tag, touch football, etc anyway.
That's what we would have done when I was a kid.
The problem with analogy is that it is, at its heart, simplification of a complex problem - and with simplification comes a loss of detail.
So one needs to be careful with extrapolation of analogy.
One should not take the analogy as recommendation of rule by elites; the "who watches the watchmen" problem is very real and non-trivial. To put it in terms of the original analogy: Sheepdogs are human, and sometimes they can morph into Wolves. So some of the distrust of Sheepdogs by Sheep is well founded. There is a balace to be struck between the Sheepdog's desire for more power and effectiveness in the fight against the Wolves, and the Sheep's desire to limit the destructive potential of the Sheepdog, should he "go Wolf".
Incidentally, although Col Grossman's work was originally on soldiers and soldiering, he has expanded his definition of who constitutes a "sheepdog" to include police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and others who put themselves in harm's way in the defense of others.
That work, by the way, is based on intense, SCIENTIFIC studies on the PHYSIOLOGICAL (note the emphasis) effects of stress and violence on human beings, both actors and victims. He has discovered, for example, that the fight-or-flight mechanism is far more sophisticated than first suspected, and while there are certain universals, many people have different reactions. It is not at all unusual for someone involved in a deadly force encounter to experience a slowing down of time, an increase in visual acuity, a decrease in hearing perception (to the point where they don't hear their own gun go off) and a loss of bowel/bladder control.
Read the books, they are full of great SCIENCE and make fascinating reading.
The "Sheep, Sheepdog, Wolf" analogy springs from the fact that most people have a phobic-level stress response to exposure to physical violence; not just when they are participants, but when they are observers. Most people, when backed into a corner, DO NOT bite.
But it is also possible to inoculate people against this stress; to teach them to remain functional when in mortal danger. Anybody who has gone through any sort of military basic training can attest to this.
And the converse is also true - the more you remove stress from people's daily lives, the poorer they handle stress when they ARE exposed to it. Prevent kids from playing and roughousing (within reasonable limits) and you are setting them up for fragility in later life.
Like it or not, the real world is full of bumps, setbacks, and wolves - the problem is not how to avoid the instances of them, but rather, how to handle them when they happen to you.
Finally, NO soldier is "pro war" - not one who has actually seen the elephant at least. But somebody has to stand between the monsters and the weak, and boy howdy, are there ever monsters out there.
If that's not you, fine. You are in the majority after all. My job is to protect you, not like you.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Elementary schools in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Spokane, Washington, also recently banned tag during recess. A suburban Charleston, South Carolina, school outlawed all unsupervised contact sports.
Some pretty Red states there. This is not just a Massachusetts thing. Also Attleboro is relatively conservative by Massachusetts standards.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Looks like I bad-touched a poor mod right on his hero fantasy. Naughty spun. Bad, naughty spun. Sheepdogs really, really need to believe they aren't just another sort of wolf. And they will rip the throat out of any sheep that tells them otherwise. Sheep gotta know their place.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
the flanders children? I say, let them eat dirt and get hurt now so they don't all die of the common cold or cry because they broke their arm when they're 37. It truly works. Just look at how long civilization has lasted.
This has already been brought up, but I thought I'd elucidate:
There's a part of the brain - right in the middle - called the "amygdala." The word is derived from the Latin for "almond," because surprisingly enough it looks like one.
It is believed that the Amygdala is primarily responsible for storing pain memory, and it seems to be the section of the brain least prone to forgetfulness and most easily accessed. If you fall over and scrape your knee on the playground's asphalt (or - more seriously - touch a hot stove or fall down the stairs), your brain will tuck away the memory of that pain in the amygdala. Any time a silimar situation arises (hot pot on the stove, running on asphalt, whatever) you will unconsciously recall this memory of pain.
Let me make this clear: this is a very good thing. It not only tells us what not to do, it also causes us to empathize with the pain of others. Someone already said something to the effect of: "and then we send them off to war." Exactly - how do you expect someone to make a responsible decision about killing another human being if they have very few stored memories of pain themselves?
No seriously. Shoot the parents and administrators who insist on these silly rules. That'll teach them that there are more important things they need to be worried about.
Pretty neat.
However when ten times as much of the federal budget goes into military expenditure as into health or education despite the country not being invaded since the war of 1812 then I suspect those making the big desicions are wolves in sheeps clothing.
This is labelled as "funny". It is not funny. It's a symptom of a deadly serious problem in the US that has been getting worse over the past few decades. We are raising a generation of risk-averse cowards. Children learn to cope with risk and pain by dealing with the kind of moderately risky situations and minor injuries that are typical of childhood. Raise them insulated from all that, and they'll start to think they are entitled to a world where they can be perfectly safe at all times. This is not the real world, and they will be utterly unprepared to deal with it. It's already bad enough with all the panic over "terrorism". This can only make it worse.
And the brethren went away edified.
The teachers probably know what's best. The judges are the ones that need to think more about this matter.
Don't let the hoster colour your perception of the article...
OK, let's address your "A Few Good Men" example. On its face (and in its heart) it is well-founded, as the Nickleson character in the movie is indeed a sheepdog who has lost the plot and has "gone wolf" to some degree.
But notice that in the movie, it is **other sheepdogs** who bring the rogue back into line.....
That is part of the dillema of being a sheepdog. There **IS** a line beyond which you must not cross. Ultimately, you **SERVE** the sheep; you are not their masters.
Which opens up an interesting observation: consider that in the parent/child relationship, there exists a kind of sheepdog/sheep relationship; the parent's job is to protect the child from harm.
Is it not then the case that a parent that seeks to protect the child by preventing it from playing "tag" might be similar to the rule of a military elite "for the good of the citizens"? Is not the parent in this case the one shouting "you can't HANDLE the truth"?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
So - while I agree with many people on here who say that banning tag would be ridiculous, did anyone catch the one *key* word in the article? No, nobody? Well, let me just point it out for you then. The key word is "unsupervised"! Now, I'm not sure exactly how people in Massachusetts mean this, but I take this to mean that as long as a yard duty is out there to keep an eye on things (and deal with accidents if they happen) then the kids can go ahead and chase after each other all over the playground. Perhaps they have a different definition of "unsupervised" than I do. However, if my kid got hurt at school because there was no adult in sight, you better *believe* that I'd have quite a few choice words for that principal! As long as there is an adult around to deal with problems as they crop up, I have no issues, but I would never want my kid to be running around unsupervised at that young of an age. What if some crazy stranger pulled up and decided to try to abduct a few kids? Small children should *never* be left unsupervised. This doesn't mean the adult watching them needs to coddle or bubblewrap them from any and all possible dangers - just the major ones, like running out in front of cars, or getting abducted by strangers, or, yes, touching the stove (as I read someone mention already). My daughter is 3 and she understands what "hot" means without having touched the stove and gotten severe burns. So, I tell her the stove is hot, and she *doesn't touch it*! She doesn't even want to... hot *hurts*! I guess this makes me part of the sissy-makers in that I don't let my child experiance all of lifes hurts without at least *trying* to warn her and keep her from the ones which would require a trip to the ER. Eh... I think I'm doing a fine job, so anyone who doesn't can just screw off.
"Does bouncing count?" - Silk, Magician's Gambit by David Eddings
OK, The first step is to admit you have a problem. Hi my name is Rob and Im from Ma. We suck. We send a fat bloated pig into office term after term, ban Halloween and stop kids from playing tag. Be careful who you vote for because the rest of the Massholes want to protect you from your self. Look at our Gov race the lead guy wants to give public housing to Illegal Immigrants along with in-state tuition and drivers licenses.
I rarely go meddling with other localities' affairs, but this one spurred me to action. Please, take the moment you were going to use for posting to compose a message to the principal and superintendant.
Technology tips and tricks.
*Or*, I dunno if this will sound foolish.. Supervise them.
The law should not dictate out lives.
Wolves generally hunt in packs, and take out only the weakest members of the sheep herd. That doesn't sound terribly challenging or much fun to me. It actually sounds rather cowardly, to tell the truth. I can do without the silly pack of wolves, howling and yapping to tell the world how great they think they are, just like some little old lady's annoying, spoiled pet poodle. I always thought I was more of a large tiger with big nasty fangs and sharp claws. Silently and alone, I stalk my prey in the dark, steamy jungle, waiting for just the right moment to pounce and tear out my prey's throat.
I remember a game back from grade school, it didnt really have a name, but it basically involved EVERYONE getting out on one of the all-dirt softball fields behind the school and playing a form of dodgeball.
With frisbees. Lots and lots of frisbees.
Like, "Everybody bring as many frisbees as you can find from your basement and bring them to school, becuase after lunch, all hundred of us are going to go out to the softball field and fling them at each others heads as hard as we freaking can."
I don't even remember anybody ever being "out" when they got hit, that just meant they got another frisbee to fling back at the other side, hopefully damaging more of your schoolmates.
Bonus coolness was to the kid who could use one frisbee to block another, Tron-style.
I can also remember playing dodgeball where one kid was throwing at everyone else, who was standing against a brick wall. If you got hit hard enough, you'd get smashed into the wall, too. Last kid standing got to be the next thrower.
ah, good times.
s'wut i sed.
Wait, that doesn't make sense to me. Unless... you're saying that dying together with hundreds or thousands of other people is more severe than dying alone or with a few friends???
Whew! that they weren't talking about the body spray. Am I right or am I right?
Life is dangerous! It will kill you!
Privacy is terrorism.
"A parent was quoted as saying that her son feels safer now and than she'd witnessed enough "near collisions".""
Does anyone else see how stupid that parent's statement is? She, that is, the mother, saw more "near collisions" that she though appropriate (she probably saw at most one, and more likely didn't see any but only imagined the possiblity), and now a regulation alleviating HER fear makes her SON feel safer. WTF?
From Neo himself: "Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory lasts forever."
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Just because he's right about one thing, doesn't mean he's right about everything....
He's wrong about video games - although I understand how he got there, based on his studies.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
banned "unsupervised contact sports"
Key word is unsupervised. So if they ain't watching whats to stop the kids from playing.
On another note I may be from Soviet Canuckistan, AND went to public school, but I could barely pick my own nose with out being "supervised" or watched. What kind of messed up schools to these kids go to that they are unsupervised? Unsupervised school? What do the kids do all just congragate once and day and teach each other?
Rather than make stupid unenforceable bans, hows about you watch the children? For the Sake of the Children for gods sake! Argh! [BOOF] head 'sploded...
Martial arts are not bad either, pick one that includes sparring fights early in a student's career. They can acquire some hand-to hand fighting skills and learn to take the occasional bruise (even if nobody intends it, minor accidents will happen).
At the same time, there is not much danger of a serious accident involved. I did Karate for a few years at university, and we had less serious accidents in our group than similar groups of soccer or volleyball players.
With serious accidents I mean things like torn ligaments, broken limbs or anything bigger.
C - the footgun of programming languages
We homeschooled our kids, and they got to play all these violent, dangerous games. If they occasionally got hurt, we taught them to get back up and keep going.
Fools! We should have upped our insurance and sued ourselves! We could be retired on a beach somewhere today...
There are only wolves and sheep. A sheepdog is what sheep call their own wolves. A wolf is what sheep call other sheep's sheepdogs. The wolves pretend they are sheepdogs, their to fight the wolves and protect the sheep. But they are all just intent on eating the sheep. The sheep think they need a sheepdog to protect them from the wolves, but they conveniently ignore the fact that sheep keep disappearing and the sheepdog keeps coming back with a bloody muzzle. Funny how the ones who usually die are the sheep.
Arguably, the world was an even more violent place when, say, Jesus or Buddha lived, yet neither one of them argued for violence as a solution. Maybe there's a reason that few of humanities greatest spiritual leaders ever advocated violence. The path away from violence is not paved with more violence.
We aren't sheep, sheepdogs, or wolves. We are human beings. If every human being on the planet refused to be subjugated, and was willing to die, not kill, for their beliefs, there would be little violence and no war. You say we aren't there yet, and I agree, but I don't think more violence is the correct solution.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
For amber waves of grain ....
That's a lame analogy: who is the shepherd? You know what their role is, right? To sell those sheep to be slaughtered and eaten, or have their wool shorn off, and then slaughtered and eaten. He'll probably cook and eat a few sheep himself, probably giving the scraps to his sheepdog. The shepherd is the one who controls both the sheep and the sheepdog, and sometimes kills the wolves himself with his shotgun. Which, according to your analogy, makes him a sheepdog.
Or maybe the shepherd is the guy who leaves the flock to their own devices and has tons of forbidden monkey sex with the other manly shepherd back at camp. Either way, when the sheepdog is off duty I guarantee you that he'll just go back to licking his own balls.
steampunk web design
Ok, I may not be the greatest product of our fine public schoold system but I think I speak for, oh....anyone who wasn't the kid sitting in the liberary reading during recess. Parents try too hard to protect their childern for video games, bullying, discrimination and anything else that might prepare them for the REAL world. I news for theose parents THE WORLD ISN'T FAIR! Lets just strip all our children of their social skills so that when they grow up and get a job and someone pats them on the back and tells them they did a good job they can sue them for physcial abuse. Great job to you parents. Oh ya and another thing, if your kids don't listen to you and they want to revolt just take them to the doctor and have them diagnosised with ADHD and let the drugs do your job.
im gonna sue the school cause my kid doesnt get to play tag now bwhaha! the system works again
Great...just what we need. RULES to make sure we raise a nation of wusses. Like we don't have a problem as it is with our kids being slugs and sheltered beyond belief. Sad...truly sad...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
In other news.... childhood obesity is up 89%!
Icemaann
http://www.nugg.org
A strange game. the only winning move is not to play.
You learn from playing, sometimes the learning can hurt.
Schatten Teufel
There is nothing "Common" about Sense
Football tackle you
The Gospel according to lolcat
Or a ban on boogers?
What about dirty looks?
So we can learn to pick ourselves up.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
...if there was any scoring at all, it was in getting and holding on to the ball. One might go so far as to say "it sheperded a sexual awakening" in the terms of the administration wombat did a whitewash study of prison rape.
Of course, the queer was always hunted to extinction, so I suppose there is a negative connotation there. I'm not sure we even knew what a queer was back then...
Funny, I hear that kind of logic all the time when a kid is bringing pain down on another kid that is outwieghed by 30 pounds. Of course when the smaller kid uses his skills and competative edge to use a tool, and shoots the entire football team, out come the "Ooohhh... the schools are too violent crys." Make up your mind. It is either ok for kids to inflict bodily harm on each other or it is not.
Mind you a game of tag is rearly going to inflict bodily harm, and if one kid IS hurting other kids when playing tag, he is cheating, and just using the game as an excuse to commit violence. So, tag doesn't really apply to my statement.
LF1M tag, need healer, pst!
This sig is neither interesting, nor humorous. Including meta-humor.
At my intermediate school (10yo-12yo) they'd banned playing games with girls, and any form of catch type games 20 years ago.
The theory being if the girls got hit in the breast they would get breast cancer, which has now been debunked.
And also that kids in general wouldn't get hurt.
This was all just a general sign of male teachers getting out of primary schools because of the prevailing opinion driven by the fear generation that all mean who work with children are paedophiles. This is now happening in high schools too, meaning male children no longer have role models at school and are generally turning in to pussies.
And if you want to talk about no longer grading people, that was implemented 10 years ago, now we have 'did not achieve' and 'acheieved' as our grades at high school. Which means anyone with half a brain just does the minimum to get achieved and the universities are now suffering because people don't know how to do anything anymore when they get to them.
A soldier should never be without a sense of humility. Do not make the mistake of overestimating your own importance. The truth is that you depend on the "sheep" more than they depend on you. I know it's not a pleasant thought, but you ought to get acquainted with it.
Banning games of tag is, of course, pointless. I doubt it will have any effect on the kids once they grow up.
The same people who stress about the cost of litigation arising from kids playing tag at school probably have no problem with military recruiters at the high school and they wave their little flags and cheer when 18 y/o kids go into the military. Then they avert their eyes when a kid with missing legs rolls across their field of view. Let the kids play tag and send the worry-about-litigation-cost republicans to Iraq and the world will be a better place.
Most men/boys want to have fun! More women/girls prefer safety.
No, we're not raising our kids to be wusses, just feminine.
"unsupervised contact sports". Is my worst subject anyway. Last time I played a game of "unsupervised contact sports" the girl fell fell asleep
My 4th-grader had this happen to her, but I found out about it as she was describing her progress in getting the new draconian rules repealed. She got a bunch of kids to politely refuse to obey, and as enough kids followed, so did the new Principal. I came in after "march like soldiers" and "put your head down after you eat" were repealed, and before tag, four-square, and using the playground equipment were reinstated.
At this point the only privilege left to be re-instated is touch-football, which they are going to get back this week.
She's getting a real education at that school.
Way back in 2001, the year everyone seems to have selective amnesia about.
The Man Who Sued God
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
That is mainly - if you don't like being the guy picked last or the one that is always it, or always getting hit first - get a gun!
This is a zero loss mentality. Most individuals and businesses are adopting policies like this because of the threat of lawsuits. This is one of many of the various zero loss rules that is going to hurt our children in the long run. Children need to have injuries while they are young. Otherwise when they grow up and have never done anything of any count they are either 1) too afraid to try because of the possible risk involved or 2) they try everything possible to make up for what they didn't have as a child.
The U.S. Military is adopting many policies like this to create a zero-loss environment. For us to play water-polo we have to have a battalion commander approval because of the possible risk of soldiers drowning. We are seriously going to cripple our children by having zero loss ideas like this because there is no moderation.
Today,s kids spend more time playing video games than ever before. I'm not saying video games are evil, but they hurt the development of social skills, especially at a young age. Kid are more likely to interract with human beings while they are at school, not after hours. Go out and tell kids they can't be in physical contact, you'll end up with a huge number of people who can't interact normally, this could cripple many aspect of interaction.
I was at a pirate festival once (I swear, only once). It was the kind of place you might take your kid for the afternoon, spending $10 on a pirate hat and a patch. When the parents needed a break, they sat down in front of the stage, where there was some grass surrounded by benches. Since these kids all now had pirate swords, etc, the activity du jour was beating the snot out of each other with plastic in the little grassy area.
So the most amazing thing? No one got hurt. These kids were having this awesome three-foot tall fight scene, swords clashing and whatnot, and not a one of them managed to get hurt. One kid fell - so the other kid said "Sorry," and helped him up. Kids know how to play. Let 'em.
Google: "All your data are belong to us."
The only problem with both home schooling and charter schools is that parents, like everybody else, has their biases and they pass them on to their kids.
Teachers, like everybody else, have their biases and pass them on to their students.
Millions of people grew up over the years playing things like tag or having BB gun wars or running with scissors. This over-protectionism is getting way out of hand and we are quickly raising a generation of people who have no idea how to deal with pain.
Is it really any wonder they react violently when they actually experience it?
They have no filter for it and they lack the ability to cope. This is complete bullsh*t.
Cheers,
let's turn them totally uncapable of doing anything other than driving to the mall and eating a double fry&burger....
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I admit I am on the other hand, and did bmx racing, mountainbiking, skating, diving, klimbing etcetcetc..... and i did hurt myself several times, and i took guys to the hospital and popped their knees back into place after nastier crashes
and when the time comes to escape the burning building, and when your reflexes count to avoid a car crash, or when you run for your life or just after a bus..... well then all those parents who "feel safer now" will damn sorry because their children will be totally unable to anythin with their bodies other than burn/fall/die
even when you do not prepare to be a parachuter, rockclimber or a race driver, a little "near collision" or kick in the head might give you some balls and teach you things
just my 10c
You're kidding, right? School is where you learn to sit down, shut up, soak up information and regurgitate it on a test. In what way is that real, big, or worldly? Homeschooled kids, on the other hand, aren't stuck in a building, and learn to deal with people of all ages, not one adult and 20-30 kids just as ignorant as themselves.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Did he also discover the freeze-or-fiddle-about mechanisms? Over 90% of the European citizens acted in thóse ways during WWII. When is the last time Col Grossman found himself fighting a war IN his own country? From his essay: "What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another." All those guns are just for hobby? And the 'Defence'-expenses (one might say 'War'-expenses) of the US of A, are meant to hurt non-Americans? All those billions could not better be used to support fellow Americans, starving children et cetera et cetera?
If that's not you, fine. You are in the majority after all. My job is to protect you, not like you. Thank you for that. But think about it: a soldiers job is to protect his/her fellow citizens from... other soldiers protecting THEIR fellow citizens?
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Yet another sad casualty to our society based almost entirely around litigation. When I was a kid (not that long ago, I was born in '81) if you got hurt playing tag it was just a harmless accident. I mean, if someone was actively antagonizing you, well, the teachers would say there wasn't anything they could do about it and tell your parents that you should just avoid them in the future (yeah great idea, I wasn't trying to do that before), but if you fall down playing a friendly game of tag then someone might sue.
Hell, I got punched in the face on the way home from school my Junior year of high school and the school didn't even do anything about it (nor did the cops actually, despite having the guy's license plate number and the jackass being stupid enough to drive by my house about 20 minutes later).
I have to wonder how these schools would respond to classic schoolyard games like Red Rover where the object is clearly to knock other people down (hell, my debate squad had an annual game of it in high school and nobody bitched) and the always fun, albeit poorly named, Smear the Queer. A game whose entire point was to pound on the kid who had the ball until you could steal the ball from him... never said we were very smart.
Cool, let's never let our kids get hurt. At all. Ever. This will ensure that they grow up to be well-rounded, responsible, and experienced adults.
or else!
the administrator's face if he ever saw a game of British Bulldogs :)
The best quote I've ever heard on this topic was from George Orwell:
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to to visit violence on those that would do us harm.."
As much as I am in favour of gun control (I am Canadian, after all) it only takes a few minutes of searching to find out that the majority of guns in the US (and Canada for that matter) will *never* be used on another person.
Some are for sporting purposes, others for recreational hunting, still others for collecting or similar hobbies, and the rest are more like touchstones, representing some sort of assurance of personal security, even though they will never be used as intended, and most would find themselves unable to use them should the opportunity actually arise.
I don't have any figures to break these down by category, and I'm afraid that any figures coming out of the NRA would be suspect... but a simple count of the number of guns extant, divided by the number of shootings per annum, shows that most are never used as weapons.
As far as the percent of GNP spent on the American defense establishment, and the worth of that money vice other potential places to spend it... this is a slippery topic that is closely tied to American partisan politics, where "my side" is always right, and "your side" is always wrong, and to hell with the merits. This makes debate likely to be counterproductive, so I'm not interested it discussing it.
I will offer, however, that I would not advocate American levels of "Defence" spending for MY country, and that engaging in a protracted military adventure where there was no credible threat, at the expense of an operation where there WAS a credible threat and a job of national reconstruction yet to be completed (that would be Afghanistan) and in so doing squandering a huge amount of hard-won political capital, while simultaniously spending billions, was perhaps not the wisest course of action.
As far as my own country goes, I would like to see military spending increased, but only slightly. We have been commited to a venture - a noble and just one, as it turns out - but our current budget does not include sufficient funds to replace badly worn-out equipment and training for those not on operations. We need funding to match the missions, but funds in excess of that should be earmarked elsewhere. We simply do not need a fleet of aircraft carriers, $2B USD each stealth bombers, or three different latest-generation fighter aircraft.
As far as the last comment goes, we have long gone past the days of the armed forces of nation-states vying with each other for supremecy and empire. It is simply no longer acceptable for any nation-state to annex the territory of its neigbours through the use of military force; wars of conquest are quite simply over.
Modern militaries are now more about restoring order to failed states, or removing of regimes whose behaviour threatens global security - such as the Taliban in Afghanistan allowing Al Quaida to operate freely within their borders. Clearly, this could not be allowed to continue, and so military force was necessary, right, and just.
We are, however, on a hell of a learning curve here, and not everything we do is as effective as we'd like. We (the global "we") really dropped the ball in Rwanda, and in Bosnia/Serbia/Croatia, and in Somallia, and we're learning the right and wrong ways to do things. Those lessons ARE being learned, and they ARE being applied at the pointy end.
Operations like Afghanistan are NOT about conquest; there's nothing there we could possibly want anyway. They are about restoring peace and security to a land that has been too long without it, and setting the conditions for sucessful rebuilding of the country. Afghanistan has one of the shortest (if not THE shortest) life expectancies, and unbearably high infant mortality rates. That is unacceptable in this day and age, and we have a moral obligation to do something about it.
You may not believe me; you may choose to believe that there are sinister, alterior motives. Believe what you want; I know why we are doing the job, and if I thought it was sinister, I wouldn't be doing what we do.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I know no one will read this, but I thought I'd mention that Doss Elementary in Austin, TX has had tag banned for around 5 years now.
-l
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Fortunately, there are other other approaches to parenting than, "You're a bad kid, Timmy!" and, "Gee, Timmy. You seem to be fighting with your sister. Clearly you have issues, because fighting with your sister is abnormal. There is something wrong with you, and we need to work together to fix your personality defects."
Ever thought about separating the action from the emotion? How about, "I understand that you are angry with your sister. Sometimes people get angry with each other, even loved ones, and you are not a bad person for feeling angry. But practicing physical violence against those with whom you are angry is not ok."
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Well Baaaaaaa
Hmm, 'USA' on the tag list. This shouldn't be a site where Nazis can do whatever they want. The tag list may have to go
Great comment, AC.
The fact is, we could have universal, free health care *and* a smaller government. These goals aren't contradictory. With the amount of money we spend on healthcare already, we could run a real universal healthcare system, such as those found in Norway or Japan.
As far as smaller government goes: we could quite easily reduce the government by cutting back on non-essential spending, and reducing government interference in what amounts to states' rights.
The fact you wish I couldn't vote pretty much indicates you are anti-democracy, and your own opinions are pretty much not well-thought-out.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.