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Elementary School Bans Students From Touching Each Other
theshowmecanuck writes "A school in British Columbia (the province that now even California can call flakey) has just banned elementary school students from touching each other during recess. You know, one of those times for play and more importantly learning how to socialize (which itself includes touching). CTV News reports: 'A ban on touching during recess at a B.C. elementary school has shocked parents, who call the new no-touch policy "ridiculous." For most kids, recess is a chance to run around and goof-off with their friends, but a new ban on touching at a school in Aldergrove could put a damper on playtime. School administrators at Coghlan Fundamental Elementary School in B.C. have banned kindergarten students from touching each other during recess.'"
How do you know who's "it"?
Now instead of Raffee they'll be listening to jingles and learning how to use the 3 Sea Shells.
Demolition Man's setting was too far south obviously.
have banned kindergarten students from touching each other during recess.
But touching themselves is still allowed. Huzzah!
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Contest to see who can be the most ridiculous. "Tag! You're it."
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Are they trying to create an entire class of socially maladjusted kids? Because that sounds like exactly what they're doing. It's not like you can easily learn the subtleties of touch later on in life. Even a year gap can get you labeled a creep and carry nasty, debilitating consequences for decades.
Finding God in a Dog
Somewhere behind all this is some whack-job parent's bitching.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Parents are upset about it.
It's an overreactionary policy by the school, nothing more.
If my kid were in that school, I'd tell them to ignore the rule, and tell the teacher or principal that reprimands them that their dad told them to ignore it because they thought it was stupid.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This is the only way to slow the spread of Cooties. Tell your kids the risks. Get tested.
I would like to say this is one of the stupidest ideas I have ever heard.
Sadly it isn't even in the top 10. So i will just say that whoever came up with this idea is a moron.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Children could still sneak out of sight and have body contact. They could 'trip' and fall into each other (faking it, the little bastards-my nephew loves faking falls). This is a start, but clearly falls short of its goals.
What's needed here is a way to keep them contained and safe, both for their own good and the good of the other children. Perhaps a start could be a resistance device fitted on the ankles to limit their speed (after all, high speed injuries are more dangerous). Maybe similar ones for the arms to prevent flailing arms injuring other people, or accidentally throwing objects at each other. I was originally going to propose having it by the forearms, but that still leaves elbows as threats - so instead have an entire jacket purposed for this effect. It could double as a uniform for ease of identification of students, maybe in a bright recognisable colour in case they wander off.
Once the children are properly protected, you then need to move onto securing the environment. Additional padding for those inescapable falls, having all objects edges rounded and no sharp objects around, would be a good use of taxpayer money for classroom renovation. Only then can we ensure they are properly cared for and educated, to grow up into strong, well-adjusted, outstanding members of the administration. It's a miracle we every survived this far as a race without these critical safe-guards, but not one we should take for granted.
Exactly. They don't come up with this crap on their own, even though there are paranoid conspiracy nuts who think school administrators just live for coming up with weird and restrictive regulations, the truth is, every time there is some weird and restrictive new regulation put in place that makes people shake their heads and ask "Why would anyone have that rule?", there is some idiot out there who demonstrated that it was necessary.
In the case of elementary schools, it's almost always because an irresponsible parent who should never have been allowed to have children went on a screaming lawyer fit because their "darling angel" was pushing others around (as is their right!) when some other kid pushed them back (how dare they! Imma sue the kid, their parents, and the school!) resulting in lawsuits that should never have happened, and new rules that should never have been needed in order to placate the moron. The same moron who will still encourage their kid to be a bully and push other kids around, 'cause those rule things only apply to other people, and who will try to sue the school again when their kid gets suspended for breaking the rule they forced into existence.
Why no, I'm not bitter at all from having watched this happen over and over. (Alright, yeah, I am.)
Red Rover, Red Rover, send nobody over.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
When my daughter was in high school, the school district announced at one point that they were going to ban all public displays of affection, no matter how casual. It became known as the "no-hugging rule".
Although I don't know what the reaction was at other schools, at my daughter's school "hug-ins" and hugging sessions were organized via facebook and texting. Kids would have massive group hugs during recess, designated "hug monitors" would hug everyone who went by in the hallway, (daughter was one such) and hugging became the common greeting. A few days into it I asked daughter how it was going. She said the principal had made an announcement that they were not going to adopt that particular guideline.
Point is, change can be wrought, even by children. If all (or most) of the kids held hands at every recess on every day, what could the authorities do? Suspend the entire school?
This kind of thing only continues when the people don't stand up to it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
I think that not touching anyone is very germane to nerds.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Let me guess... Former english teacher. :)
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Because this doesn't seem like tech news
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There is that whole "riding on a single wheel thing" in the comic.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
"Feminization" is the wrong word for this. If you take female young children, and don't systematically indoctrinate them into quietly playing "tea" and "shopping" with dolls, a whole lot of them will love to run around and explore and compete, too. True, some of them won't, and will prefer quietly playing make-believe with dolls --- the same of which is true for some young male children, who won't all automatically be little wild roughhousing monsters. Kids of both genders show a variety of individual behaviors, frequently including thriving on unstructured, rambunctious activity.
Blaming poor treatment of children on sexist stereotypes ("feminization") is misplaced. "Femininity" is not to blame for the authoritarian, "sit down shut up and behave to become good obedient workers" schooling approach, which is usually dictated from above by overwhelmingly male upper-level administrators. Teachers interacting with students are primarily female, since societal sexism leaves lower-paying and less desirable jobs to women; however, teachers increasingly have little influence at all over school policy (they are expendable labor, who must submit to management priorities or be fired). When I was in school at the beginning of the transition into the "zero tolerance" era, none of my teachers supported those policies; that crap was being forced down from above, from a wealthy white male administrative class with MBAs (not from "touchy feely female teachers").
"NO TOUCHING!"
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
>even though there are paranoid conspiracy nuts who think school administrators just live for coming up with weird and restrictive regulations
I used to think this in high school, after all none really seemed that bright.
later on in life, I just found they were playing dumb just to fool the students, silly me
Actually, I think it is ridiculous reaction to ridiculous parents making ridiculous complaints held up by ridiculous courts who issue ridiculous settlements when cases like this are brought before them.
In short, I blame lawyers. ALL of them. the whole "you can sue anyone for anything" logic lawyers have is what is really fucked up. Deep pockets win every time, even if they loose, they win. Because it becomes MUCH less expensive to simply settle for less than the cost of litigation.
I've always wanted a third "verdict", one that represents a level of contempt by the court for frivolity. It would work like this. You sue, for damages of $100K and the trial happens and the judge/jury ends up saying "this guy had no case" and issues a verdict for the defendant, with "prejudice" (or other word) that would indicate frivolousness of the case. The plaintiff would be responsible for the lessor of the amount of the suit ($100K) or the costs of the lawyer's fees, plus 25%.
Close cases lost by the plaintiff would be exempt. Judge/Jury discretion.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I think you're making a mistake by identifying this as a "gendered" problem, that "boys are being treated like girls." From my own observations of kids (and, there is more "formal" research backing these things up in greater generality), both boys and girls naturally exhibit a wide range of individual behaviors, including things that traditionally have been placed in strict gender categories (but, in reality, quite frequently cross gender lines). Some little boys are wild and active and love rough physical play; so are some little girls. Some little girls are quiet and polite and like "domestic" play; so are some little boys.
Setting up a false gender dichotomy between "how boys behave" and "how girls behave" creates the problems you're complaining about: if you throw all little boys together in a rough-and-tumble free-for-all system, some will be happy and some will go home crying to mamma about how horrible the playground is. If you force all little boys to be still and quiet and do genteel arts and crafts, some will be happy and some will go screaming crazy. Good childhood care does not come from locking everyone into their expected gender behavior box ("boys' activities for boys, girly stuff for girls"), but recognizing and working with the fact that each individual child will have their own personality, behavior, learning style, etc., and you need a flexible system with experienced adult supervision on the ground (not distant managers issuing simplistic edicts) to address differing needs in the classroom and playground (e.g. let the rough-and-tumble types play "physically"; step in if they start causing distress to some other kid who doesn't enjoy that type of activity so much).
As it turns out, I actually know the administrators personally, as well as the kindergarten teachers. My kids go to this school, and have had this principal for several years. I have nothing but praise for this principal and the kindergarten teacher that my kids had. They're excellent, committed professionals.
Of course, that doesn't stop someone who's read the Slashdot 1-paragrapher of the original, grossly-slanted news story from launching an ad-hominem attack on people (s)he doesn't know. Way to jump to conclusions.
And, really - 5, Insightful?
I've got a little bit of knowledge of this specific situation, as it turns out (my kids are at the school). The Slashdot summary, in typical style, is way out to lunch. The school has placed a temporary ban on play at recess or lunch that involves physical contact between kindergarten students. This is in response to a number of injuries that have happened with this particular class. Given that we're two full months into the school year, I think it's pretty safe to assume that the teachers have done the "Billy, please don't hit Bobby" routine, and there's a few kids for whom that's not working. At this point, given the way negligence and liability works in Canada, if the school was not to react in some way, my guess is that legal action from one of those lawsuit-happy parents we often read about could in fact be successful. So, they responded and said for the immediate future, there will be no touching on the playground, for the class that's having the problem.
As for "shocked parents", I'd say it would be more accurate to refer to "the shocked parent". This would be the one who went straight to CTV News without clarifying the situation with either the teacher or the principal. Most of the other parents that I've talked to are more than a bit disgusted by a) the decision to skip the usual channels and go straight to the news, b) the extremely slanted news coverage (which of course seems to have exactly the one interview with the one mom, since few of the other parents were willing to go on camera when it was obvious the angle the news was taking), and c) the gross overreaction by the news-story-commenting-public.
As it turns out, I'm ALSO a pedagogue (with a Masters degree and about 15 years of experience in the classroom to date). I happen to think you're wrong, on all counts. The school needed to act on not just pedagogical theory in this case, but also to demonstrate legal "due diligence" that they were dealing with a safety hazard for children that had already resulted in several injuries. I don't have personal knowledge of the students involved, so I certainly wouldn't want to call myself an authority on how this situation was handled (although that doesn't seem to stop others, who have even less knowledge of the situation than I do), but this situation seems to have been an ongoing one that presumably was not being "solved" by other measures that had already been taken. Also, I don't believe anyone (in the know) has been claiming that bullying is at play here - it seemed to me from reading the letter sent home to parents that it's basically normal "rough-housing" that is problematic because it's resulting in injuries (e.g. when it happens on playground equipment and results in falls), moreso than any sort of bullying.
Finally, "so-called teachers are obviously unprofessional and should be avoided", when you know as little about the situation directly as you do, seems to be a bit unprofessional from a self-proclaimed pedagogue such as yourself. These are all well-qualified teachers who in my experience in dealing with them in other situations (e.g. when my own kids were directly involved) have always conducted themselves with the utmost integrity, competence, and care for my children. So, frankly, I take your opinion of them for what it's worth. I'll let you run the math on that.
I don't know any of these kids myself - my kids are a couple of years beyond kindergarten now. But, as a first aid attendant (and teacher) at a different school, I can attest that I'm seeing more playground injuries now than 10 years ago. The equipment has never been safer, but perhaps that gives kids a false sense of security that it's okay to push kids or play-fight when you're 4 feet off the ground on some equipment or other.
When I mentioned this news story to a primary school principal I know, her immediate comment was that so many kids that age are showing up so sleep-deprived, they basically show all the symptoms of ADHD. I don't teach primary grades myself, but I've certainly seen this in some of my older students.
And, I'm guessing you were making a light-hearted "Canada" joke, but it should probably be pointed out that 5-year-old hockey camp doesn't generally include body contact. To my knowledge, that all starts somewhere around 12.
Such behavior has also been expected, at other times, of well behaved boys; such as the Victorian-era "children are to be seen but not heard" ethos. Hammering away at the "feminization" aspect of the problem is often used to misplace blame --- on some imaginary straw(wo)man liberal feminist conspiracy --- for problems that do not stem from some mythical ascendancy of women in society. There's more than "some" overlap in the "bell curves" between boys and girls; often, there's more overlap than not (and, in a hugely multidimensional space of behaviors and preferences, nearly everyone has at least a few things on the "other side" of crude gender stereotypes), though it depends on how much forced gender socialization has been imposed. The problem is one of not making accommodations for the wide range of childhood behaviors, but enforcing a one-size-fits-all approach that best meets "business style" metrics-driven management idiocy. The approach hurts both boys and girls who fall outside a narrow enforced "normal", of which there are plenty of both. Casting this explicitly as a "boys' problem" is ignorant, and likely to produce unhelpful solutions (that are beneficial to the management metrics goons, but not particularly to kids).