After all, we don't want our children being harmed by FUN, DO WE???

[Montauk6]

Officials at the Willett Elementary School in Attleboro have banned playground tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chasing games over concerns about the risk of injury and liability for the school.

"It's a time when accidents can happen," Principal Gaylene Heppe said.

Heppe included the new rule as part of a standardized set of playground rules.

While no district-wide policies banning contact sports at recess appear to have been put in place locally, many principals are making up new rules in an atmosphere reflecting society's increasingly cautious and litigious nature.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/10/18/attleboro_elementary_school_bans_tag/

[nickinSTL]

1. so...

are they going to require that the children be wrapped in bubble-wrap from head to toe next? :eyes:

[Montauk6]

17. No, NIck!

Why, that bubble-wrap would be a breathing hazard!

(To this day, I still get creeped out about those plastic-bag warnings on dry cleaning covers; I always pictured a child crawling in and the bag sealing up around him as the Psycho music plays)

[MrCoffee]

2. "unsupervised chasing games"

those skinned knee settlements can really add up. i guess it's time for a rousing game of Stare.

[yankeeinlouisiana]

8. Oh, No!! Not Stare!!

You could strain your eyes.

:eyes:

[Richard Steele]

12. "Let's have a sitting-quietly contest!"

[Bonobo]

3. Where I grew up on L.I., we played a game called "Pin War"...

It was dodgeball modified with a bowling pin that had to be guarded.

When I say I loved it, I am understating it a great deal. I LOVED it.

It was important to me as a kid, it shaped me as a kid. It's true.

Now games like it are banned and kids no longer can organize a game of pickup ball in the field because of the climate of fear... really sad to have lost that.

[MadHound]

4. Geez, talk about going overboard

Especially in a time when our children are becoming ever more obese, these idiots want to ban physical activity at recess. Wonder if they have any studies backing up their assertions? Somehow I doubt it. Thus, kids won't be able to be physically active outside, will have excess energy when they come inside, and become problems in the classroom.

This is idiocy of the highest order IMO.

[Kali]

7. If they haven't already banned recess.

Hyper indoors? That's what drugs are for.

[progdonkey]

9. It would be so wonderfully ironic...

if some kids started having health problems from being overweight because they were prevented from playing outside, and their parents sued the school. :evilgrin:

[The2ndWheel]

10. That's what pills are for

It's the 21st century. There will be no random chaos allowed.

[Montauk6]

21. I guess it's physically safer for the kids to play Grand Theft Auto.

:eyes:

[Rosemary2205]

26. IMHO it's wrong to blame school admin

the blame belongs on parents looking to hit the lawsuit lottery.

[Quantess]

34. Absolutely!

However, schools can't afford to shell out lawsuit dollars, and they want to protect themselves by preventing lawsuits. Sad state of affairs.

I worked with a couple of students whose mother had sued their previous school district. Both children had terrible theft problems, one of them to the point that I'd call kleptomania. When I sent home a letter to their mother, another teacher warned me "Did you know she sued XXXXXXXX public school district? Be very careful what you say to her." Maybe the public should be able to sue her for raising bratty children?

School districts really are very afraid of lawsuit happy parents.

[Kali]

5. They banned fun a long time ago.

I remember 5 or 10 years ago my son got in trouble for...get this...climbing on the playground equipment. Yep he dared to shimmy up a pole rather than take the ladder. I remember when we had to shimmy up poles for PE, WTF? Onother time got in trouble for swinging on the swings on his stomach instead of his butt. Yep they took the fun away a LOOOOOONNNGGG time ago.


Put them in a padded room with soft sterile (sanitized of course) plastic toys. Gotta stay SAFE, doncha know?

[petronius]

18. When I was a kid I didn't have the arm strength to shimmy up a pole

Every time we had to climb a pole or a rope I was HUMILIATED, ostracized, and made to feel less valuable than the other kids. Why do you want to go back to the days when the slightly different among us are forced to undergo emotional TORMENT and even VIOLENCE just because bullies like you and your son want to have FUN!?


:sarcasm: (Except for the wimpy arms part; that part is true... :()

[Kali]

29. Heh - I had/have the wimpy arms too...

think I managed maybe ONE pull-up in all those years of the Presidents Phys fitness program (remember that?)


I would be more in favor of banishing competitive sports (and PE?) than recess - let the kids who can shimmy poles shimmy away!

[petronius]

33. Oh yeah, I definitely let down the president back then

If the Evil Empire had invaded, I was going to be totally useless in the patriotic insurgency. The rest of the Wolverines would have been shimmying up the rope to attack the Reds, while I would have been hopping up and down at the bottom cursing my underdeveloped biceps. :)

Organized sports and PE were pretty useful, though - we did learn to have our fist-fights when the teacher wasn't looking, and our soccer coach taught us how to fight dirty, so it wasn't all a waste.

Seriously, however, I hate to see all this limiting of recess and free-form play at the younger ages especially. I know it's all well-intentioned, but a couple of bloody noses, skinned knees, and fights are a small price to pay for a bit of fun, exercise, and unstructured socialization...

[riderinthestorm]

6. I'm guessing this principal didn't take this action in a vacuum

She's got a litigious parent out there whose kiddie got chased.
:(

I bet the kid is as outraged as all of us about the principal's latest rule....

[progdonkey]

15. yeah, it usually is just one parent who ruins it for everyone else...

Like that case in Texas (Plano, I think) where a woman who's been an art teacher for like 40 years and has received teaching awards was fired because she took her class on a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Fine Art and a student saw a naked sculpture/painting. She had all the permission slips, but one parent bitched to the principal (who had actually encouraged the teacher to do the field trip) so the principal sent the issue to the school board, who refused to renew the teacher's contract.

One parent complains that his/her kid saw--gasp!--a naked figure at an art museum which the child went to with the parent's signed permission, and now all the other students at the school have to suffer losing an award-winning teacher.

[tularetom]

11. I dunno - maybe it's better that kids don't play

the same games we used to. Be honest now - who among us didn't participate in a rousing contest of "smear the queer".

[MrCoffee]

16. other than the name, what's wrong with smear the queer?

[Montauk6]

23. I played Blind Man's Bluff

I became familiar with Smear the Queer when I, oddly enough, started going to a private school.

I guess the lesson is how childish bigotry truly is and that one EVENTUALLY outgrows the ignorance.

[tularetom]

28. Actually it was a lot of fun

although unsanctioned by the school authorities it was more popular among boys (and a few tomboys) than the candy ass shit they made us play at recess. It was a great way for kids full of nervous energy to blow off steam. How much fun can you have playing musical chairs or duck duck goose (although I remember when they banned duck duck goose after some kid actually started goosing the girls).

[Kali]

30. Loved that game - didn't even know what "Queer" meant.

Rename it smear the republican.

[jmowreader]

37. We only played that during the wintertime!

Heyburn Elementary School in St. Maries had two playgrounds--a grassy playground in front of the school that had playground equipment on it, and a blacktop playground in the back that didn't have anything on it.

We had a school rule: if you can see the blacktop anywhere in the playground, you can't play Smear the Queer. They didn't want anyone getting killed.

Now they can't play Smear the Queer because when they had to expand the school to absorb the fifth and sixth grades, they put it on the back playground and there's no room to play that game.

[Homer Wells]

13. When I was in Junior High back in the '60's

We had a game called "Free-for-all Rugby. It was similar to soccer, but the coaches tossed in as many as ten balls at once. Our PE class (maybe 50 boys), followed the basic rules of rugby, but the main goal was to kick as many goals as we could, and this often resulted in some pretty painful injuries (one kid even broke his arm). Not a lawsuit to be seen.
I would not be surprised to see Chess be our number one sports interest in schools in the future. That being said, I figure someone would bruise his/her hand on the clock and sue the shit out of somebody.\

:eyes: :smoke:

[MindPilot]

19. On rainy days we had an indoor game called "caveman soccer"

It required a basketball and each player to have one boxing glove. There were invariably bloody noses, busted lips, black eyes and at least one knockout per game. Nobody sued. And that was high school--Catholic high school.


On Edit: I feel a GEICO commercial coming on...

[MrCoffee]

22. a basketball and one boxing glove? sounds AWESOME!

[riderinthestorm]

24. LOL! Caveman soccer and free-for-all-rugby just cracked me up!

Jayzus, that brings back some fond (but bloody) memories.... I even remember the kid who got their arm broken.

Two split chins for me, required stitches both times. Our game was a version of monkeybars, king of the hill and a baseball bat.

[MindPilot]

38. It's the baseball bat...

that really made *that* game work!!

[Kali]

31. Hahahahha that sound ... inventive

[Divernan]

20. Playing chess would be WRONG!

The thought skills developed by chess would be disastrous for the GOP agenda. Chess requires long term planning, and other rigorous, critical, analytical thought processes which the GOP has been struggling for decades to eradicate in the US educational system.

[OwnedByFerrets]

14. A Country of Fear! nt

[madmom]

25. when my daughter was in 4th grade she had long pigtails, that the

boys loved to pull,when she and some friends were sitting on a bench beside the baseball diamond playing Barbie's the boys would pull hair and twist arms, the principals reaction..."tell the girls to stay away" my reaction "if it happens again she will know what to do with her knee", the principal yelled you can't do that..I said watch me! It never happened again, at least with my daughter.

[The2ndWheel]

27. Ah, the natural balance

I'm pretty sure that's why they are where they are on us guys.

[jakefrep]

32. Tag should be banned....

...not for being hazardous, but for being mindnumbingly stupid and boring.

[Marrah_G]

35. Hey my town!!!!!

Yup I live here and I love it.

Yes I think the rule is overboard. That particular school does not have grass in the playground, only asphalt. I expect that this stems from some kids getting hurt and the principal wanting to avoid any lawsiuts in this litigation-happy world.

Shameless town plug: This is a great town to live in. We have a diverse middle-working class population. We are a suburb of both Boston and Providence where many people from all over the world stay after coming here to college. We also re-elected our gay mayor who married, LEGALLY, his partner over the summer. How cool is that?

[proud2BlibKansan]

36. Old news

I haven't taught at any school in over 20 years that allowed tag or touch football.

You can thank the parents who threaten to file frivolous lawsuits - or maybe their attorneys.