Banning Tag

[inuvik]

Poor kiddies! Glad I'm not one anymore. It's getting very hard to have any fun.

ATTLEBORO, Mass. - Tag, you're out! Officials at an elementary school south of Boston 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.

Recess is "a time when accidents can happen," said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban.

While there is no districtwide ban on contact sports during recess, local rules have been cropping up. Several school administrators around Attleboro, a city of about 45,000 residents, took aim at dodgeball a few years ago, saying it was exclusionary and dangerous.

Elementary schools in Cheyenne, Wyo., and Spokane, Wash., also recently banned tag during recess. A suburban Charleston, S.C., school outlawed all unsupervised contact sports.

"I think that it's unfortunate that kids' lives are micromanaged and there are social skills they'll never develop on their own," said Debbie Laferriere, who has two children at Willett, about 40 miles south of Boston. "Playing tag is just part of being a kid."

Another Willett parent, Celeste D'Elia, said her son feels safer because of the rule. "I've witnessed enough near collisions," she said.

From Yahoo News, Oct. 18/06 article.

[mlm828]

I just had to shake my head when I read about the ban on playing tag. I sometimes wonder how I (a member of the Baby Boomer generation) ever survived childhood with nothing worse than a broken arm and a really bad case of poison ivy. "That said," I am totally in favor of a lot of the reasonable safety precautions which weren't around when I was growing up. Bike helmets are one that come to mind, and I would never (and I do mean never) get into a car without fastening my seat belt. I still remember my mother, more than once, reaching out to catch me (sitting in the front seat next to her), when she had to slam on the brakes.

I suspect that what's really behind the rule at the school in Attleboro is a fear of being sued.

[maggiethecat]

This whole thing puts me in mind of one of Denis Leary's rants, where he talks about the big old station wagons we all grew up riding around in -- no padded dashboards, no seatbelts, and if one of the kids bounced out on the highway you called it "thinning the herd." Of course he's exaggerating . . . but I never even saw a seatbelt in a car until I was in my teens, and as for kids swallowing toys and choking -- ever taken a good look at all those itty bitty Barbie shoes?

Yeah, mlm, how did we Baby Boomers ever survive?

[greenbeing]

When one plays it safe like that, one misses a lot of fun. The same goes for making sure American children feel good about themselves by dumbing down classes so fewer children fail. That means fewer children learn anything, as well.

--GB

[carl1951]

What about Dodge Ball. Remember that? The rougher form of Tag. Used to leave some terrific welts, which meant a meeting, after school, usually held in the alley, with a nice audience.

Now those are great memories.

Later, Carl

[mlm828]

greenbeing said:

The same goes for making sure American children feel good about themselves by dumbing down classes so fewer children fail. That means fewer children learn anything, as well.

I totally agree! We're all going to fail sometime in our lives -- more likely, many times. If they're never allowed to fail, how are kids going to develop the skills and resilience needed to cope with failure?

As for "dumbing down" classes, I still vividly recall sitting in my first grade class having already read the book my classmates were struggling to read. Fortunately, the teacher eventually figured out that I knew how to read and gave me more books to read. I wonder what she would have done today -- pretend not to notice I could read, so the other kids wouldn't feel bad?

[shmeep]

maggiethecat said:

This whole thing puts me in mind of one of Denis Leary's rants, where he talks about the big old station wagons we all grew up riding around in -- no padded dashboards, no seatbelts, and if one of the kids bounced out on the highway you called it "thinning the herd." Of course he's exaggerating . . . but I never even saw a seatbelt in a car until I was in my teens, and as for kids swallowing toys and choking -- ever taken a good look at all those itty bitty Barbie shoes?

Yeah, mlm, how did we Baby Boomers ever survive?

Not just the Baby Boomers. How did Gen X survive? I had one of those station wagons. My parents would squeeze ten kids inside and take off, not caring if we used seat belts or not. And I have home movies of Mean Uncle Bill (not to be confused with Weird Uncle Bill on the other side of the family) driving around in an open jeep with seven kids piled inside--half of us standing up and hanging onto the roll bar--heading up rough, nearly perpendicular inclines. And sunscreen? Well, Mom would suggest that I use some SPF 4 at the beach from time to time, but I got burned regularly every summer and then eventually ended up a nice dark tan (in contrast with my white hair, tinged with green from the chlorine--and we didn't even have a pool). Now I'm a white white girl so that couldn't have been good for my skin.

No one thought about safety as they do now. No helmets, no kneepads, nothing protective in any way. My brothers played football in the middle of the street or shot at each other with BB guns (although I don't think my parents knew much about that at the time) and we all wrestled and chased and rode our bikes miles away on our own and no one thought a thing of it.

I guess keeping people safe in this day and age is progress, but I'd hate for it to be at the expense of fun and social advancement. Kids need to know how it feels to lose or get tackled or to tackle someone else. That's part of childhood. I don't want anyone getting hurt, but it's impossible to pad the world for your child's safety so I guess the real question becomes about where to draw the line. I will probably have a very different take when I have kids, but for now it all seems kind of silly and extreme to me.

[hoosier]

I recall an incident where two little boys got in trouble because they pretended to have guns while playing either cowboy and Indians or cops and robbers on the schoolyard. They both ended suspended for a few days because of the school's zero-tolerance code concerning weapons etc. How do they expect kindergarten age kids to understand what zero-tolerance means?

As to playing tag, I happen to remember some PE classes as being highly dangerous! In Indiana, basketball in one form or another seems to be part of every PE class. I have been hit in the face with a basketball (doubly hurts when wearing glasses!),run over by a larger player I was guarding and had my fingers jammed by a bad catch. And don't even get me going about this weird hard rubber ring throwing game where we used a volleyball net! I think I had more bruises from PE than I ever had from playing at recess.

[housemouse]

My boys started a new school a couple of weeks ago. My oldest son told me they are not allowed to play dodge ball.

Modified to add:

My son wanted me to say they are not even allowed to play dodge ball at PE. Apparently they did that at their other school.