Tag – that exclusionary activity your mom warned you about.

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.

This is getting a bit nuts.  What are kids supposed during recess, read?  What makes me sad is this part:

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

Her kid is screwed for life.

Yeah, dodgeball and tag are potentially dangerous, but so is this:

If these parents and teachers are so damned worried about kids doing dangerous things, WHY DO THEY STILL NOT DEMAND SEATBELTS ON SCHOOL BUSES?

These people are idiots.  Put seatbelts on school buses and let them play like kids.  Sure, it’s scary how they play, but that’s what kids do.  That’s how kids learn.  If they don’t learn the physical limits of how to play with each other as kids, they won’t know what those limits are when they are older and the consequences are much more severe.  It really never ceases to amaze me how many teachers truly think the only learning that occurs is in the classroom.  I’m here to tell them, those kids learn just as much on the playground at that age as they do in any classroom.  And, at that age, what they learn on the playground is probably more important.  It’s called interactive skills.  If you don’t have that, it doesn’t matter if you can spell right or not.

So, let the kids play.  Let them knock a tooth out and occasionally break an arm.  Let them be exclusionary.  Some lessons you just can’t teach in the classroom.  If I were a teacher at Willett, I’d report there was no tag or dodgeball ever occurring, and look the other way at recess.  I HOPE that’s what they are doing there.

Sheez.

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  • http://www.americanphoenix.net American Phoenix

    This is just about as stupid as an entire school banning peanut butter because 3 students are allergic.

  • Moonage

    I think if I were a parent there, I’d be looking elsewhere since it’s obvious these people don’t have a clue how to deal with kids.

  • http://www.americanphoenix.net American Phoenix

    That seems to be most of the public schools these days. Homosexuality is in. Tag and peanut butter are out.

    My son won’t be going to public school.

  • Moonage

    I can’t speak for most public schools, but I can our own. Here, homosexuality still isn’t “encouraged”, prayer is OK as long as the teachers aren’t involved, and not only are they encouraged to play tag, but they can play tackle football at about age seven or so. If they do serve peanut butter, they notify the family so they can pack their own lunches if need be. So, those issues aren’t really issues here. And, the only private schools we have are very religious, which I’m not sure I want to go that route as I’m not even sure which religion I would prefer. So, at this point, he’ll be going to public school as long as he behaves. Since I discuss what the kids are learning with them, if they learn something contrary to my belief, they’ll get my opinion along with what they hear at school. My opinion is that the kid with the broadest knowledge will go farther than the kid with the most narrow, regardless of how liberal or conservative the school itself may teach. There really isn’t much a school could teach that would offend me too much ( except of course, teaching conspiracy theories not grounded by any facts ). What I do expect my kid to understand is that they don’t have to agree with everything they’re taught. They do however, have to digest the knowledge enough to pass the class. However, if that knowledge is not what they understand to be true, know how to obtain knowledge from resources other than the teacher. And, if they want to debate what they know versus what the teacher is saying, I’ll back my kid up every time. I challenged my teachers when I was in school. It did occasionally get ugly. But, I’m quite satisfied with the result at this point. So, to me, it’s not terribly relevent which school my kid goes to, because I’ll be expecting more from him than any teacher.

    I will however, expect that school to allow him to be a healthy vibrant kid until the time he chooses not to be ( about 30 or so ). If he gets hurt playing tag, I’ll foot the bill as my parents did decades ago.

    Those teachers in Boston truly are ignorant. All they have to do is INFORM the parents their child might play aggressive, potentially exclusionary, games. If the parent then allows the child to attend that school and expose themselves to tag, it’s the parent’s responsibility and not the school’s.

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  • http://www.americanphoenix.net American Phoenix

    1. Sounds like your public schools still are run by people using common sense. Unfortunately, I life in California where that is often not the case. Even in good school districts, ideology has been infused into the teaching. Legislation was recently passed, and signed into law, which would make it illegal not to read stories about homosexuals to kindergarteners. (I’m not kidding you.) And Gov’r Schwarzanegger signed this into law.

    2. Although our school doesn’t serve peanut butter, they don’t ban you from packing a PB&J sandwich in your child’s lunch either. If you specify you want your child to have a vegetarian lunch, they put all the vegetarian lunches at one table and all the meat lunches at a different table. Since my child is lactose intolerant, I just make sure to put a note on his school lunch form, in case of substitutions, that he’s not to have milk or cheese. If they are serving cheese on a particular day, I pack a lunch for him instead. This isn’t rocket science!

    3. I think you’re right on with how you are handling your children’s education. If they learn something contrary, they should get your opinion. There is, however, a time and place for everything. The time for sex education is not kindergarten. I am also not a fan of conspiracy theories, as you well know.

    4. I also agree with you that the child with the broadest set of knowledge will go farther than those with a narrower set of knowledge. That’s why I want my son to have religious instruction as well as academics. Not allowing religion to be taught ignores what motivates the majority of people in the world – whatever religion they happen to practice. It also ignores some of the most fundamental questions about our existence, including how did the earth and human beings come into existence? What I like especially about the school my child is at is that they educate the whole person – physical, intellectual, character and spiritual.

    5. I think these teachers are going to find that they have a lot of problems with the children in the classroom. Children need to exercise. They have lots of energy and they need to burn it off and develop strong muscles. If they don’t get a chance to do that outside of the classroom, they’re going to be antsy in the classroom. This is going to result in a much poorer learning environment.

  • Moonage

    I think the result is obviously a much poorer learning environment.
    http://moonagewebdream.blogs.com/moonage_political_webream/2006/10/majority_voters.html

    California’s ranked 47th in the country in educated people. That really surprised me. Wonder if they’re paying any attention to that in the state department of education there?

  • http://www.americanphoenix.net American Phoenix

    California’s statistics don’t surprise me. I live amongst some of the most “intelligent” stupid people you will ever want to meet. As a friend of mine says, the easiest people to fool are smart people.

    I think they are paying attention to it. The problem is that they haven’t figured out what the problem is and without that, they don’t know how to fix it. They think that throwing money at the schools, without actually changing the pedagogy (or worse, changing it in ideological ways), is going to make for better education. All this is going to do is produce idealogues and cheat entire generations of children of a real education.

    I went to a seminar on gender differences in children yesterday and how this impacts education. What I said about about banning recess/physical activities having an impact on the ability to teach in the classroom is dead on. One of the ways little boys use their brains is movement. They find it very difficult to concentrate while sitting still. 80% of all of the children who currently drop out of high school are boys. Want to make a bet that those places that ban recess are going to show an even higher spike in boy dropouts? It’s like telling boys that there’s something wrong with them for being boys.

    This is so short-sighted it’s pathetic.

  • Moonage

    I’d have to pass on that bet. I was a boy once, I know I hated sitting in class. It just bored me to tears. I was an OK student and excelled in math and sciences, but it wasn’t by desire. My desire was to be playing tag and warball. If they remove the only thing that some kids enjoy doing from school, then yeah, I see a lot less kids wanting to be there all day.

    It is amazingly short-sighted. If I can figure all that out and not be an education expert, just makes you wonder what they are teaching the “experts”.

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