Yes, sure, on rare occasions kids can get hurt. So? It’s certainly not life-threatening, and if you banned every activity in which kids could get hurt you’d end up having them sit quietly in a dimly lit padded room.
Kids do get hurt. They skin knees, bark shins, loosen teeth, bleed and cry. And then the play some more. They win games and they lose games. They try and fail; they try again and sometimes succeed. They fall. They get up.
This is childhood. This is learning that the world is not a dimly-lit cushioned room.
The Fray
greyrat says:
My son broke his collar bone (Well — had his collar bone broken) while wrestling in a summer sports camp. Yes, the sport. You know… Wrestling. What sport is he signing up for this fall in school? Yep. Wrestling. Good on him.
Md Mama says:
After teaching early ed. for over 20 years, I can tell you that banning recess or any type of physical play is not good developmentally for young children. School systems have had pressure put on them from this generation of parents who over coddle their children.
Randy says:
My youngest brother suffered a concussion after falling out of a 15 foot tall climbing structure in elementary school (about 25 years ago – I’m old). Last time I was home visiting my mother, we went by the old school, and that same structure still stands. Glad not *ALL* schools are getting rid of fun stuff just because someone *might* get hurt. In case anyone wonders – no one has been hurt because of that structure since my brother fell out of it.
tommy says:
physical activity – play – in all forms, is essential to brain development.
Movement and physical control over the body (not to mention trying to figure out ‘what the eff is all this light and cold about’) being the only thing a newborn baby really has to figure out, it is a precursor to all other forms of learning. Play is the natural next step, and develops more obvious functionality such as eye/body coordination, physical strength, helps the child realize any special abilities, and perhaps not so obvious – sets the stage for developing a sense of fairness and justice. There are hundreds of other things that ‘play’ does for small children. It is their ‘work’ until they have to enter the ‘serious’ world. They need to do it.
Sadly sometimes pain and injury are the best ways some lessons are learned.
There are books on it. If the folks banning tag in any school district had any interest in education they would have read books like that.
They need to work on the bullying problem and gang activity in schools before they can think they have the free time to spend on banning things like tag.
dolts!
tommy says:
cottling parents I agree, but if they know best how to educate their children let them homeschool them.
Insurance liability and cost control I’m sure plays as big a role.
if we had a better public education system, we might have more smart people around to consider for president.
sorry, this riles me up…
Boink Blogs says:
[...] #1736 we’re not sending Sam to public school Andrew added an interesting post on Reason #1736 weâ