Oh Please!!!!!! What are we coming to?

[rosered32]

Not it! Mass. elementary school bans tag

1 hour, 24 minutes ago

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.

Comments

school fun

[caradoc01.livejournal.com]

the only two fond memories I have of school are of disecting things and playing dodge ball.

I was one of those people that was always chosen late in the picking but I was also always one of the last kids out and oft times the last one.

the fact that schools have gotten so fearful of being held liable for what the kids do that I am beginning to see schools much as they are protrayed in Pink Floyds "The Wall" or in the game "Cyberpunk" where kids sit and stare at the teach as they have facts recited to them are then piled on with 7 hours of homework and expected to remember it all.

People wonder why kids hate school, it is because they are forced to sit in uncomfortable desks, have teachers who's only (legal) interaction with them is to spout off facts, formulas and information at them just before they are given a homework assignment, for that class alone, that will take between 50 and 90 minutes to complete.

Multiply that by 6 or 7 classes and the kids have 5 to 10.5 hours of homework, all of which is expected to be turned in the next day, kids don't have time to play.