Why don’t they just ban recess altogether? Have the kids spend the entire day inside, in rooms with carpet and padded walls, sitting at their desks. That will really lower the risk of lawsuits! :rolleyes:
Better yet - schools like this should just make the kids stay home. If I were living in this district I’d be looking to move my kids away as fast as possible.
When I was in elementary school, we used to play tackle football at recess. They kept trying to get us to play touch instead.
These are the same people that promote bicycle helmets. I’m against it. All of it.
Signed,
Kalhoun…who fell off her bike, fell out of trees, and was regularly terrorized by Boys Who Played Too Rough.
I’m starting to put a few recent threads together in my mind - this one, the spanking one, the “why don’t people DO something at school shootings” one, even the exercise ones and the fear of death - and I’m starting to come to an uncomfortable hypothesis.
Do you think it’s possible that by keeping our kids (and our parents keeping us) so safe from physical harm that we’re terrified of phsysical pain and don’t know what we’re physically capable of? I mean, if a kid literally never gets pushed over and falls down on asphalt, of course he going to be scared of falling and getting hurt, or exercising and straining a ligament, or standing around while a crazy person shoots all his classmates. Maybe the reason people used to fight more (assumption, I know) is because they learned as kids that a skinned knee sucks, but you get over it? That punching or being punched is not pleasant, but it’s not the end of the world? That, yeah, people can die, but dying saving others, or even making the attempt, could be a good thing and that the world won’t stop when you die?
I don’t know where I’m going here…just random thoughts that are not quite yet a Unified Theory of Wussiness.
Oh, and WhyKid’s school banned running, pushing, tag, jumping and most ball sports during recess a few years ago. I asked him what they do, and he said they’re supposed to stand there and talk. Mostly they hang out with the cop who works at the school and take turns being handcuffed for fun. Yeah, seriously.
Bicycle helmets I can agree with. They might not go as fast as motorbikes but you’re still playing in traffic and stand an equal chance of being turned into road noodle.
The rest though, is dumbassed overprotective cowflop. There’s a school in a neighbouring city that banned peanut butter in deference to the approximately one student who had a peanut allergy. “Because he might swap sandwiches with someone who has peanut butter.” Yeah, because I’m sure the kid with the allergy spends his free time looking for ways to induce anaphylaxis. This same school also makes parents sign liability waivers for school road trips.
All this dumbassed overcoddling is ridiculous and is really just icing the path so parents and schools alike can skate on personal responsibility and allow them to punish kids for being kids. Kids get hurt. They fall off monkey bars, they spin the merry-go-round too fast, they trip over their own shoelaces and climb on things they shouldn’t and a million other dumb things that kids do because they’re kids and haven’t learned proper caution. And they learn proper caution by doing dumb things that get them hurt.
Protect kids by all means – no playing in traffic, looking both ways when crossing the road, all the usual parental lessons one teaches their young. But you can’t sheild them from everything and trying to create and enforce rules to do it for you is not going to do anything but give kids less to do and more to brood about.
When I was in school (6th-8th grades), us bigger kids used to play a game called Churri-Va. The little ones didn’t play it due to danger of being creamed against the floor by the big ones.
It’s played in two teams. One person from the first team braces against the wall, legs slightly apart. If that person wears a skirt, the skirt gets “diapered up”. Next person puts his/her head… uhm… well, in the first person’s crotch and surrounded by his/her legs, as if s/he was going to take the first person up sitting on this second person’s shoulders. Third person’s head goes between second person’s legs, etc, until you get a sort of “worm” of people.
Second team is lined up a distance away, behind an arbitrary line on the floor. Once the worm is all formed, each person from this second team runs toward the worm shouting “CHURRIIIIIIIII!” at the top of their lungs and, as they vault over the last person’s ass and as far ahead as possible, “VA!”
If this second team manages to all get on top of the first team before the first team breaks up and everbody falls down in a heap of coed teenage limbs, then the second team wins and the first team has to re-form the worm. This makes it very important to get teams of similar strength and weights, and of course usually the heaviest person would jump last.
The nuns tried to forbid it a few times…
I’m introducing that game at my next home party…
I was in first or second grade when the movie Karate Kid came out. We played a game called, apropriately, “Karate.”
It involved two teams of 5-10 six-year-olds each. We would stand approximately ten yards apart, run toward each other, and then try to beat the other team into a bloody pulp. Rocks and sticks were allowed.
We did it nearly every day for an entire year.
Seriously…Naked Twister has nothing on that.
Heh, they always used to try to outlaw British Bulldogs at primary school. It never worked. There’s not much you can do if a whole playground of kids decides they want to play it.
Ballwars were another favourite for banning at secondary school. Someone shouts “ballwar!” and the whole yard splits into two teams. They then take it in turns to smash the ball at each other as hard as they can. Great fun.
Bolding mine.
This does not look like a touchy-feely-keep-the-kids-from-conflict decision, but a fear of lawsuits decision.
I agree that kids need to play and that the decision is bad. I wonder, however,
From what I understand, this has been pretty much universal SOP for as long as I can remember. My parents had to sign waivers for my field trips in the '60’s.
I’m with most of you that fear of liability is starting to border on the ridiculous. However, I remember being almost terrorized in junior high with a game we called “Jungle Basketball” – Basically, basketball with no rules, just get the damned ball in the hoop. Football players in the off-season played this as part of our weightlifting regimen. This meant that seventh graders were playing against eighth and ninth graders. Man, I hated that game, and don’t remember learning a damned thing from it except that big guys can beat the shit out of little guys. As far as I was concerned, it was just condoned hazing.
When they install the centrifugal bumblepuppy equipment then I’ll start to get really worried.
When and where did you play this? I need to know as I’m going to build a time machine and go to your school.
We used to call this game buck buck.
I remember Bill Cosby’s 70’s comedic routine on that game. He called it BUCK-BUCK. Fat Albert always won.
Bill Cosby called it “Buck-Buck”. We had another name for it in the mid-60’s, which I have long forgot.
Getting hurt once in a while is good for you, especially if you are a boy. It gives you a badge of honour, at least it did when I was in elementary school anyhow. When I was in grade four they outlawed tackle football and we were really pissed off about it. What we did was sneak off the property (not far, just a few hundred feet) behind some trees. We also instituted a no tattling policy - no matter what happened.
A lot of people got hurt, I got a sprained a knee, got numerous scrapes, and I think there were even a few incidents of stitches (I don’t remember how). After a few months of this a kid who we thought might cause us problems found out and he really wanted to play. You see, he whined a lot and we were all worried he’d tell on us as soon as he got hurt (which was an inevitability - he wasn’t as big as some of us). We thought it best to let him play and sure enough, he got hurt within the first week. I tackled him and his eye hit my knee or elbow or something and his eye was swollen shut. I mean he got a really top notch black eye.
We were pretty scared that he’d tell on us but when we got back to class the teacher asked him what happened and he said, “I ran into a fence.” He was a member of our little group from then on.
When I was a kid in the dark ages called the 70’s we played dodge ball in gym class. I was the smallest kid in my class, but I loved it! We played tackle football…I didn’t really like football, but i loved playing even when I got hurt. We’re turning kids into wimps nowadays.
I’m sure this will frighten the hell out of some people, but we played a game called “hot bread and butter beans” after school. You take a belt, and whoever is it goes to hide it while the rest of us stay at the “base”. Usually a tree. Then “it” yells “Hot bread and butter beans, come and get your supper” . The rest of us look for the belt. Whoever finds it then starts whipping the players as they run to the base. (when you reach the base, you’re safe). And it wasn’t like our parents didn’t know what were playing. I didn’t grow up in the Klingon Empire, though it might sound like that, and I wouldn’t like to see kids doing that today (too easy to get your parents sued)…but I don’t think it was evil, cruel for the children bad. Hell, I liked that game better than football. (But then, I could un very fast back then. ) 
When I was a kid in the dark ages called the 70’s we played dodge ball in gym class. I was the smallest kid in my class, but I loved it! We played tackle football…I didn’t really like football, but i loved playing even when I got hurt. We’re turning kids into wimps nowadays.
I’m sure this will frighten the hell out of some people, but we played a game called “hot bread and butter beans” after school. You take a belt, and whoever is it goes to hide it while the rest of us stay at the “base”. Usually a tree. Then “it” yells “Hot bread and butter beans, come and get your supper” . The rest of us look for the belt. Whoever finds it then starts whipping the players as they run to the base. (when you reach the base, you’re safe). And it wasn’t like our parents didn’t know what were playing. I didn’t grow up in the Klingon Empire, though it might sound like that, and I wouldn’t like to see kids doing that today (too easy to get your parents sued)…but I don’t think it was evil, cruel for the children bad. Hell, I liked that game better than football. (But then, I could run very fast back then. )