Tag: The latest victim to controlling school officials
There are moments when you hear or read of something so boffo bizzare that the only decent reply is to raise an eyebrow and look unemotionally dumbfounded. My bizarre moment was reading the report of a Colorado school banning the game ‘Tag’. This is not the first school to ban the game as indicated here and here. To be honest, my mind scrambles for the understanding of how other adults actually sit down and think up the most foolish of behavior controls.
Why Ban Tag?
The common excuse given by the school official revolves around either so called safety to prevent collisions or some silly self esteem issue.
Firstly, these are kids with functioning eyesight; either assisted with glasses or without. The kids are not intentionally trying to run into each other. These kids are not male rams butting heads nor are they wandering asteroids that will drift into the paths of each other.
As for the self esteem excuse, for a teacher to invoke it to me demonstrates the pathetic thinking of the adult and not the student. They are not teaching anything but to be a victim of the moment. Is it too much for a teacher or yard supervisor to quietly suggest a playing strategy to the tagger such as chase after the slowest runner? Is it beyond the teachers’ creative ability to explain how the game of tag is similar to how a lion or wolf will chase the prey animal? How about showing a nature video to reinforce the notion how Tag is universal among several species. Humans use it for play while animals use it to feed themselves.
What’s Next on the List to be Banned?
I expect the next playground activities to be banned are “Red Light-Green Light” because of self esteem issues. You ask how? Think like the idiot officials for a moment. The game requires you to listen to the caller shout out either color. The discrimination occurs because a deaf student can not hear the shouts. Never mind that the deaf student should be able to follow along with the other players in knowing when to move and freeze.
Another banned activity could be “jump rope.” You ask how? Grit your teeth through the pain and think like an idiot official a little longer. One of the students might get the idea, after several rounds of jumping, to snap the rope in the same manner as using a whip on another student or to try to swing from the top of the jungle gym. Jump ropes could easily get classified as weapons.
It is hard enough being a kid without the misguided buffoonery of public school education professionals.
My guess as to the next victim will be Marbles. These folks have pretty obviously lost theirs.
When I was a kid, one year I distinctly remember a couple of special awards that were given out at the end of the year; they were the “The Tree Moved into My Way” awards, given to some kids who had managed to crash right into a tree … likely while running during a game a tag. One kid even managed to break his arm.
Yeah, I’m sure it hurt at the time. But the cast was a special mark of honor for that kid later, and y the end of the year, even the teachers were laughing at these incidents.
Even with all the safety improvements made over the last 40 years, kids will still have accidents. Last summer my son fell off a swing, and landed just unluckily enough to snap his wrist. So be it; I sure hope the schools aren’t considering banning swing sets. There was already an issue of making sure kids get enough “swing time” during recess, but after teachers tried to step into to regulate it (with alarm clocks!), they discover, at least at his school, that the intervention was worse than the problem, so they learned to step away and let the kids negotiate it themselves. At other schools, I wouldn’t be surprised if the “swing time conflict” was leading to considerations to banning swing sets on school grounds.
We are indeed creating a milquetoast society, if these trends continue.
Showering is dangerous too.