I read an article today how certain school recess activities are being banned in some school districts. Activities such as playing tag, touch football, or any unsupervised chase games.
An accident might happen and the parents might hold the school liable. Gasp! Oh, no! A kid falls and hurts himself! Or a kid might run head-on into another kid!
Pretty soon, jungle gyms will be outlawed, along with monkey bars, teeter-totters, slides, swing-sets and sandboxes. Seriously, aren’t those more dangerous than being chased?
Kids have a penchant for pushing things to the extremes. Who else hung upside down from the monkey bars? We could have fallen and cracked our head open or broken our neck. Kids are brutal on the teeter-totters. I think everyone has gone home at least once with bruised butt bones because our counterpart on the teeter-totter suddenly jumped off while we were in the air, causing us to crash to the ground with sudden force. Slides are dangerous, too. Someone could slide down and crash into you while you’re trying to climb up the slide. Who didn’t try to see how high they could swing on the swing-set and then jump off, to get the feeling of flying? We could have fallen, tripped, broken our leg or nose. And sandboxes are just gross.
Wow, I can’t believe I survived childhood with all those dangerous things around me! I thought I was fortunate to have grown up before the bike helmet law went into effect. To think that I used to ride my bike on the shoulder of a road with a 55 MPH speed limit without a helmet is just beyond reproach. Yet, I have a right to engage in risky behavior if I so choose, don’t I?
Half the fun of being a kid is trading scar stories with your friends. Getting hurt when you’re young is considered regular and customary, isn’t it? You need to push the limits of your body so you know what the limits are. You need to learn you are breakable. It is part of the learning process.
Kids are full of energy, and if we take away all their outlets to release that energy in a healthy manner, we’re going to have a real mess on our hands. I personally hate video games for this reason. I don’t think video games do children any justice at all. Give a kid a fenced-in back yard and a friend, and tell them they can’t come in until dinner. They’ll find all kinds of ways to exercise their imaginations, brains and bodies.
I just think we are on a very dangerous trend by “banning” certain activities for fear of kids getting hurt. We are already trying to soften the blow of not winning by awarding trophies to the losing team. I wouldn’t be surprised if kids are no longer allowed to pick team members in gym class, because someone inevitably will be picked last, and their feelings will get hurt. This is a very socialist way of looking at things. The same goes for group projects. Don’t get me started on group projects. I was always the one doing the majority of the work so I could protect my high grade point average. And, as always, the other members of the group benefited from my work ethic, while I grudgingly toiled. I hated group projects.
That’s one of the reasons I’m so glad to be an adult. I can look at my resume, or my salary history and smile with pride. I did that. It was all me. Nobody else can take credit for my accomplishments of today, nor can they bring me down to their level. I am enjoying capitalism to its fullest.
So naturally, I am concerned about what kind of generation we are churning out. These kids will one day be my co-workers. Or my employees. And I’m going to be a hard-ass. I’m going to give the job to the person who is most qualified, or more importantly, most motivated. I mean, I hope I will be able to do that. It is possible that business will have changed to be more of a socialist environment, and I won’t be able to pick and choose by the ethics upon which I was raised. I’ll have to make a hiring decision based upon a lottery, so things are “fair,” and then I’ll have to move to a country that embraces capitalism the way it was meant to be.
That’s why this is a soapbox issue to me. It goes against everything I have worked so hard for, fought so hard for. I view it as a threat to my success and my liberties to meet and exceed my personal expectations. This is way more than a few concerned school board members, and I don’t think these folks are fully contemplating the repercussions of their rules. Frankly, someone needs to call out these trends before it’s too late.
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