Games Of Tag Banned During Recess At Elementary School

<snip>

Students at Willett Elementary School in Attleboro can no longer play tag during recess. The same goes for touch football and other unsupervised "chasing" games.

The school's principal said there's too much risk of injury to children during games like tag.

Principal Gaylene Heppe is in her second year as principal at the school.

Parents are divided.

Debbie Laferriere -- who has two children at the school -- said playing tag is part of being a kid. She told the Sun-Chronicle of Attleboro that unsupervised games help children develop social skills that can be valuable later in life.

"I think that it's unfortunate that kids' lives are micromanaged and there are social skills they'll never develop on their own," Laferriere told the paper.

Other parents said it's ironic that schools are banning games like tag at a time of rising concern over childhood obesity.

"I think it's a little bit silly," said parent Christine McAndrews. "The kids love to play pick-up football games that they organize themselves. It's great for their social skills and they resolve things on their own. It's good for them."

But another parent, Celeste D'Elia, said she's witnessed a lot of "near collisions" between children and supports anything that makes the playground safer.

According to the paper, Willett Elementary is not alone. Schools in Cheyenne, Wyo. and Spokane, Wash. banned tag at recess. A suburban Charleston, S.C., school not only banned tagged, but outlawed all unsupervised contact sports.

http://www.wftv.com/education/10102602/detail.html

Gee, let's just put everyone into separate, padded cells and immobilize them so that they can't get hurt.

Oh, wait, we have to sedate them, too, or they could hurt themselves by pulling at the restraints.

These fucking worrywort parents who are obsessed with making sure that little Johnny and Susie never get so much as a scratch need to be removed from the gene pool immediately so that the rest of us can live normal lives.

:eyes:

Let's ban walking, too, shall we? After all, you could trip and get hurt. *sigh*

in other news, the school also banned talking, for fear that one student might say something that could hurt another.

i'm not even old (i'm 21) and when i was in elementary school, half of our playground was a giant dirt field where we just used to tear the shit out of each other playing football, soccer, and any other sport that we could turn into a full contact sport.

when this next group of kids gets to be adults they're going to be a bunch of pussies, our nation's offices will have to put padding on the corners of all the desks, and allow half an hour everyday for their worker's parents to come in and make sure their day is going okay.

We played all these games on asphalt and I'm 23. If you got hurt, you dealt with it.

When I went to school, we played dodge ball (which I hated, btw). I swear there is no common sense anymore.

with the help of the type of helicopter parents who would wrap their children in cotton batting and carry them in a Snugli all their lives if they could.

Sort of cops of the playground set. :headbang:

When one sees the nitwits that are teaching our children one really thinks we need smarter people in education. Education majors need to be changed so they are no longer the bad joke that they are. But if the standards are raised most of our children will go without teachers. It is a catch-22.

The collisions are half the fun!

Those are contact sports, and I remember more than once getting "injured" by an overzealous classmate or two. I still have a knot on my head where a kid beaned me during Duck Duck Goose. I sued for a cool mil and won. :sarcasm:

Damn, that's idiotic... :grr:

it can cause severe injury.

that doesn't have its collective head up its ass.

All of the chasing games are generally fun and good exercise. Crazy.

We used to play a game where one kid got the ball and ran for his life while a couple of dozen other kids tried to tackle him and take the ball away. THe game was "Kill the Guy with the Ball" or "Kill the Guy" for short.

though another variation was 'smear the queer' and it was fucking awesome!

poor kids...

encouraging obesity?

the collisions *were* the game, and it was good.

Soon kids will be reduced to a rousing game of Intense Stare Football at recess. :eyes:

Little brats shouldn't have play time anyway. I don't send my tax dollars out to the schools so the little shits can play Ring Around the Rosy all friggin' day.

I say add a few extra hours to their learnin' time and forget about this play time shit.

Oh, and what's up with this "lunchtime" bullshit? Back in my day... we had little cotton swaps dipped in lemon juice in our desks, and when we felt like we were going to pass out, we would suck on the swab for a bit until blood was flowing again, then back to work...and we LIKED it.

















B-)

:evilgrin:

What do sausages have to do with this topic?
:silly:

:evilgrin:
Yah know, rug rats, curtain climbers, yard monkeys, ankle biters, crumb snatchers.

little bastards?
}(

:evilgrin:

and had only one pair of shoes!

:P

...Tag is pretty much worthless and stupid. God I hated that game. "Great for social skills", my ass.

do teach and reinforce motor skills, turn taking, processing and cognitive skills, etc.

I'm very glad alot of schools have banned it.

I wasn't bullied in grammar school, but I saw alot of nastiness funneled towards others through this "game."

but ours was always supervised....my son's school has a somewhat less intense version.

After all, the game is free and does nothing to help our corporate economy. Think of the jobs created by video games, for example. What is more, the pharmaseutical industy suffers because all that excerise makes children healthy.

Geez, who will think of the corporations?:-(

Wouldn't be surprised if it keeps getting worse, inch by inch, as we spin around the sun.

Did they ban "sui" yet? They have to ban that for the violence and name. Best recess game I ever played though. Nothing like multiple tennis ball shaped bruises.

:(

We played that in elementary school - our playground was all sand (the desert, dontcha know) and we'd form these giant lines of kids and go tearing around making hairpin turns until the last 2-3 were flung away...

I understand you can do this on ice, too.

Rough I tell ya it's rough out there. I'm okay now but last week I was in rough shape lemme tell ya...

Why is this so bad? Unsupervised kids chasing each other, next thing you know you've got a head injury, laceration, whatever as one of the kids being chased collides with the merry-go-round. Why risk that?

My two-year-old's daycare doesn't allow the kids to run when they're on the sidewalk or around playground equipment. Elementary school kids can't run in the hallways. How is this any different?

oh my god a child bumped his head! the world stopped turning!

no, not at all. yeah, a kid can get a bump on the head or scrape his knee up but is it going to kill them? is it going to make them turn into dysfunctional adults? no. they are kids. kids run around, they get hurt, and in 10 minutes they forget about it. it happens.

they are stealing childhood from these children.

I'm not talking about bumped heads or scraped knees. I'm talking about serious head injuries and lacerations. Avoiding those kinds of injuries is not "stealing childhood". Nor is it something they will "forget in 10 minutes".

kids can't ride bicycles, go outside, walk somewhere, or ever take their feet off the ground.

in fact, we should probably just use dog carriers to cart our kids around - it will be safer and there will be no risk that they will be hurt.

kids get hurt, sometimes badly, though certainly not ever playing tag. running around like chicken little (the children might be falling! the children might be falling!) doesn't do anything but hurt these kids.

i took a lot of nasty spills when i was young because i did a lot of dumb things. if i have kids i expect nothing less because THAT'S WHAT KIDS DO.

It's talking about what schools do, not what you do with your own kids. Oh wait, you don't have any. My bad.

a game of TAG.

i don't have any kids cause i'm still a kid myself, but i sure feel sorry for yours

TAG!

Tag is unsupervised 6-year-olds, running as fast as they can, around playground equipment. (read the OP: see the word "unsupervised"? It's kinda important)

And you feel sorry for my kids :rofl:

You do like to extrapolate to extremes, don't you? Newsflash for ya: weakens your point.

When I was in school - not THAT long ago:

We did have playground equipment, but we had another open field adjacent where we played football, soccer, tag, etc.

They may get hurt.

:cry:

No, I don't have kids, but I was a kid and I remember being one. Kids get hurt doing stupid things. It's part of being a kid.

And when I stopped, what do you know, I got chubby?

Also, I must of played the game thousands of times... I still do. What's the worst that has happened? A small bump on the head. It hurt, sure. But I sucked it up. And how do lacerations happen? Playgrounds don't have razor sharp objects everywhere.

And I'm only 8-9 years older than you. Kids these days are WAYYYYY too protected. I'm shocked at the number of parents who completely forget their childhoods and feel the need to wrap their kids in foam.

We would tear each other up. A kid walks into the class with a bleeding knee. So what? He got over it. And plus, it's fun to talk about when you're older.

Hey, we play tag in band all the time. I always loose because I have short legs and play the bari sax.

We'd stick our glove in the back of our pants. We had to keep one hand behind our backs and attempt to stay in a fencing stance. It could get while, but it was fun.

Oh and the Viking Day we have at karate camp, now that would give some of these wimpy ass parents a much-deserved heart attack...

Do I even want to know? :rofl:

loading up on waterballons and the biggest, baddest supersoakers they could afford, loading into canoes and setting out onto a small lake with the intent of soaking and pummeling their opponent while attempting to capsize their canoe.

Viking Day is THE FUCKING BEST THING EVER INVENTED!!!

and one of the platform steps going up to the big slide had no bars or anything to protect you from falling...we used to have contests to see who had enough balls to jump off of it

and we had another mini jungle gym that was just a giant stack of old tires that were all bolted and tied together, christ was that thing hazardous, but a hell of a lot of fun too

sadly, both are now gone...:cry: poor kids

I bet neither of us either recieved any injuries beyond scrapes, some bumps on our heads or getting the wind knocked out of us on the playground.

And we had hell of a lot more fun that kids do now.

the worst injury i ever saw in my playground experience was a kid who broke his arm when he slipped on some ice when we were playing football in 5th grade...

maybe we should ban ice from playgrounds?

Ice attacks everybody.

It is necessary for their development. An injury is usually not serious or lasting. Yes I know there are exceptions, but the develpmental risks of being overly controlling are worse that the remote risk of real harm. Children who are free to be themselves grow up strong and confident. Ones who are kept on a proverbial short lease grow up self-doubting, anxious and insecure.

Let them play. Be spontaneous. Test their limits. Interact. Take a risk or two. No one will get killed. Or even seriously hurt.

I don't even know how to respond to that.

I mean life-changing, permanent injury, NOT a trip to the emergency room.

I'll bet the odd are against it. Like about the same as a lighting strike.

Especially since playgrounds have already been pussified beyond all belief.

. . . but generally turn a blind eye to hazing and bullying.

That makes perfect sense.

Gee, if the little whipper snappers can't RUN off some of their youthful exuberance, no wonder they fidget and get disruptive in class. Many schools force parents to have kids medicated rather than just figure out how to work about WHAT IS PRETTY NORMAL FOR KIDS.

There are too many parents who have to get meds for kids to be allowed to keep them in public schools. Sure, I will give you there are some kids who really are in need of chemical additives, but we see too many kids who are just being kids having pills shoved down their gullets to satisfy a narrow judgment of what is 'normal'.

Kids have energy. Let them run some off and they can sit still in class much easier. Deny them the NATURAL impulse to be physical and there will be trouble.

Tag, not meds!

Why not just wrap the kids up in a cocoon? How did I ever survive childhood anyway?

:eyes:

And they can't figure why there is more 'attention deficit'

The wankers shouldn't be near kids if they are that stupid!

change of pants nobody gave a rip. No wonder my students today are a bunch of complaining assholes. "It's too haaaard!"
"I don't want to read." "I don't understand what these words are." "How come you make us write so much?"

because they have no seatbelts. Lunch? Liquid. Wouldn't want them choking. :eyes: Good golly.

They might get spilled on their new pants. Oh! Or they might get some in there eye!

the wrong way. Happens to me every so often.

"Can you walk 20 feet without stopping to rest?"

:eyes:

who in the hell is going to stop them?

It seems to me that teachers on the playground should be able to tell when things are getting out of hand.

will be the first one to sue if their child got hurt.

I'm not saying that we should abolish the game either, but the reality is that schools are liability nightmares

....yes we did!! :evilgrin:

..."stalking" apparently. They've taken all the fun out of it, what with injunctions and restraining orders and whatnot.

that kids at his school (he's in fifth grade) are no longer allowed to play tag at recess. I asked why. He said, disgusted, "No hands on." He said recess stinks now--sounds like the adults won't let the kids do ANYthing.

When I was in school many moons ago, some kids would use "tag" as a way to push kids they didn't like around. And I mean PUSH to the ground. They were bullying and abusive. We had a mom who was our playground monitor, and she'd put a stop to stuff like that ASAP.

However, most recess appears to eb unsupervised now -- not as many playgrounds moms around. IF they were incidents of very aggressive "play," then I suspect a few bullies spoiled it for the few. That's why I believe in pretty much zero-tolerance for bullying.

That's why kickball, jumping rope, and flag football are great -- they're cardio, fun, helps with teamwork and motor skills/hand-eye coordination -- and all relatively safe for unsupervised kids. They are RULES... and no one will jump on your case faster for not following a rule than a kid!

before jumping off into the grass.

The goal was to reach the lowest tree limb which was pretty high up.

No one ever broke anything.

You can't stop kids from being kids, but in my humble opinion, all contact games, sports, gym classes should be supervised, in the event something does happen, it can be acted upon quickly. During an outside school gym class last year, my son's Kindergarten class was allowed to "free play" , and the kids decided to play a game using a rope, they held onto the rope and ran with it. My son fell, and was dragged along a bit, and stomped on a bit. he had facial injuries, busted lip, bloody nose, nasty eye, and lots of facial abrasions. It looked uglier than it actually was. It could have been worse, and if no one was around, it would have delayed treatment. The kicker was, they were allowed to do this on asphalt, while acres of grass were available. Sometimes these drastic measures come about because of sheer stupidity.

Flame away if you must, but we are turning our kids into such pussies

When I was a kid we got skinned knees and elbows and most of us walked around with bruises, scrapes, cuts and bug bites we'd scratched open. Sometimes all at the same time.

Let it happen to your kid today and you'll find the child in protective custody and you in jail for abuse.

Our kids are being 'protected' right out of their childhoods.

in middle school, when my friends played it wasn't uncommon for it to result in bloody noses just from running into each other.

no tag, no musical chairs, no chain swings.

Christ lets just shoots our kids. Then we wont have to worry about them living a little.

it's not even been two decades, and they're banning tag and touch football? what the hell is wrong with this country? you know what they should be absolutely banning from schools instead of this shit? religion, the department of education's history curriculum which teaches absolute lies to children, and abstinence only sexual education.

for fuck's sake this isn't even a problem, and the only time i ever saw anyone get hurt playing tag was if they did something stupid like instead of tagging the person they slapped them and there was a retaliatory response.

Yep THIS STORY

They love this story. The fact that it was in Mass just added to it. Of course they are so illogical that they ignore the fact that they should be using this to attack the trial lawyers (as if that is the actual cause of this) not the "Liberals are ruining our children" which holds very little water considering the unbelieveable asskicking that our soldiers are doing in Iraq right now - I mean that in the sense of pure military assessment.

childhood? Not only did I play tag (I have scars on both knees to prove it) but leapfrog, hide and seek and god knows what other dangerous things! And I even played on monkey bars, which I understand were banned a few years back. What's next? Will they ban hopscotch next? Do kids still play that? Or maybe jump rope? After all, a kid can trip and fall on their butt. We don't want that! :wtf: