Raising A Nation of Sissies

What have we come to?

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.

In 1985, in third grade, I had the stereotypical hippie teacher. This guy voted for Mondale, Carter twice as well as McGovern. We had a fight club, before fight clubs were cool.

Everyday, we'd be out there beating on each other. Eventually the older kids started showing up. Our hippie teacher knew we had a fight club. I remember him telling another teacher, "those boys go out there an roughhouse!" but we were never "shutdown."

We even had a firepole on the playground. More than one kid broke their arm. I'm sure it's gone now.

How times have changed.

I say to Gaylene Heppe, driving is when accidents happen too. Are you walking to school?

Dirty Hippies Posted by AlexC at October 19, 2006 11:29 AM