Massachusetts school bans playing tag at recess over fears of injuries, lawsuits
ATTLEBORO, Mass. (AP) - Tag, you're out!
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.
Elementary schools in Cheyenne, Wyo., and Spokane, Wash., also recently banned tag during recess. A suburban Charleston, S.C., school outlawed all unsupervised contact sports.
"I think that it's unfortunate that kids' lives are micromanaged and there are social skills they'll never develop on their own," said Debbie Laferriere, who has two children at Willett, about 65 kilometres south of Boston. "Playing tag is just part of being a kid."
Another Willett parent, Celeste D'Elia, said her son feels safer because of the rule. "I've witnessed enough near collisions," she said.
Breathing is dangerous. If your afraid of tag, you shouldn't breath either.
That's just absurd. And they wonder why kids stay indoors and play video games instead of really playing!
This'll sound like a bad advertisement, but the only summer camp I've ever run, we broke so many kids... well, quite a few had casts on and off over the course of a few weeks. Apparently this was normal -- the casts had been found to be a better precaution than a bandage, and the parents expected kids to be kids. It wasn't that we were doing anything incredibly dangerous.
In this country it'd have been overreaction city, let alone in the US...
. "Hawkeye's the best! Hawkeye's got the cutest eyes! Hawkeye's got some kinda butt! I swear, Ralph, ever since that blowhard joined up, all I hear is Hawkeye, Hawkeye, Hawk...."- Green Arrow, JLA/Avengers #3.
*sig (once again) generously made by Denyer*
It's illegal to play tag in Spokane?!! I didn't know that. That means my poor little nephew will probably never learn it. We used to play tag on the play ground equipment, we were fearless. No one at my school ever got hurt playing tag, not while I was going there.
Seriously, there has to be a way to stop people from suing a school because children get hurt while playing a game during recess.
Pretty good job these kids weren't playing 'British Bulldog'; almost one half of school at one end of playground, the almost other half down t'other end, with about twenty boys and girls in the middle. OK, a few wimps sat it out and bleated to the teachers until it was banned, but we bashed them up later (the wimps, not the teachers, I think).
Anyone want to bet how long it's going to be before schools in the UK pick up on this? How do the authorities propose to stop the children playing tag/tig out of school in case someone else could be sued or whatever?
I wonder if calling players 'it' or telling them that they're 'on' are also bannable offences?
yeah sometimes i offer them choclates and candies to sit on my lap.
. "Hawkeye's the best! Hawkeye's got the cutest eyes! Hawkeye's got some kinda butt! I swear, Ralph, ever since that blowhard joined up, all I hear is Hawkeye, Hawkeye, Hawk...."- Green Arrow, JLA/Avengers #3.
*sig (once again) generously made by Denyer*
Originally posted by inflatable dalek See, Hawkeye's down with the cool kids.
We always called it touch... But these days that's probably an inappropriate word to use in a school... Or something.
-Ss
I found God. Then I lost him. He'll probably turn up down the back of the sofa someday.
"The early bird gets the worm, but the early worm is ****ed."
"I'm not oppressing you Stan, but you haven't got a womb. Where's the fetus going to gestate? You going to keep it in a box?"
Originally posted by inflatable dalek Errrrm, it was probably inapropiate at the time. Plus a proper game of Tig should be more violent than the gentle sounding "Touch" implies.
At my school we used to call it "get him! kick the **** out of the little ****er!"
We just screamed. A lot. The victims, of course, screamed louder, but were lost in the general melee until the dust settled and the ambulance was called.
Because you're also a department store Santa, yes?
they wont let me
. "Hawkeye's the best! Hawkeye's got the cutest eyes! Hawkeye's got some kinda butt! I swear, Ralph, ever since that blowhard joined up, all I hear is Hawkeye, Hawkeye, Hawk...."- Green Arrow, JLA/Avengers #3.
*sig (once again) generously made by Denyer*
![[The Transformers Archive - an international fan site]](/common/skin/cardbackwide/tfarchive.png)
. "Hawkeye's the best! Hawkeye's got the cutest eyes! Hawkeye's got some kinda butt! I swear, Ralph, ever since that blowhard joined up, all I hear is Hawkeye, Hawkeye, Hawk...."- Green Arrow, JLA/Avengers #3.
