Posted on 09/29/2015 8:45:10 AM PDT by John Semmens
The Mercer Island School District in the State of Washington has barred students from playing the game of “tag” on school grounds or within eyesight of school personnel. Communications director Macy Grade described the ban as “an essential step to ensure the physical and emotional safety of all students.”
In the game of “tag,” one child is designated as “it” until he or she can tag/touch another child and pass along the “it” status. Grade characterized the game as “potentially devastating to children’s self-esteem. First of all, the person who is ‘it’ is isolated and stigmatized. Second, all the other participants are traumatized by the risk of becoming ‘it’ unless they can successfully flee. Third, the chasing and fleeing exposes the children to potential injuries from falls or collisions.”
The decree banning the game followed the school districts unsuccessful attempt to revise the rules. Grade explained, “instead of one child being singled out as ‘it’ we tried to encourage the children to play a game of ‘us’ in which every participant is designated as ‘special’ so no one has to chase or flee. But the new game didn’t catch on. The children called it ‘boring’ and continued to engage in the dangerous, traditional version of the game.”
The district also sent a letter home with each student asking parents to help police the ban during non-school hours. “We can’t afford to let our best efforts to eradicate this scourge of childhood be undermined by the unsupervised play of youngsters when they are not on school grounds,” Grade said. “It is important that parents be on board and help prevent the harm this activity can wreak.”
if you missed any of this week's other semi-news/semi-satire posts you can find them at...
http://azconservative.org/2015/09/26/boehner-resignation-unleashes-cascade-of-caterwauling/
I have sent this to my sister-in-law; “progressive elementary school teacher and Union wonk”
Attribution will be made at the very end of the post!
Wouldn’t German night schools also have to prohibit Tag?
Another in a long series of good ones, John.
I’m so glad I grew up when I did.
(riding down a dirt path on a bicycle... shirtless... farefoot... with a stringer of catfish on my handlebars and a dead snake around my neck. Dirty, stinky, skinned up... happy.)
Is “Smear the Queer” still ok?
Wasn’t this reported as a true story?
I even went “barefooted!” :)
Suggestion to the board. Simply change the term “it” to “republican” and make it a learning situation so that no child grows up wanting to be that person. That would be a kind of isolation they would approve of.
Keep up the nice work John! :)
yeah barefoot...
And the only real restrictions we had were, stay out of farmer Jarmin’s watermelon patch and be home by suppertime.
Yes, this is a true story, not satire at all. It was all over the news for a couple of days. Most of the Mercer Island School District parents were not too thrilled about banning tag. They are in support of “free playing”, running around, having fun, being kids, enjoying the simple games of childhood.
Rotflol!
Surely tagging someone as “it” is harmful to those with gender identity issues...
Well after stories my grandad told me about when he was growing up on the streets of New York it’s like kids today can’t have fun without parents organizing them. No more things like sandlot baseball ... kids can’t go down the block by themselves anymore.
Wow. If tag is banned, I guess Cowboys and Muslims will be next.
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