Recess at Salisbury State

Children have a natural need to run around and scream. I first learned this truth on the playground of the Experimental Elementary School at Salisbury State Teachers College in Salisbury, Maryland. But I didn’t know I knew it until a generation later, when my own children were the same age. Now comes news that school administrators in Attleboro, Massachusetts, have outlawed the game of tag because “children might get hurt and sue the school”.

Children are bundles of energy. That’s why recess was invented. To get the urchins sitting quietly and paying attention during classroom periods, they would be allowed a break in the middle of the morning to do as they choose – which meant to run around and scream.

Salisbury State Teachers College was what its name implied, until it went upscale and became Salisbury University. It taught teachers. And it had on campus an Experimental Elementary School where budding teachers could ply their trade on actual students.

It was located right across the street from my childhood home at 205 East College Avenue. But my story begins earlier than that. All the families in that area used Carrie Hyde, known as “Momma Hyde” for day care and babysitting. And her son Paul, who was a student at Salisbury, liked to practice his teaching techniques on her charges around her kitchen table covered in oil cloth, with an ever present bag of the world’s best potato chips, the legendary Utz chips.

Paul was a gifted teacher. As a result, I learned to read and write, and do simple arithmetic, when I was five years old. That caused a dilemma as I approached elementary school age.

So, my parents trotted me next door to Dr. Blackwell’s house. He was the principal of that elementary school. A little informal testing, and Dr. Blackwell decided that it was a bad idea to stick me in First Grade, so I started in the Second Grade, in 1949.

I can still remember three of my classmates from my two years in that school. There was my best friend, John Hanson. There was Alta Ann, a red-haired girl with freckles who lives in my memory as a living version of Raggedy Ann, though she’s certainly a silver-haired grandmother by now. There was Corey, a round-faced boy of dubious accomplishments.

And I remember recess at that school. There was an asphalt-covered playground with a dodge ball circle painted on it. What vicious beasts the adults in charge were. Every single one of us got scrapes on each and every knee, playing on that surface. However, somehow, not one of us grew up to be ax murders, as best I know.

There was a swing set that in my memory was 30 feet high, but in truth was probably 10 feet tall. It had metal links, rather than ropes. And John and Corey and I liked to swing as high as possible, and bail out at the top of the arc into a sand pit.

But most of all, I remember the screaming and running. The bell would ring, we would pour out the door, and the running and screaming would start immediately on the steps of the school.

There were educational benefits as well. Because the classrooms were overrun with student teachers, we had opportunities unlike those at a normal elementary school. My career as a writer began with a column in a “class newspaper” produced on a mimeograph machine in the Second Grade.

Raise your hand if you remember the mild high from a deep sniff of a freshly-printed mimeograph page. And while we’re in a Marcel Proust minute, raise your other hand if you remember the mild taste of that white school glue. Perfection.

The point, of course, is that it is a proper part of the education of children to allow them to be children. To be stupid, pointless, wild – at some times and in some ways. Haven’t the yo-yos at Attleboro ever seen spring lambs gamboling in a pasture? Or spindly-leg colts running in a field?

The purpose of school is to prepare children for life. And life is full of asphalt and danger. Raising children in an artificial cocoon, totally divorced from reality, is just plain wrong. And adults who do not understand that are fools who should not be in charge of the teaching of children. They have every right, no matter how wrong it is, to raise their own children to stand in a corner shivering, like a Mexican hairless dog.

But they have no right to do that to everyone else’s children through namby-pamby rules for the playground, as established by Attleboro schools, and others in Cheyenne, Spokane, and Charleston, and elsewhere. Sadly, this trend may be due to the modern American plague of trial lawyers, rather than merely foolishness by school administrators..

Post Script: Paul Hyde, by the way, became an excellent teacher, an excellent principal, and Superintendent of Education for Wicomico County. Then, shortly after his retirement, “Momma” Hyde died in the fullness of her years at age 100. .

About the Author: John Armor is a lawyer specializing in constitutional law, who may again be a candidate for Congress in the 11th District of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu

Though y'all might enjoy this. I know you were appalled by the story from the Attleboro schools outlawing "tag."

John / Billybob

YOWZA! Cross Mark Steyn and Dave Barry, we've got this gem of yours.

Someday I hope to be able to write *half* as well as you.

Cheers!

Great article Billy bob!

These schools would do well to stop worrying about little bumps and bruises, and start considering what will happen when these students get older and realize it was the schools that taught them that they should "experiment and question" their sexuality. When the medical repercussions of that result from that teaching hit home for some of these students, the lawyers are going to have a field day!

What a wonderful, well written article. While pointing out the continuing obtuseness of the liberal left, it brought back memories of the '"good times', and yes, I can still recall the smell of the mimeograph and the taste of the paste, the running and yelling on the asphalt playground, and sliding into the bases on that hard dirt baseball field.

Isn't it wonderful that we were brought up in that era and that we still can remember those things like it was yesteday...?

To steal from Bob Hope, Thanks For The Memories!

4 posted on 10/23/2006 11:43:06 AM PDT by hadit2here ("Most men would rather die than think. Many do." - Bertrand Russell)

Good luck to Attleboro schools - they're going to need it to stop children from playing tag. What foolishness people exert nowadays

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