Don't touch! Will rule make kids feel safer?

Star Tribune ^ | 5/17/08 | TERRY COLLINS

[MichiganCheese]

We used to play “smear the queer”. They would rebel against that on many levels today.

[lesser_satan]

But Principal Joan Franks has now refined the policy to target aggressive and "unsafe" behavior such as play-fighting, pushing and shoving. And tag.

Fascist-eduKKKrats-running-amok-in-Minneapolis ping

[meyer]

Or "Smear the queer". Remember that one? :)

Yeah, we had that but we called it "kill the guy with the ball". Our school was much too "progressive" to make an ill reference to the queer lifestyle.

[Darren McCarty]

I guess “smear the queer” isn’t allowed there either. Too many queers...

[Alright_on_the_LeftCoast]

and bows and arrows...we used to stand about 50-75 yards apart and launch at each other...only 20 lb. bows but still enough to kill you.

[goodnesswins]

Ha....your first sentence reminds me of a family story....my Uncle (age 3?) dared her brother, my Aunt (age 4) to chop off his finger with the axe they were playing with......she did!

[karnage]

Idiotic.

[Puppage]

No more tag or touch football for the students at Armatage Elementary in south Minneapolis

Why don't they just ban childhood?

[M.K. Borders]

Buck-Buck! Anyone remember it? Man you could get yourself killed playing that if the the teams were big enough.

[luckystarmom]

This is not so stupid.

The problem is that there are a bunch of kids in public schools whose parents do not enforce any kind of discipline on their kids. These kids are way out of hand, and there are a lot of them.

My daughters were in a decent public school, but then the district closed it. The following year (3rd grade for my daughters), my girls went to where the district moved the kids from their closed school. The new school had 3/4 horrible kids. Lots of them were from illegal immigrant parents. If they weren’t illegals then they were on drugs and had all sorts of issues.

The nice kids kept on getting beat up. There were tons of discipline problems because kids did not know how to behave.

At that school, I would have supported a no touching policy because it was so out of control.

Teachers can only do so much. Parents have to also control their kids.

(My daughters are now in private school, and that school would not need a no touching policy.)

[goldstategop]

I can understand the concern over children being exposed to pedophiles but banning all non-sexual touch is paranoid overreaction.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus