Big Fight on the Playground (Parents Protest as Schools Take the Play Out of Recess)

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ^ | Friday, October 10, 2003 | LAUREN LIPTON

[presidio9]

Callaghan Elementary's fourth-graders returned to school this fall to an unusual new recess activity. Worried the nine-year-olds have too much independent playground time, the Virginia school decided to have them walk the track.

"The teachers will make it fun," Principal Nancy Moga says. One possibility: Kids may plot how many miles they've logged for math class.

[ItsOurTimeNow]

I worry we're raising a generation of wimps and whiners.

They've already been raised, and the damage is already being done. It's only going to get worse from here.

The "Nerf" mentality must be stopped/resisted at all costs.

As Steve Martin used to say "LET'S GET BLAND!!"

[onehipdad]

Good one! I was thinking the thame sing.

Say, whatever happened to good ol' chicken-fights, on wet asphalt?

With nightcrawlers, to really make it interestin'...

[ctlpdad]

It's these damn government schools trying their best to faggotize our kids. Do you really want to work (or hire)with some wussy geek who never had a scraped knee or a broken wrist? Not in my business.

I really don't want to see my babies get real hurt, but what kind of character would they have if the grew up wrapped up in bubble wrap to keep them from getting hurt.

let the kids play, and explore their limits as little humans need to do. But, then again, the government schools aren't trying to produce individuals, they are trying to produce little gover

[blackdog]

A slab of playground gutterspout ice placed under your butt when going down the slide guarantees a mach 2 speed down the slide. After explaining it to my youngest daughter, she and the rest of the kids were banned from the practice last winter because the excessive speed sent kids flying out of control at the bottom of the slide.

When you're a kid, flying out of control is what you do best!

[BureaucratusMaximus]

Great...I can't wait untill these pussyfied kids are running the country someday.

[blackdog]

"Ahhhh...I love the smell of worm pate' on the playground asphalt at the morning recess." - A quote from Robert Duvall's childhood years.

[Little Pig]

Where I came from, we also had "Bombardment", sort of dodgeball, only there were about 20-30 balls. You stood on opposite sides of the gym and hucked 'em at each other from behind a line. For some reason, we always fought over who was gonna get the star pitcher on their team.

[cwb]

This is precisely why we have a bunch of screwed up kids. We have taken adversity out of their lives and replaced it with a false sense security. This is part of the same trend that promotes children when they should be held back..and rewards them for failure. Or when anything bad happens we have a parade of "grief" couselors that come to the rescue. Is it really any wonder why we have kids shooting each other? We've taught them that adversity doesn't exist...and that anything that might offend them is an assault against them. Instead of "sticks and stones may hurt my bones"...Words have become weapons. Liberals have literally created a socialist utopia that doesn't exist outside the classroom, so when these kds enter the real world, we see even more violence as they can't handle the adversity. This isn't preparation for the real world...it's preparation for a dream world that liberals are trying to create using our youth as guinea pigs.

[BureaucratusMaximus]

LOL! In NJ, we called it “Kill the Guy With The Ball.”

LOL...in my childhood circles...we just called it "Kill".

THAT was successfull anger management.

[Spruce]

Most recess injuries when I was a kid were from the hard-core "King of the Hill" matches.

[Cicero]

Well, they are not only determined to kill roughhousing but the creative imagination. We wouldn't want kids to learn how to think or feel for themselves, would we?

[ladylib]

"Our school is an A-plus school, but my children are miserable," Mrs. Hoffman says."

Wake up, Mrs. Hoffman, and remove your children from a school they hate. It's not doing them any good.

[TomHarkinIsNotFromIowa]

King of the Mountan - Snow Season

Huge piles of snow on edge of playground. There were always little blood trails leading back to the school. It wasn't a good recess unless someone bled.

[xzins]

Our job is to teach them how to compete properly," says headmaster Olen Kalkus.

Exactly. Let's quit pretending that there aren't differences in all kinds of abilities.

Harvard doesn't choose C students and Ohio State doesn't draft intra-mural quarterbacks. (We could try to force them to do so, of course, in the name of 'inclusiveness.")

It's my job to teach my kid that life has its victories and its defeats, and that we need to learn how to live with both. While the school's primary job is education, it's the school's secondary job to reinforce such common sense parental guidance.....even if it means keeping their nose out of it.

[blackdog]

(Apocalypse Recess Now) Those guys surfing on that beach in Vietnam from the Air Cavalry during the beach battle were the same kids playing "Kill the kid with the ball" when they were in gradeschool.

Some day soon there will be a major war with a battlefield strewn with American kids all because they were fighting "Operation Mousepad" instead of "Kill the Kid With The RPG".

[blackdog]

I bet the school in Viginia makes them walk the track to the left!

[BureaucratusMaximus]

We have taken adversity out of their lives and replaced it with a false sense security.

Which, in turn, takes the whole "thinking for yourself" and "maikng decisions for yourself" concepts out of a child's development; thus creating a lifelong childish dependence and loyalty to "the authority". The present authority is the school (not the parents)...who knows what it will be in the future. They ARE being groomed for socialism/communism. Its sick.

[Ajnin]

Smear the queer was one of my favorites along with wallball.

[blackdog]

I was cut during tryouts for our little league ball team two years in a row before I made the team. If you were not good enough you sat in the bleachers and worked on your game until next year. My dad's involvement was to get me to join the little league football team in the fall so I could smack the crap out of the same baseball kids who were "better" than me. It felt good and kept me in the upper tiers of the pecking order. Self esteem counseling consisted of a good forearm block to the chops.

[AnAmericanMother]

Don't forget "Red Rover".

A good sized kid could really work up some speed in the space between the two lines. If ya kinda tilted as you hit the line, you could usually take out at least one person on the opposing team -- sometimes two or three.

I have a chipped tooth and slightly askew nose to show for it.