What will schools ban next?

Book burning and censorship.

What you will see is a continuation of the exodus from public schools that originally started with busing in the mid 20 th century, thus dooming many urban school systems to slow decay.
More and more private schools and home schooling
Isolated, politically correct
homogenous public schools

Yep! Can’t even pick on a blind kid anymore, somebody calls you out for being a bully!

No more boys playing “bootie tag” on the girls who don’t even like to play, no more hit tag on the kid who wants to read a book.

I am going to say it, despite some will groan, another reason I am super glad we chose not to have kids,it’s getting to a point do we even have a right to bring an innocent life into this extreme fucked up world?
We either act like savages, or over think everything unto death,another fact we are rapidly breeding common sense out of the human race.

I recently read a good article in the Atlantic called The Coddling of the American Mind. It’s focused primarily on colleges and universities, but looks at the same phenomenon: the growing effort to shield students from any possible emotional unpleasantness.

It’s not easy. I don’t know anyone who would suggest that there isn’t a line to be drawn between acceptable and unacceptable exposure to disturbing stimuli for kids, but the answer isn’t to eliminate as much of it as possible. There appears to be a steady creep in that direction, possibly because people in a position of responsibility don’t want to be found to have done too little as protectors of young psyches.

This is what happens when you combine an extremely litigious society with a national educational policy that takes schools out of the hands of educators and puts them into the hands of administrators.

@thorninmud While I overall agree with your answer, I’m somewhat dubious about that article. Here is a pretty good response to it.

When I was a kid in the 70’s, the middle school halls were divided down the middle with tape, and there were hall monitors. It was a freeway, in that you could only turn certain directions at certain monitors. If you missed your turn, you had to go to the next authorized monitor and circle back.

During the time I was in school, the banned wearing jackets (particularly jean?) during the school day. We were not allowed to wear clothing that was red-white-and-blue if it was patterned with stars or stripes. Appliques on clothing were strickly forbidden.

The establishment strikes back at the liberalization of society in mean, petty ways.

Well, they just need to make recess computer playing time, instead of letting kids waste all that good energy out on the playground, chasing each other around and, OMG, touching each other.

Nipple tassles for geography teachers?

Apparently none of you have been forced to play tag with several of the school’s worst bullies. Or maybe you are having some rosy retrospection on your own childhood during those times…

I’d imagine the school made a conscience decision based on several negative events that took place prior to the ban. The OP, article and even it’s source took the ‘one-sided, outrage-tactic’ so the story would pull at the heartstrings of your inner child that once liked to play tag with friends, while at the same time suggesting you should share the same view they are pushing… “teachers are making bad decisions”

What if the article was written in way that showed the school was facing some serious bullying/violence issues, and due to current policies set in place, temporarily banning tag on the playground was the quickest/safest response until they discover a better solution. Would you still feel the same way as you do now?

I tell you what I miss that you don’t see any more and that’s tether ball.

Appliques were particularly popular back then. My sister had a small hole in her jeans that my mother patched with a bumblebee applique. My sister’s famous statement? “They aren’t going to make me take that bee off! If they try, I’ll just take off my pants and show them my hole!”

LOL! We did the patches things, even if we weren’t covering a hole. My mom got one that said, “The End,” and sewed it on the butt of my jeans. She thought it was so funny!

Mercer Island is the home of Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and a few other extremely wealthy individuals among its 24,000 residents. The median household income is $90,000. That’s not directly relevant to the question, but I’m sure it factors into the background of the story somehow.

Dodgeball along with other things

@Tropical_Willie Dodgeball was my favorite game in gym class.

Mine too @Cruiser, I was the chubby/husky but I was the hardest to hit in the center of the circle. We played something called Bombardment with five balls, you could use a ball you held to block from getting hit with another ball.

We played crab soccer with a twist – a PE teacher had made 18” wooden square carts with casters (like furniture dollies) that everyone had to sit on. It sure sped the game up, but could be hell on fingers.

Schoolchildren will be next. They are rowdy and rebellious and a health and safety risk to themselves and others. Schools would function far more efficiently without them.

Peanut butter. Drawing a barbarian with an blood covered axe got me in light trouble in grade 5 .

Kids at me niece’s previous elementary school weren’t allowed to hold hands, or even walk side by side with their arms around each other’s shoulders – which I am extremely opposed to. Physical contact is very much a part of normal childhood development and bonding with friends. The fact that the schools are taking “no touching” so far is seriously creepy to me.

studying

It is getting a little ridiculous! I understand some of the restrictions, but goodness, it’s well beyond rational some of it.

Sexting

@Cruiser and @Tropical_Willie,....Man I loved dodge ball (and volley ball, and basket ball and badminton and tether ball and everything.) At my 10th class reunions, one of my former PE class mates who I didn’t even remember :( said I scared the hell out of her in dodge ball! That kind of made me feel bad. It wasn’t my intention to scare anyone….just kill ‘em. You know.

I won’t miss dodge ball. I lost at least two pairs of glasses getting a ball to the face. I was very good at dodging, though. I only got nailed when I tried to catch the balls. I have coke bottle lenses. My parents had to shell out several hundred bucks for those stray dodge balls.

At least most schools still had recess. The elementary school in Florida where I taught banned recess. They called “unstructured recreation” and said it in a shameful way. The kids got gym class twice a week instead. Yay.

I had coke bottle glasses too. Never got hit in the face, though. That would have hurt. Got slammed by a volleyball in the face once, on a spike. That really did hurt. Thankfully I had contacts by then.

As for recess, that absolutely sucks, @keobooks. That is the most ridiculous, and SAD thing, I’ve heard of, banning recess. But I don’t understand. When I was in elementary school we had 2 recesses a day, as well as gym twice a week.

@keobooks: Did the person who hit you in the face with the ball get in trouble?

Why would they, @jca? It certainly wasn’t on purpose. Not too many kids can hit a moving target right where they want to, from 20+ feet away. Plus the head is too small of a target. You aim for the torso. It was nothing more than the risk you take playing dodge ball.

I don’t know Dutchess. Maybe there were rules or maybe it was obviously thrown to her face.

I don’t see where she said it wasn’t on purpose, Dutchess, so I think it’s a valid question.

Cheering grads.

@jca I doubt it was on purpose. It only happened when I tried to catch the balls. I have a dodge ball magnet up my nose or something.

They reinstated tag….the torches and pitchforks were just too intimidating….better to let the kids take their lumps than the adults.

It was so depressing when, try to dodge as you might, a ball would still hit you. Maybe that’s why they banned it. Too many kids couldn’t handle hurt feelings.
Or maybe the face thing had something to do with it, @keobooks.
I look back on tether ball days…and kind of shudder, really! That tether ball was moving WAY faster than a dodge ball..or even a volley ball spike. But it never hit me.

At first I thought the dodgeball bans were over the top, but over the years I changed my mind. I think that should be banned.

I asked my daughter if they play dodge ball in her school and she said no. I’m guessing that’s because mothers would raise holy hell if their kid came home with an injury or broken glasses due to an overzealous ball thrower.

My son (4th grade) said that they still play dodge ball occasionally during recess.

Here’s how dodge ball worked when I was a kid: A bunch of asshole strong kids would pick on the weak, vulnerable, and intelligent. Some poor kid would get slammed in the head and would smash his head against the wall. Then, at some point, a fist fight would break out and the game would end. Every single time. It was a nightmare.

I share @thorninmud‘s concern re: trigger warnings etc for older students. But for young kids, some of the things that were allowed when I was a kid should be something we can put behind us.

I recall a time not too long ago when they decided that all backpacks must be clear so the contents could be seen. That didn’t last too long but I still think there are schools out there that would like to eliminate the backpack for supposed safety reasons.

From the link I posted….

“Tag as we know it… is reinstated.”
Update

After our report on the decision by the Mercer Island School District to ban the game of tag over the physical and emotional safety of students, the district received lots of negative feedback.

Now, the school is backing off.

Time for a parade to celebrate….

Yay! ^^^

Wow @DoNotKnow. Was no one supervising your games? We had a rule that you couldn’t hit people in the head. It’s not that hard to not hit someone in the head. In fact, I don’t remember anyone ever getting hit in the head, much less getting his or her head smashed into the wall.
As for stronger kids beating up on the weaker, lots of kids just stayed to the back, where they couldn’t get hit and didn’t have to participate at all.

No fistfights broke out over any of it either.

But then again…these were girls. I guess I don’t really know how the boys’ games went….oh, WAIT a minute! I do remember one boys game of shirts and skins. The girls were in the bleachers watching the boys play. One kid was on the ground, on his stomach. He was one of the skins. The coach came over, stood above him, and slammed that red rubber ball down on the kid’s back as hard as he could…..That gets weirder and weirder every time I think about it. The coach crossed the dividing line and came about halfway into the other territory to do that…..

@Dutchess_III – Not very much supervision, and they would break up the fights during gym class. But free recess time and after school was when you had to answer for your actions during the day. Fights were a regular occurence. This is something I am glad my school district doesn’t have any tolerance for. That and “shirts and skins” that you mention. Can you imagine the trauma that fat or skinny kids go through having to take off their shirt in school? And yes, before anyone objects to the word “trauma” – this was not a typo. While I’m on the skinny side now, I was the fat kid in elementary school (in today’s terms, I was slightly overweight). And my fists had to do a lot more work because of it.

I honestly can only think of two kids who were “fat” (actually only slightly overweight, as you said, compared to the norm today) in high school, and they were both female. But yeah. I can imagine it would be mortifying. I’m glad they don’t do that any more.

But the “I’ll see you at the graveyard at 4:00 after school!” challenges still goes on today, you know.

But…Dodge Ball was fun, at least for me! But I guess I’m glad they’re doing away with it, too, for all the reasons mentioned.

And could you imagine what would happen to that sadistic coach today? I think I even remember who the kid was, it was so shocking.

My kid’s elementary school recently banned running and playing tag during recess too.

While I think it seems pretty ridiculous to ban an activity that is essentially the heart of recess, I get why they did it.

Our school is heavily impacted, meaning there are way too many kids playing in a space that was designed to accommodate a lot less kids.

There was already an incident of a fifth grader running and knocking over a first grader so hard that it caused lasting brain trauma.

The no running rule obviously isn’t a solution to the overcrowding problem. It’s more of a temporary fix—if that.

I was volunteering at her school this morning and all the outrage(!) about the new rule is pretty unwarranted. All I saw were kids running around and playing chase.

Calling dodge ball murder ball.

@fluthernutter

Do they have a reason for not simply creating multiple break times? That’s what some of my schools did – the younger kids were safely back inside when the older ones got started.

@longgone That’s how recess was when I was younger. But I don’t think it’s possible for her school because they don’t have the extra staff to run multiple recess times. :(

@fluthernutter That sounds a bit like an excuse – do all the teachers go out with the kids right now? Honestly? Even if they do…halving the group of kids as well as the group of adults will create a similar level of safety. Especially as the overcrowding is the most dangerous factor at play.

From what I see, the playground monitors are not teachers. Recess is the teachers’ break time and time to get ready for the next class (around here teachers get three breaks per day).

@jca Three breaks plus lunch?

@JLeslie: No, three breaks total. Morning 45 minutes, lunch, 45 minutes, and afternoon 45 minutes.

When I was teaching, the teachers were the play ground monitors on a rotating basis. Some recesses were break time for me, some I had playground duty.

@Dutchess_III: This is a different era.

I’m not entirely sure why. I’m guessing that there are probably newer state-mandated ratios in relation to space.

There’s an adjoining park to the school. But they only open it up for the kids to play during recess when there are enough parent recess volunteers.

@jca It’s not like it was 30 years ago! I’ll check, but I’ll bet that around here that’s how it is. The schools here have been closing whole buildings. No way would they hire someone strictly for playground duty.

@Dutchess_III: Here, the aides are not “strictly” for playground duty. They are cafeteria monitors and teachers’ assistants. My point is that the teachers do not do playground duty, cafeteria monitoring, etc.

Reporting on what Is banned next will be banned.

Well, maybe each school is different, because they did when I was teaching in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.