Chicago Schools Contemplate Recess After Nearly 30 Years Without It
 

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news...78/detail.html

ATTLEBORO, Mass. -- An Attleboro Elementary School is playing it safe. The school has banned tag and a number of other popular games from the playground.


That's causing controversy.


NewsCenter 5's Gail Huff reported that the Willett Elementary School in Attleboro banned tag and it has upset a number of parents and students.

Their school safety issue is ONLY tag? The same tag, you are it!

GTFOOHWTBS

I posted randomly that the "dogs and the po po were here" and THEY are worried about TAG?

umh, umh, umh!

What are school administrators smoking these days? What are they going to ban next, jump rope or 4-square? Children are supposed to get hurt! :p I show off my permanent scars like tattoos. ;) J/K

Is this poll function new? Or I was too lazy to look for it? I don't remember seeing it before, even on the new GC.

It is new, added this summer, but no one has used it yet until today. :D Isn't it great?

Some of my fondest memories are freeze tag. So what I got hurt? That's what band aids are for! Cocoa butter too for the itchy scabs as they heal. If you don't want to get hurt, go sit on the wall and read a book. :D

How about one of your nifty "How to _____ on GC"'s?:D

4-square was THE BOMB in elementary school!!!

I loved it. You'd start off playing with your friends, but at the end of recess you were no longer friends and ready to fight b/c someone lost a game! Then, you'd make up and start all over again with a new game the next day! :D

Oh my dayum! What next?!?!?!

tag is universal, international... the kids are still gonna play it...

Agreed.

Keep tag, touch football, and dodgeball and just punish the children who play too rough or get too touchy feely. They can also just do permission slips where parents give their children permission to play basic school yard games, with an understanding that their are some basic risks. Also, why is there "unsupervised" anything on the schoolyard? Not enough monitors?

I hope they got rid of those hard arse red balls we used for dodgeball and kickball when I was little. We would sometimes use soccer balls. Ouch. :o

On a somewhat related note: I remember in high school when horseplay became very popular. All of a sudden we had guys chasing each other down the halls between classes, throwing each other into lockers, and a few times accidentally throwing each other out of windows or down stairs. The principal made an announcement that horseplay is banned and that being caught will result in suspension. That type of ban makes complete sense because horseplay isn't really a school yard game, high school students don't have recess, and horseplay usually results in someone getting hurt.

I think that's the point...are these kids "tagging" each-other like we used to...or do the "tags" routinly result in someone hitting the ground?

Dodgeball is too exclusionary...haha. We don't want people to feel "out." This reminds me of that California school district which abandoned phonics for a while because they didn't want to tell kids they were pronouncing/spelling the word incorrectly.

I think a lot of things have been taken to the Xtreme these days so I suspect they aren't doing regular tag.

I know there were some mean kids on playgrounds when I was little but they would get punished with the quickness.

Or worse? Yesterday, two "friends" were "fighting" during lunch. The "fighting" resulted in them breaking the glass door that leads to the library. One of the students said that the guy was his friend and they were not fighting. Okay. How about your hand is all scraped and bruised?

Now, you and your friend are suspended for 9 days AND you and your friend must replace the glass door.

Usually tag isn't banned because it's violent, it's because it is exclusionary. The slowest kid is always "it"

It's still stupid to ban it.