More Dumb Assity

Seriously.  I’m ill.  Four schools across the country have banned “Tag” as a schoolyard game.  I’m sure by year’s end, that little trend will have swept the nation.  School officials feel that it is detrimental to the psyche of the loser and also puts the school in a potential litigious situation if an injury occurs.  I'd be more worried about kids bringing guns to school as a potentially litigious situation, ya' know? 

Come on, it’s a playground.  Kids play there.  Games have winners and losers.  In fact, in tag, as I recall, it’s a revolving winner and many losers. Kids fall down, trip, stumble, and skin knees and elbows when they play.  How could that possible damage the psyche of the child?  If I were Johnson & Johnson (makers of the Band Aid™), I’d sue the schools for interfering with business, know what I’m sayin’?  If they aren’t gifted at chasing, reaching out, and tagging someone, perhaps they could jump on the swing set during recess and swing for a while. 

I pay enough taxes to support a family of four in most third world countries for over a year and have three kids to worry about myself—let me worry about their psyche and let the schools work harder to control the classrooms so some actual teaching can be done.  I should sue those schools, because my psyche is seriously damaged by this dumb assity.

Which brings me to teachers shifting from correcting with red pens to more pleasing colors such as purple.  How ridiculous.  If the paper is wrong, they should use red pen—it’s attention-getting.  If the kid doesn’t like a paper marked up with red, perhaps they will make sure it doesn’t happen again by studying, spelling correctly, and looking up the right answer.  By default, they may actually learn something.  If a parent is worried about little Johnny getting his feelings hurt because he had to look at the big, bad, scary red ink--how about you help him with his homework instead of staying glued to the little stylus on your PDA?  That will help both of your poor psyches.  

How will we create the tough-as-nails young men and women we’ll need in the next few years to fight in the ongoing debacle in Iraq if they are all namby-pamby on the playground and can't deal with a little red ink?  How will they deal with getting blown out of ill-equipped convoys and finding themselves leaking red blood, instead of looking at red ink?   

This rant brought to you by a parent who is just so sick of playing by their rules.

 Published on: Oct 27, 2006