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Add to FavoritesI shudder when I think of the possible reasons why anyone would want to ban the game of tag from American school grounds! Why would anyone feel it necessary to eliminate this staple of playground activity? In a society that is rampant with "political correctness", paranoid safety measures that are so extreme they they are detrimental to the learning process and anarchist bullies that terrorize principals and kindergarten students alike, it's no wonder that the true schizophrenics have moved from book burning to eradicating childhood games!
Political Correctness, Inappropriate Touching, Bioterrorism and the (Occasional) Cootie
Are we to assume that people want the game of tag banned in the interest of national security? Have terrorists invented a completely devastating bioweapon that is spread by direct kid to kid contact? I'm not thinking that is highly likely. I suppose that the argument could be made about the cleanliness of kiddie hands but if you follow that line of thinking then you should also ban pens, pencils, chalk, computer keyboards and the ubiquitous computer mouse. Kids (being kids) touch everything including each other and it's perfectly normal for them to do so. Get your kid to wash his hands and vaccinate him or her and they'll be just fine. Inappropriate can be a concern but since most children of this age group think that members of the opposite sex are covered with cooties anyway any touching that results from the game of tag is almost certain to be innocent enough.
OSHA Says to Wrap Your Children in Bubble Wrap Before Letting Them Run With Scissors!
The game of tag is a contact sport-but only by definition. Think about all of the other activities that children do that are far more dangerous- monkey bars and swings, bikes, trikes and scooters, T-ball and pee-wee football; have you ever been on one of those metal slides at the park on a sunny summer afternoon- OUCH! No one is discussing removing any of these things because people believe that these activities are (relatively) safe. Besides kids are supposed to supposed to fall and injure themselves from time to time. Of course this doesn't mean that you should go and knock your kid to the ground!
Lets face it, you can't ( and ultimately shouldn't ) protect your child from everything. Teaching them to be reasonably safe is perfectly fine and preferable. No one wants to develop a phobia. I remember when I was a teenager and was catching the city bus home from school. I remember shaking my head as a woman boarded the bus with two kids-the bus ride just lasting less than a block-as the bus meandered its way through a construction zone! It looked like a play straight from the Secret Service handbook!
The Running of the Bull(ies)!
The game of tag is pretty harmless but bullying is not. I suppose that it's not unrealistic for a game of tag to develop into a bullying bacchanalia but its just as easy for adults to intervene! (I believe that there will be some authority figure at the playground supervising the kids anyway. So supervise already! Most people know what an acceptable level of horseplay is if they are honest.
In short, I don't see what the big hoopla is. Tag is one of the safest forms of exercise that a child can have and every child should be allowed to experience it.
Learn more about this author, Bobby Brown.
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Yes
The problem with the game of tag is not the children who play it. Tag has been played more or less the same way for generations, and it doesn't look like that's about to change. Instead, the problem with tag is the parents of children who play it. Because of their insistence that any consequences of tag from inappropriate touching to personal injury demand compensation from someone, banning the game of tag on school grounds is a necessary safeguard against litigation and harassment.
Tag isn't as innocent a game as you would think. Consider the primary rule of tag: whoever is It must tag someone else, who then becomes It. There are a number of problems with this rule. The biggest problem is the psychology behind tag. The fastest children generally do best at tag for obvious reasons. Conversely, the children who end up It the longest are the slowest ones. All things being equal, every child would in theory have a chance to be It. But more often than not, there's at least one child who always ends up It longer than others, probably the reason why one principal from California cited the game as potentially damaging to self-esteem.
Even if you don't buy into the psychological impact of tag, the physical impact is the primary reason why schools ban the game. A tag can be anything from a light touch to a shove. In the case of the California school, children have even been run into who weren't even playing the game at the time. In some cases, such as in one Arizona school, children have gone much further, seriously injuring other children during a game. Even in the best cases, adults supervising children during games of tag can make mistakes that incite disgruntled parents to seek forms of recourse that could easily be avoided by simply banning the game of tag.
Of course, even if tag is banned, it won't be detrimental to a child physically or even socially. Children are by their very nature creative and inventive, especially when challenged by an adult. If an adult tells them, "You can't play tag here," two things can happen. Most likely, they'll try to find a way to play tag in a way that they won't be asked to stop. Or they could find any number of other games to play instead. Banning tag won't stop children from having fun. If anything, it will only make them more determined to find new games to play.
It's unfortunate that a game as timeless as tag should have to be banned on school grounds because of parents. Not children, who have been playing the same way - aggression and all - for the countless years the game has existed. Instead, adults unable to properly raise their children or accept responsibility for their own mistakes have left school officials with few alternatives. If tag isn't banned on school grounds, schools will be more vulnerable to lawsuits and legislation that would further hamstring an educational system already suffering from financial problems. Perhaps then children won't take the game of tag to the extremes that their parents did.
Learn more about this author, Tim Peters.
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