MASSACHUSETTS VIEW

Let kids be kids

Once again, the city of Attleboro has found its way into the national consciousness in a manner that's far from flattering. First it was that crazy cult that starved its own children. Then came the "Paddleboro" sado-masochism follies. Now, Attleboro has again become famous (or more likely, infamous) because one of its elementary schools has outlawed the children's game of "tag."

Tag! A simple, generally harmless game enjoyed by little kids for centuries on most corners of this planet!

This latest tale of misplaced educational priorities left me shaking my head in utter disgust when it first appeared in the pages of your Blue Ribbon Daily a few days ago. Now, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien have seized upon it for their nightly monologues. Great publicity for the city, huh?

I'm in Buffalo this weekend to cover the Patriots-Bills game, and if someone asks me where I'm from, the answer will be, " somewhere south of Boston, to avoid hearing a response such as, Oh, yeah? Been arrested for playing tag lately?"Now, I fully expect that the following commentary will be met with a full slate of complaints from Attleboro school officials over the fact that I didn't call anyone to get "both sides" of the story. Pre-emptively, I respond by reminding them that this is a column, an intentional expression of personal opinion, which is one-sided by definition. Their "side" of the story has already been represented in news stories (which are different than columns), and now, I'm going to take great pleasure in responding to it.

Personally, I don't care about the safety issues, or the design of the Willett Elementary School playground that supposedly forced the hand of school officials to ban the children's game and other high-exertion activities. Children have been skinning their knees and scraping their elbows on concrete or blacktop for as long as those substances have existed, and Western civilization has not come tumbling down because of it. Obviously, school administrators should do everything they can to prevent worse things from happening, but realistically, they have to leave the rest in the hands of fate.

What bothers me initially is that this is clearly a response to an over-litigious society in which desperate people look for any means possible of cashing in at someone else's expense. And it further infuriates me because of the message it sends to youngsters that physical activity is "bad" and should be avoided. At a time when childhood obesity is becoming a national disgrace, I'm not sure it's wise for any school administrator to be advocating the limiting of activity that can run a few Twinkies and orders of French fries out of the kids.

And yes, here's another disclaimer. Today, I am well over my "playing weight," and I'm not terribly proud of it. But I've had 52 years to get there. When I entered high school back in 1967, I was about 5-foot-5 and 120 pounds, and I graduated at a fairly fit 5-11 and 168 pounds because physical education was approached as a serious part of the entire educational program, and not just given the lip service that it gets today. I attended a parochial elementary school that put no emphasis whatsoever upon physical activity, and I found myself lagging behind my classmates when I transferred to public schools in seventh grade. But in high school, I was incredibly fortunate to have a gym teacher named Dan Smith, perhaps the only person on the earth who could have ever inspired me to do 50 push-ups and 100 sit-ups in the same class, and to run a mile in a time of 5 minutes and 20 seconds. OK, I know that 5:20 wouldn't win most high school girls' mile runs today. But I was a marginal baseball player, not a track athlete in training, and it was through Smith's prodding, insistence and encouragement that I could push myself to do something I never imagined possible. That forever convinced me of the value of physical education in the schools.

Unfortunately, Smith's curriculum would probably be seen as excessive in today's oversensitive, overcautious educational environment. And the result? In my current visits to local schools, I see a lot of young people (not participating in athletics, of course) who couldn't walk from one end of a gym to the other in 5:20. Yes, I wish I could set a better example myself, but I'm not in the business of making physical activity part of an official school curriculum. Attleboro School Superintendent Pia Durkin and Willett School Principal Gaylene Heppe are.

They're not alone in their misery, of course. A Framingham school has also outlawed tag, dodgeball and other such games because they are supposedly "dangerous and exclusionary." A school official was quoted on WBZ radio as saying that they didn't want students "touching each other." Many other schools across the country have done the same. Again, I just have to shake my head.

Sports are naturally exclusionary in nature because they are a form of competition that separate those who succeed from those who fail. I hear far too many supposedly intelligent people claiming that children should be taught that everyone can be winners, and they tinker with sports to remove the competitive aspects -- and then they wonder why the kids grow up unmotivated, expecting everything to be handed to them on a silver platter, and totally incapable of working as part of a team once they reach the adult world.

In sports, you are supposed to both succeed and fail. You learn about life because of it. You experience joy for succeeding, and you work harder toward a positive goal if you fail -- and you also come to the realization that the effort is ultimately the most important thing. It's so simple a philosophy, it's no wonder supposedly educated people dismiss it!

As for the "touching" aspect, are we supposed to put our kids in giant plastic bags, punch a couple of air holes for them and tell them to avoid all human contact at all costs? Give me a break! It's called social interaction, people. This is how you learn to function in society. There are many worse forms of "touching" to which school administrators should be paying attention, and it's generally not what kids do to each other on a playground.

I'm not saying that there should be no discipline on a playground. Far from it. My grade-school teachers spent far more time than they wanted to keep me in line, I'm sure. Maybe that's why today's issue sounds suspiciously like an attempt on the part of administrators to lessen the workload (and the level of legal responsibility) by legislating against everything that could result in time-consuming disciplinary duties.

It's unrealistic, at the very least. Kids will be kids. And what example is set for them at the elementary grades will go a long way toward determining if they grow up interested in athletics or other forms of physical activity and keeping themselves fit, or becoming candidates for heart attacks and strokes before they reach the age of 30 -- and, possibly, so paranoid about human contact that they can't function anywhere but in front of their computer screens.

I'd like to think that I survived all of the pitfalls of my youth -- skinning my knees, losing at dodgeball, falling off my bicycle a few times, getting punched in the nose by a bully or two -- and became a fairly well-adjusted and productive member of society because of it. In fact, I'd really hate to think what my outlook on life would have been if every possible risk had been removed from it before I left the house each morning.

So, I leave the administrators of the Attleboro schools with one last thought before the phone calls start coming. As the fans in the stands say at many of the games I cover, "Let the kids play!" Tag. You're "it."

Mark Farinella
21 October 2006

http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2006/10/22/sports/sports3.txt

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