The extreme measures that schools employ to protect themselves from liability mean preventing kids from doing things they might enjoy, especially if those things involve the slightest risk. Crusade Against Fun Continues

Fun? Who wants fun? Fun is so last year.

Or so says the latte-drinking crowd who sit around thinking big thoughts – thoughts that become dictates and mandates about how we should educate our children.

Of course, they would never admit it in public, but fun is at the top of their target list, and it has been for years.

For starters, we can thank the greedy trial lawyers bent on making a quick buck from even the most trivial lawsuit. They've created a climate where insurance companies, school lawyers and administrators have to go to ridiculous lengths to limit possible liability. (Ever wonder why every aspirin and vitamin has to be turned over to the school nurse. Otherwise, it would only be a matter of time before some kid OD'd on vitamins.)

The extreme measures that schools employ to protect themselves from liability mean preventing kids from doing things they might enjoy, especially if those things involve the slightest risk.

At the same time, the social justice crusaders have been out to do away with any activity that might be considered competition. After all, someone might get the feelings hurt or have their self-esteem undermined. Nope. Can't have that.

All of this leads logically to a front page story that appeared in USA Today.

"Tag! More Schools Ban Games at Recess," the headline read.

Under that eye-catching banner, intrepid reporter Emily Bazar reported that games like tag, soccer and touch football are being banned on playgrounds around the country.

Educators are taking action, the article explains, because "kids [are] running into one another."

One school in Cheyenne, Wyoming banned tag at recess because it "progresses easily into slapping and hitting and pushing instead of just touching," the principal helpfully explained.

Touch football and soccer were banned in Charleston, South Carolina because children suffered broken arms and dislocated fingers.

We hear that each of these schools will next declare themselves fun-free zones.

Ms. Bazar quotes a couple of experts in her article, lamenting that mandated limits on recess games will harm kids' development and make them more likely to be overweight.

No one will ever accuse us of being experts on educational theory or childhood development, but anyone with a pulse, including every kid who has ever gone out for recess, knows these bans are idiotic.

But beyond their mere idiocy, these measures are symptomatic of an unfortunate broader trend: Over-the-top limits being put on kids by adults who think they know better.

Taken as a whole, moves to mandate children's diets, restrict advertising to kids, limit recess activities, and all the rest are a significant threat to our children's ability to grow up free and to learn to make intelligent choices. The only way for kids to learn is to try and, often, to fail – with no shortage of bumps and bruises along the way. Trying to protect them from failure only leads to unhappy, irresponsible adults who are convinced that someone else is going to protect them from every challenge that comes their way.

At this rate, it won't be long before our kids are going to school in vacuum-sealed clean rooms as in some bad science fiction movie of yore.

June 23, 2006
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