Safety Precautions
I have a pet peeve. And maybe I will be more sympathetic to this cause when I have children of my own, but I really disagree with the way "we" coddle our kids these days, giving them no responsibility for their own safety. For instance, if the playground has icy snow on it, we call a black-top recess (kids are only permitted to stay on the pavement; they are not allowed to go on the icy snow for fear they will fall). It seems that this kind of mentality breeds a society that will then go and blame everyone else if they slip and fall on a sidewalk or the like.
Well today I saw something that really took the cake in this department. My students were returning from the gymnasium where they had been in an assembly. They were returning to their classroom in a fairly organized flood of children, that is, they were walking casually on the right hand side of the hallway. A large TV on a trolley had been parked on the right hand side of the hall for some reason or another. And a teacher who has a reputation for being quite concerned with students not learning to be safe on their own but instead protecting them from any possibility of harm was planted firmly with arms crossed in front of the TV so as to properly divert the stream of children around it.
What are we saying if we have children who haven't learned, when they see an obstacle in front of them, that they must go around it?
2 comments:
Well, on a similar note, apparently the standard for it being too rainy these days to stay outside is about 3 drops...
..anonymous is considering uncorking his token rant about how children are being prepared for life in the Canadian "social democratic nanny state", in which everything harmful is banned (ban trans fat! ban oil! ban tobacco, but not really, the nanny loves the taxes she makes from it! ban cows, they fart and contribute to global warming! ban breathing, it emits carbon dioxide! ban alcohol, but not red wine, which the nanny currently deems healthy, in small doses!) by banning them from such activities that the nanny deems harmful...
but then anonymous would not be anonymous anymore...
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