BAW
The Flower
SANTA MONICA ? A Santa Monica elementary school has banned the game of tag, once synonymous with youth and innocence, because they say it creates self-esteem issues among weaker and slower children.
"We had some children who were not playing 'it' appropriately. How do you differentiate between those that are playing correctly and those that aren't?" asked Franklin Elementary School Principal Pat Samarge.
In the school's weekly newsletter, Samarge told parents that without adult supervision, the game would be banned. The principal said children playing tag suffered both physical and emotional injuries.
"Little kids were coming in and saying 'I don't like it.' [The] children weren't feeling good about it," Samarge said.
Dr. Judy Young, executive director of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, disagreed with Samarge, saying that games like tag "are organized to have a winner and a loser," which is simply a part of life.
"Self-esteem should not be imbedded in whether you win or lose a game," Young said.
Tamara Silver, a parent of a fifth-grader at Franklin Elementary School, said the school sent her two letters informing her of the new rules. The second letter cited safety concerns, not issues of self-image, to justify the tag ban.
"I want my child to know that he can have some freedom," Silver said. "I want my child to know he can play. I want my child to know that he can fall down and skin his knee."
This has been all over the local news in the LA area and I have to say that with this, I've just about heard it all. Tag, a game that has been played by generations of kids, is now "damaging to a child's self-esteem"??? What kind of wimpy, wussy children are we going to send out in this big, ugly, competitive world if they aren't allowed to experience losing a game once in a while? We already have no score soccer games and this year, my son's high school yearbook removed the "best looking" and "best personality" categories because "someone might get their feelings hurt"!
I just remember such a different way of growing up in the 70's. It seemed like I always had a skinned knee or a splinter in my finger and now we want to wrap our kids in a plastic bubble and insulate them from everything, including hurt feelings. I know its a completely different world today but I really feel sorry for todays small kids.
Competition is not always a bad thing.