Turning children into gerbils at Dulles Town Center in Virginia.
Turning children into gerbils at Dulles Town Center in Virginia.
>> Turning children into gerbils
Progressives *like* ‘em that way.
Ages 13-16 we played football in front of the school. There were walkways across the lawn then. Our only concession to safety was no, ahem, neck tackling on the concrete allowed.
My son has a huge yard and my grandkids had a little trampoline and a big trampoline,no safety net, a merry-go-round that could turn so fast that you could (and often did) get thrown off. There was a swing set and a seesaw. All kids loved to come home with my grandkids.
Now that they are older, they have bonfires and volleyball games and swim in the pond. They ride 4-wheelers and motorcycles and hunt rabbits at night.
They are too busy for video games and television and they are both very slim even though they eat like horses.
From a playground in Tallinn, Estonia, where my kids were lucky enough to spend some of their playground years.
The 20 foot rope thing, which never would have passed muster with US lawyers, was part of the new safe equipment. The old Soviet-era stuff was truly menacing - usually featuring something very heavy, steel and moving.
I learned that it is possible to bounce somebody off a teeter-totter if you get a firm grip, your feet on the ground and jerk the plank at the bottom of the downstroke.
Years ago parents and community folks at our local school got together and put up a “Leathers” playground. It was fantatic! Heavy rope/telephone poles, etc. Then a kid got a splinter in his belly, and after enough whining from his yuppy mother and friends, they now have all this plastic CRAP. So glad my kids got to enjoy the old Leather’s playground.
I think the sad thing is is most of it is brought about of fear from lawsuits of people if their kid gets hurt on government property. Our parents would not have sued if we got hurt, they’d just take us home and patch us up and maybe tell us to be more careful next time. Not people today who are always out looking for their next free meal ticket.
Of course there are plenty of people who are PC and promote zero-fun policies as well.
My old grade school isn’t far away from where I am. went in a few years ago and got a little tour of the changes. Went in to the old cafeteria/gym and was talking about how great it was playing dodge ball in there. The now female gym instructor says ‘we don’t play dodge ball anymore’. Too dangerous, and not everyone’s good at it. They don’t play kickball like we used to either. Again not everyone’s good at it. They just do ‘skills’ work, and running. Everyone can play soccer because even if you suck you’re just running around. Hard to tell if you suck at soccer because hardly any goals are scored anyway. Team skills. That’s what’s important now. They do real sports in junior high and high school. Supposedly.
I already knew I’d probably see this as I had already known for years how they were messing up gym in the elementary schools. I was one of those kids that sucked at gym most of the time because my eyes were bad, and I was able to be in a class a year ahead of my age so I was smaller. Still had good memories of stuff and there were times when I did okay. Dodge ball was still great. Even if you aren’t the best you can still get people out and you can still dodge balls, for awhile at least.
Back in 1980 we had one of the worst ice storms I can remember. Right around 3 inches. My parents lived on a gravel road at the top of a 1/4 mile long hill at the bottom of which lived my aunt. The ice completely covered the road and I thought it’d be a good time to sled down it.
Never have went that fast on a sled again.
In many ways these libtards are robbing our children of being able to be children.
In the same way lame-ass parents who would sue at the drop of a hat rob our kids of being able to be kids too.
This is not new. If you transported back 50 years you would see playgrounds were not used then either. Playgrounds have always been interesting for about half an hour then they are boring. Even with teatertotters.
We spent our times in the woods making forts.
In the same vein, I grew up in the town of Amherst, MA. Amherst college there happens to have God’s Own Sledding Hill, officially known as “Memorial Hill”. It’s sloped at about 30 degrees, starts at about 25 yards wide and ends at about 100 yards wide, is perfectly flat, and is about 100 yards long. The sole obstacle is a 24” drainage ditch at the bottom where the hill opens out onto the college playing fields. When I was a kid, the hill was open to all, and during the winter was the main destination for kids to sled. There were usually two well-packed tracks going down the center of the hill, and often some college kid would build a ramp off to one side (or even sometimes a small one on one of the tracks). The slog to get back up the hill was exhausting, but it was worth it for the ride down.
Shortly after I graduated high school, the college declared the hill to be closed, and would stop the usual weekend-day sledding festival, though people could still sled it on their own unofficially later in the day or evenings. A few years after that, I found that they had closed it completely, and the campus cops would patrol the area when there was snow, to prevent anyone from using it at all.
It’s an interesting theory, but I doubt it is correct. I had two kids, and they loved playing in these “gerbil cages” as you label them.
The reason kids don’t do anything anymore is that they can have all the fun they want without getting out of a chair. When I was young if we wanted to have fun, we went out, found some kids, and played together.
Now kids have the internet and video games. The games even allow them to talk to “friends” while playing, so it’s like they are socializing, but without moving their bodies at all.
“...and then the grownups started and they moved in......the monkey bars.....the monkey bars came in, we lost 124 kids on one day...”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqv38fP7cr0
I see a slide and then several gangways for walking. Is that what passes for playground equipment these days?
Well we did that with the old school steep metal slides, so the new equipment is still safer.
However, I saw no mention of the most important factor for safe, fun-free playgrounds...
Lawsuits.
A kid gets injured?
Parents ring the cash register on anybody with deep pockets and a hint of liability.
The grandkids’ school solved the kid to ground impact problem by putting down about 8 inches of tire chips. The surface is a little like playing on sand, but with ‘bounce’ and is very forgiving compared to the playgrounds of my youth. Considering the relative lack of skinned knees and torn clothes, it is a good deal. They can still fall, but are less likely to get hurt.