Poll: Is Kickball too Dangerous?
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i remember my primary school days, i attended a catholic school that was pretty lax about what we played because well lets face it we were A) small classes of 50 kids per grade and only 2 grades out on one yard at a time, and B) really good kids and in all 8 years i went there their wasn't a single fight or instance of threats or bullying. so they let us do what we wanted and conducted ourselves pretty well. we only ever had ONE injury and it was my 7th grade class playing red rover. a kid got cloths-lined, hit his head and got a concussion. but we were back to playing it the next day just fine.
the real kicker? we played American foot ball full tackle with no pads all the damn time if we could get some grass, if we were at a park as a class with free time? tackle football. heel we even played it on our DC trip in 8th grade. we played full tackle in a patch of grass next to the parking lot with teacher watching us. yeah we had it easy and did wee eve get hurt? naw i got hurt more in the class room with bored kids doing stupid stuff than ever playing a recess game.
(i'm not kidding about that last bit, i still have graphite in my thigh because a friend of mine wanted to see how sharp his new pencil sharpener could get them. he stabbed me and the tip broke off in my leg. you can see the dark mark still 7 years later.)
the real kicker? we played American foot ball full tackle with no pads all the damn time if we could get some grass, if we were at a park as a class with free time? tackle football. heel we even played it on our DC trip in 8th grade. we played full tackle in a patch of grass next to the parking lot with teacher watching us. yeah we had it easy and did wee eve get hurt? naw i got hurt more in the class room with bored kids doing stupid stuff than ever playing a recess game.
(i'm not kidding about that last bit, i still have graphite in my thigh because a friend of mine wanted to see how sharp his new pencil sharpener could get them. he stabbed me and the tip broke off in my leg. you can see the dark mark still 7 years later.)
Hear! Hear! Well said, when I was a kid one of our favourite games was to go into the woods and get sticks to sword-fight with and to throw at each other as javelins. It was fucking sweet, and of course it was dangerous, so's life.Custard_Angel said:
Also gravel fights on the school playground
RIP Bullrush...although I hear it's on its way back...
I believe that these games are not too dangerous - or at least no more dangerous than anything else. You cannot and should not cotton-wrap your kids. That doesn't mean you should encourage them to be fundamentally reckless, but how are they going to develop physical coordination and survival skils these days anyway? =P
I believe that these games are not too dangerous - or at least no more dangerous than anything else. You cannot and should not cotton-wrap your kids. That doesn't mean you should encourage them to be fundamentally reckless, but how are they going to develop physical coordination and survival skils these days anyway? =P
This is fucking ridiculous, I hated kickball because I felt it was a lazy version of softball, and I only accepted softball because they wouldn't let us use real baseballs in school but I don't see it as particularly dangerous unless they're using a fucking bowling ball instead of the big red rubber ball.
I never understood the point of Red Rover and never looked forward to being forced to play it because it pretty much always ended with me feeling like one or both of my arms had been ripped from it's socket but if schools want to force it on their students more power to them.
If there had been a dodgeball class at my school I would've taken that at least one semester a year, I fucking loved dodgeball. If they banned it in my school district I would protest. When I was in middle school we played with these old volleyballs that were all hard from being from like the 70's. I saw the stoner kid in my class take one of those things to the face from the P.E. teacher and it knocked him on his ass because he wasn't paying attention.
This nanny state bullshit needs to stop before American society ends up being bigger pussies than we already are. Keep banning common playground games because someone might get either their feelings hurt or actually come to minor physical harm and we'll end up being invaded by some tiny country like Lichtenstein and we'll go down harder than the French did to the Nazis.
I never understood the point of Red Rover and never looked forward to being forced to play it because it pretty much always ended with me feeling like one or both of my arms had been ripped from it's socket but if schools want to force it on their students more power to them.
If there had been a dodgeball class at my school I would've taken that at least one semester a year, I fucking loved dodgeball. If they banned it in my school district I would protest. When I was in middle school we played with these old volleyballs that were all hard from being from like the 70's. I saw the stoner kid in my class take one of those things to the face from the P.E. teacher and it knocked him on his ass because he wasn't paying attention.
This nanny state bullshit needs to stop before American society ends up being bigger pussies than we already are. Keep banning common playground games because someone might get either their feelings hurt or actually come to minor physical harm and we'll end up being invaded by some tiny country like Lichtenstein and we'll go down harder than the French did to the Nazis.
*giggles* That is soooo true, they'll *never* EVER ban Amercian Football.Nouw said:
My kids, however (if I have boys), will grow up playing rugby, a real man's sport.
Back on topic, I grew up playing dodgeball and kickball on the school playground, and I'm no worse for wear, this is absolutely ridiculous... *sigh*
Well the issue here is one of risk, 99.9% of the time there is no real danger involved in these games, and injuries will be relatively minor if they occur. The problem is that tiny portion of the time when a kid *IS* injured seriously, which of course opens the school to litigation, and if the school is receiving public funding in any capacity the state and town can be held accountable... through rising insurance premiums if nothing else (since if they have insurance to deal with this, the rates will rise once they have an incident).
It's a slipper slope issue, with no easy answer. The reflex is to point out that this is the result of the insanity of a legal system that allows people to sue for nearly anything ,people oftentimes forgetting how they would feel if their kid was seriously injured. There is also of course the connected issue of negligence and one of the big reasons why it's become possible to sue with enough of a chance of success in cases like this is that there have been plenty of cases over the years where physical education instructors HAVE been negligent, over the top, or were just not taking their job seriously which lead to the injuries. Removing liability from the equasion can also lead to a lot of problems.
One also has to understand that even when you don't get into punitive damages, simply having a school be considered liable for the injuries can be a big deal. I'm sure we all know people who suffer from injuries they sustained in school activities, especially later in life. When you get older some injury you seemed to shrug off playing football, falling down, or whatever else can come back with a vengeance or be the catalyst for various degenerative conditions. If some kid takes a bad spill playing kickball, and sprains their leg or something, and there are records of this where it's acknowleged to happen, this old sports injury could see the school having to pay out a lot of medical fees 20 years down the road if it can be tied to why some middle aged guy starts to have problems walking. You might laugh but cases like this have been won, and there is a lot of legitmacy to the central complaint, what's more if YOUR the one who is in pain, your going to want treatment and do whatever you have to in order to get it, and if that means going after your old school because you can't otherwise afford and injury like that, well that's what your going to do.
Don't misunderstand what I'm saying though, I think the situation is ridiculous, but I do understand it. Personally I think these schools and programs need to suck it up. Especially when dealing with private programs simply run through schools the things are cash farms. It basically amounts to a bunch of people looking to make some extra money teaching a few extra gym classes as a fancy form of day care, and charging crazy amounts of money for it at times.
The kind of thing they seem to be talking about is say where a Gym teacher gets permission to use a blacktop or school gym after hours (perhaps in exchange for some kind of write off the school gets for donating it or whatever), and then accepts money from parents to keep their kids busy for a couple of extra hours a day. They might charge like $200 per kid a month for this, or even more, and there generally isn't any oversight on the "program" because it's not actually being run by the school, and the nurses that work for the school aren't on contract to service this (hence the point about the medical liscences and so on), assuming this isn't all at the town green or a park, or some public blacktop or whatever.
The basic logic can apply to a lot of differant things though, and it's ridiculous, but it is a touchy subject, and not one you can actually take a side on easily if you really think about what's involved.
It's a slipper slope issue, with no easy answer. The reflex is to point out that this is the result of the insanity of a legal system that allows people to sue for nearly anything ,people oftentimes forgetting how they would feel if their kid was seriously injured. There is also of course the connected issue of negligence and one of the big reasons why it's become possible to sue with enough of a chance of success in cases like this is that there have been plenty of cases over the years where physical education instructors HAVE been negligent, over the top, or were just not taking their job seriously which lead to the injuries. Removing liability from the equasion can also lead to a lot of problems.
One also has to understand that even when you don't get into punitive damages, simply having a school be considered liable for the injuries can be a big deal. I'm sure we all know people who suffer from injuries they sustained in school activities, especially later in life. When you get older some injury you seemed to shrug off playing football, falling down, or whatever else can come back with a vengeance or be the catalyst for various degenerative conditions. If some kid takes a bad spill playing kickball, and sprains their leg or something, and there are records of this where it's acknowleged to happen, this old sports injury could see the school having to pay out a lot of medical fees 20 years down the road if it can be tied to why some middle aged guy starts to have problems walking. You might laugh but cases like this have been won, and there is a lot of legitmacy to the central complaint, what's more if YOUR the one who is in pain, your going to want treatment and do whatever you have to in order to get it, and if that means going after your old school because you can't otherwise afford and injury like that, well that's what your going to do.
Don't misunderstand what I'm saying though, I think the situation is ridiculous, but I do understand it. Personally I think these schools and programs need to suck it up. Especially when dealing with private programs simply run through schools the things are cash farms. It basically amounts to a bunch of people looking to make some extra money teaching a few extra gym classes as a fancy form of day care, and charging crazy amounts of money for it at times.
The kind of thing they seem to be talking about is say where a Gym teacher gets permission to use a blacktop or school gym after hours (perhaps in exchange for some kind of write off the school gets for donating it or whatever), and then accepts money from parents to keep their kids busy for a couple of extra hours a day. They might charge like $200 per kid a month for this, or even more, and there generally isn't any oversight on the "program" because it's not actually being run by the school, and the nurses that work for the school aren't on contract to service this (hence the point about the medical liscences and so on), assuming this isn't all at the town green or a park, or some public blacktop or whatever.
The basic logic can apply to a lot of differant things though, and it's ridiculous, but it is a touchy subject, and not one you can actually take a side on easily if you really think about what's involved.
At this rate, our kids may as well be caged if people (particularly politicians) wish to shield their child(ren) from all things bad. I wouldn't be surprised if 16-year-olds developed osteoporosis as well as severely atrophied muscles because their muscles aren't being used.
It's a god damn athletic endeavor. Those are always accompanied by an element of risk. Sure, there are sports that are riskier than others (Rugby for example), but just because risk is involved doesn't mean you should ban such things. And, if you want to do that, what are you going to use for physical education? Curling into the fetal position in a quiet padded room where you're supervised by an adult so that you can be as sure as possible you won't incur some sort of injury?
I honestly pity anyone who lives their lives and never manages to gain a scar in a hard fought encounter in sports and I'm constantly baffled by the increasing need to protect people from one of the fundamental joys in life.
I honestly pity anyone who lives their lives and never manages to gain a scar in a hard fought encounter in sports and I'm constantly baffled by the increasing need to protect people from one of the fundamental joys in life.
It is a game commonly played by younger children. Basically, a group is split into two sides. Each group joins hands and stands across from one another. At a call of "red rover, red rover let come over", the child who's name is called sprints from his position in his line and attempts to break through the opposing line. While there are probably rules associated with scoring and such, when I played we never seemed to keep track of such petty things. If we broke the opposing line, the two members who failed to hold switched sides. If the runner failed to break the line, they joined the team they charged against.Aethren said:
Not yet, but I've been exploring possibilities. Coating the balls in something like broken glass is probably the simplest possibility. I've been considering a system whereby the ball has a small explosive inside (probably not big enough to be lethal, maybe blow a foot off) with a trigger that goes off after randomly-determined number of impacts, but maintaining the balls elasticity has always got in the way.
Hold on just a second... kickball? How is that dangerous?
There's no bat or stick to hit someone with, the ball isn't hard like a baseball, the only physical contact between players is either tagging the other person or hitting them with the ball (which isn't harmful)...
What are they afraid of? The kicker tripping and falling between bases?
There's no bat or stick to hit someone with, the ball isn't hard like a baseball, the only physical contact between players is either tagging the other person or hitting them with the ball (which isn't harmful)...
What are they afraid of? The kicker tripping and falling between bases?
Dunno how you played red rover. We played a game that was essentially touch rugby with no ball. Everyone lines up on one side of a field, with one kid in the middle, he calls out one kid who then has to get the other side without being tipped (tagged, touched) and then all the other kids run across.Plurralbles said:
British bulldog was the same but where you had to take them to the ground.
What's kickball? Is that a funny US way of saying Football (Soccer)?emeraldrafael said:
Also, what's freeze tag?
And what the fuck is Wiffle Ball?