No roughhousing. No superhero games. No turning your fingers -- oryour Pop-Tart -- into a make-believe gun. No tag. And certainly no dodgeball.
Stories of zero-tolerance play-policing by schools are a well-established news genre. Most recently, parents in Washington state mounted a successful campaign to force the Mercer Island School District to reverse its ban on playing tag during “unstructured playtime,” or what used to be called recess. In his backpedaling press release, district superintendent Gary Plano puzzlingly insisted that “asking students to keep their hands and feet to themselves at all times, including recess” wasn’t a ban on tag. Perhaps he envisions tag by telepathy.
At any rate, Mercer Island isn’t the first school district to prohibit tag and it won’t be the last. Bans on physical contact and pretend violence are the norm on U.S. school playgrounds.
“The majority of school districts in the U.S. have ‘zero-tolerance’ policies on ‘any form of violence,’” says Jennifer L. Hart, who teaches early childhood education at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia and has published research on “playful aggression” among children. Kids who wrestle, pretend to fight, or play superheroes face punishment, as do teachers who tolerate such old-fashioned antics.
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