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August 30, 2006
The Wimpification of Our Future
Children are our future, and moonbats are doing whatever they can to shape it in their image — including turning kids into pansies by politically correcting playgrounds into settings suitable for the Teletubbies.
The jungle gyms and monkey bars we grew up with have been replaced by simplified forms in Day-Glo colors, made of rubber and foam, like the spongy souls of those who build them.
Whimpers Donna Thompson of the National Program for Playground Safety:
Getting hurt on a playground is not a rite of passage to be an adult.
If "getting hurt" means occasionally scraping an elbow or bruising a knee, she couldn't be more wrong. How is a kid who has never learned the hard way not to be a baby ever going to develop enough character to qualify as a grownup?
Not only playground equipment, but even games have been banned by moonbats bent on producing a generation of gelatinous wimps. Grade-school kids in places like Cheyenne and Spokane are even forbidden to play tag. Dodgeball is particularly incorrect. As the National Association for Sport and Physical Education preaches,
Dodgeball does provide a means of practicing some important physical skills — running, dodging, throwing, and catching. However, there are many activities that allow practice of these skills without using human targets or eliminating students from play.
The students who are eliminated first in dodgeball are typically the ones who most need to be active and practice their skills. Many times these students are also the ones with the least amount of confidence in their physical abilities. Being targeted because they are the "weaker" players, and being hit by a hard-thrown ball, does not help kids to develop confidence.
Yet I can state from personal experience that even a puny little brat with all the coordination of Ted Kennedy on his fourth martini, who invariably got nailed in the face with the ball, used to love dodgeball — because unlike most school activities, it isn't boring. As for confidence, avoiding any situation in which you might fail is the last way to develop it.
NASPE's whining continues:
And it is not appropriate to teach our children that you win by hurting others.
On the contrary, in a hard world like the one that surrounds us, an unwillingness to hurt others is a lethal flaw, as we will find out once Democrats are running the War on Terror.
Deliberate wussification isn't the only aspect of moonbattery at play. Trial lawyers have also left their mark. As Donna Thompson smugly observes:
[I]n the long haul, it's going to cost less to make the playgrounds safe than to go to court.
Ironically, prissified playgrounds are deleterious not only to kids' development, but to their health. Says pediatrician and professor of pediatrics Jay Noffsinger,
The much bigger problem in this country is sedentarianism and not being active, and though I would be in favor of people looking at making playgrounds safer, there may be an overemphasis on that rather than the fact that we need to be having more of them and encouraging physical participation with kids in any activity we can get them into. We need to be encouraging physical activity in any form, rather than legislating rules about the safety thereof.
Now we know why MLB needs to import so many ballplayers. Before long policemen, firemen, and soldiers will have to be imported too, while native Americas degenerate into quivering blobs of politically correct Jell-O that resemble Dennis Kucinich with a beer gut.
Posted by Van Helsing at August 30, 2006 4:48 PM
Comments
A nation led around by its balls is infinitely preferable to a nation led around by its pussies.
Posted by: V the K at August 30, 2006 5:44 PM
'[I]n the long haul, it's going to cost less to make the playgrounds safe than to go to court.'
It actually costs less to not make playgrounds at all. And tiny communities faced with ruinous insurance bills or lawsuits have found this out.
Children have only a short time in which they like unity and direction. As they pass into the teen years they despise it and the more precisely they are supervised in directed play the less interest they have.
They shift to activities where they feel free; music - the louder the better - computer games, cliques, clothing with no merit except to offend, avoiding adults and educators, etc, smoking, drinking, etc.
My guess is that we are trying to freeze life at the seven-year-old stage when children readily cooperate. That certainly would be more convenient for teachers, educators, and others who work with children.
It is pleasant to walk a well trained dog.
Posted by: K at August 30, 2006 11:34 PM
Go play in the sunshine - you need the Vitamin D. Grown ups need a few bruises, too. Stop wasting life on your computer.
Posted by: Happiness at August 31, 2006 3:46 PM
When I was a kid, I had bruises all over me from the rough play me and my brother used to engage in with our friends. I ate dirt too. I never get ill and I'm not particularly afraid of getting hurt (in fact, pain doesn't bother me most of the time). I do lead a fairly sedentary life, but that's by necessity of employment rather than through any sort of fear.
ANyway the point is I wasn't coddled as a child. SOme of my peers were, and now they're little wimps who won't amount to anything.
Posted by: Archonix (in Madrid Airport) at September 1, 2006 12:45 PM
