Sunday 2 September 2012

Safety First - Fun Is Only For The Fully-Trained

Following swiftly on from the campaign to criminalise cartoon dinosaurs, an Australian branch of the 'over-thinking danger' profession have decided that their wages, irrational fears and inflated egos are far more important than kids having time-honoured fun.
THE fun is over for Sydney schoolchildren who dare to do cartwheels and handstands in the playground.

Drummoyne Public School has banned handstands, cartwheels and somersaults during lunch and recess unless "under the supervision of a trained gymnastics teacher and with correct equipment."
I sometimes weep for the world these poor tykes are being forced to live in. Doing what has come naturally to kids for time immemorial - or, according to the definition in English Law, a lot longer than that - is now apparently too dangerous unless overseen by a paid expert. The dull-minded arrogance behind such a policy is truly staggering, isn't it? Self-centred adults inflicting their own set of values and fears onto minds which should be blissfully ignorant of all of them.

I'd like to say it's a small bit of Aussie lunacy, but we've seen the same in this country and in Canada.

Sorry, but I'm not buying any 'health and safety' bullshit on this issue. Nor do I believe it is any kind of excuse that they feel they might be sued by over-zealous parents. Both of those, if employed as excuses, are pure cowardice and reason for the idiots involved to be drummed out of childcare professions for good.

Safety should be a concern, yes, but the moment it usurps innocent childish fun it becomes quite evil. Kids have always enjoyed playing and, indeed, learn vital life skills by doing so. To deprive them of this and fill their minds with exaggerated fear is almost an abuse in itself.

Still, I suppose once kids have been taught that it is natural for pleasure to be curtailed in pursuit of overbearing security, they'll be far easier to control in the future, won't they?

Well done Australia, you continue to keep Ben Franklin spinning in his box.

H/T Aussie jewel thief, Cherie.


5 comments:

The Meissen Bison said...

Sorry to quibble but your first instinct should be to steer well clear of terms like childcare professions which gives a kind of legitimacy to the overblown and underqualified folk who take refuge in such expressions.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Agreed. My bad.

Furor Teutonicus said...

XX overseen by a paid expert.XX

And therin lies the answer as to why.

Rob said...

Of course, the very same people will demand action on 'obesity' caused by physical inactivity in childhood.

Jeff Wood said...

The good Furor has it.

There is at least one nation in Europe which is not yet wimped out.

Here in Italy, they ride furiously downhill in mass bike races, climb sheer faces in numbers, jump from aeroplanes, scuba and so on. Sometimes they tell the bloody Mafia to take a hike, which takes some nerve; and they drive as they do on Italian roads, on four wheels and two.

A couple of weeks ago we took a visiting teenage grandson to one of those adventure parks where you swing through the trees, albeit hooked up. He had tried one in Scotland, and quickly discovered even the basic adult course was tougher than the hardest one at home.

What I saw was large numbers of Italian parents using the child course as a brief workout for their children, then pushing them on to the adult courses, encouraging and bullying them round. I did the basic adult percorso, and was constantly overtaken on the tricky bits by twelve-year-old brats, who didn't seem to notice the stretches which tested my ageing nerves.

Youngsters who froze received a little sympathy at first, but that soon turned to fierce encouragement to move on. By the time they swished down the final wire, they had grown. And this was just a day out...