Maybe this has been discussed, but dodge ball is now out in many schools -- "competitive" and "aggressive." Dodge ball is one of the games I thought virtually all children loved. I could have played it forever, and would play it right this minute if i could get a game organized by going out and yelling into my neighbors' windows and the grass wasn't full of Lyme disease.
I sometimes walk on a trail that passes by a soccer field. There are young children taking hit after hit on their skulls with those quite heavy, hard, flying balls, yet I read about a study not long ago showing that there is demonstrable, significant damage done to the brains of children who get bashed in the head frequently in that game. I have always wondered about the discs in their necks, too. When I read the article in the NYT, I figured i wouldn't be seeing those kids playing head-soccer any more with their parents watching from the sidelines. No ten year old of mine would be playing a game in which a heavy object kicked from a distance by an opponent would thud repeatedly and directly onto the top of his or her tender young skull, and that's intuition, pre-study. (My son was on the wrestling team, and a prodigiously good fighter, and i never worried about that.)
Dodge ball was great. Is tag really out? I understand that wrestling is now a sexually integrated sport in many schools, which strikes me as an example of the stupidity of so much ideological -- in this case, PC -- thinking, but maybe i just have a suspicious mind. |
