When I was in first grade in the early 80s, my teacher was a total throwback. Super stern, had a grey beehive… she was awesome. Anyhow, we had a merry-go-round like the one in the picture on the main page, and it had sand underneath. She warned us to stay away from it, and explained in graphic detail how a child had gotten stuck underneath it and had been scalped. Can you imagine telling a 6-year-old kid that these days? Needless to say, we all ignored her and played on it, but we had a healthy respect for not falling under it when pushing it.
So what we need are fewer bureaucrats and more mean beehived teachers.
I’ve spend a fair amount of time in remote Amazon River villages where little kids swim in waters filled with caiman, climb trees and vines and wrestle with each other everywhere. What I see are lean, healthy kids with great coordination skills having a lot of cheap fun. We’ve lost something I’m afraid.
As someone previously posted, here’s the actual legal version of what happened with the playground. As you can see, it’s not that the city wanted to sanitize playgrounds, it’s that someone sued them after their kid obviously fell off the thing, and the courts ruled in favor of the person, not the city. So don’t blame the city, in this case, for this stupid decision!
Quite frankly, that does look pretty unsafe. Compared to the merry-go-round pictured, it’s pretty high off the ground and it doesn’t look like there’s any easy way to hold on.
Of course, the suitably-determined child may injure him or herself on just about anything.
When you go to a public playground you are expected to be responsible for your children. They need to be taught how to use things safely, and when they might hurt themselves or someone else. Playgrounds are designed to be challenging physical activities and sometimes that can hurt. (thanks gravity). Now, if the equipment was defective, mis-assembled, poorly maintained, I can see the damages to sue. But improperly using something or just accidentally falling off, that’s just life telling you to be a bit more careful next time.
Honestly, if you go to a playground and don’t come back with scrapes and bruises, you are doing something wrong.
A few dozen children die each year in playground accidents. I imagine a few times more are crippled or otherwise permanently injured.
Now, be an administrator telling a bereaved family or a judge that that it’s acceptable for a few children to die each year so that the vast, vast majority learn necessary physical skills.
It’s true, but very few people (including most of those decrying our safety culture) have the guts to say it out loud. Hence, our playgrounds get nerfed.
(And in 60 years, hundreds of thousands die a few years early of diabetes and other obesity-related diseases.)
Actually, make the playground boring enough, and the kids will go home and play video games instead.
And, to be honest, this is much preferred by almost everybody because it’s a whole lot less work than supervising children playing outdoors and it’s a relatively cheap way of keeping them sedated. (And letting children play outdoors without supervision can now get you arrested.)
Also, when they’re older, it stops them from gathering on street corners, getting involved in petty crime, etc. It’s almost as good as not having kids at all!
