Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
…so said this expert across the pond over two years ago.
Britain’s leading play safety expert has some simple advice for grown-ups: relax. Let your kids have fun; let them be challenged; let them explore – and let them take risks.
David Yearley, of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, says that years of concentrating solely on safety has led to the spread of ‘boring’ public play areas. With £124m in lottery cash earmarked for sprucing up playgrounds, he says it’s time to shift the focus to ‘controlled risk’.
Yearley, keynote speaker at an international conference in Loughborough this week, said: ‘We need to provide play environments so that children can experience risk in a controlled and managed way.’
Yeah, for one brief, shining moment, there was light at the end of the tunnel. A little bit of respect for old-fashioned, rough-and-tunnel, “Hold My Beer And Watch This” manliness.
Maybe that was there, but the more pressing concern was…
Play can be dangerous: 40,000 British children – from an under-15 population of about 12 million – are injured each year. One child dies every two or three years as a result of a playground accident.
Yearley said that, unless playgrounds provide ‘exciting, stimulating’ diversion for children, there is a danger that children will not use them, and will play instead on railway lines, by riverbanks or alongside roads.
Well ironically, this much older article was more in line with the concerns I have about kids today.
A GROWING number of children’s playgrounds are too safe and designed more for anxious parents than the rounded development of their cosseted offspring, research-ers say.
A three-year study written in conjunction with the University of Manchester surveyed 872 families and found that a concern for safety often hampered children’s ability to learn for themselves. In two- thirds of cases, a decision to use a particular playground was made by parents and not by their children.
Dr John McKendrick, of Glasgow Caledonian University, one of the report’s authors,said: “There is too much concern with safety. Good parenting has been seen as interventionist parenting for too long … parents are using playgrounds for their own benefit and not for their child’s.
Bingo! Good parenting seen as interventionist parenting. How many times have I had this conversation with Kidzmom, and with mothers in general…”So, when he’s eighteen and graduated from high school, are you planning to be there to –” “Yeah, I know…” The final two syllables of the retort are drawled out wistfully, understanding the problem, knowing it’s a significant one, but not being able to dredge up the drive to confront it.
Now, get a load of what Cassy found out, via Wizbang, about potato sack races.
The sack race and three-legged race have been banned from a school sports day because the children might fall over and hurt themselves.
:
Simon Woolley, head of education at Beamish in Co Durham, said: “We looked at a three-legged race and a sack race but what we want to do is minimise the risk to the children. We thought we would be better to do hopping and running instead because there was less chance of them falling over.”
We are living in an over-lawyered society. The nightmare scenario that led to this, was for that dreaded playground sound to be heard — “++plop++ WAAAAAHHHHH!!!” — and a lawsuit to ensue.
So no plop.
This is a great definition of a bad idea. Everyone says “we had better do it this way”…but nobody wants to sign onto owning the decision. Nobody says this is a better way to do it.
Nobody really wants to sign their name under the idea that the kids are genuinely “unharmed.” Because deep down, we all understand that isn’t true. But we have to do it this way; it’s “for the children.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I have attempted to introduce more risk into my boys’ lives, as they now have none. I would caution fathers to avoid the logic along the lines of “Boys who don’t manage fear and risk will not be able to defend us in wars or start businesses.” My wife believes both are avoidable, alas.
- wch | 07/18/2008 @ 12:27My son was demonstrating less ability to alertly cross a street than his mother and I felt he should have been showing, and so she was trying to extract out of me a promise that I wouldn’t make him do it. The way he gets distracted, he could easily be HIT by a CAR!
My response was, if that happens what big loss is it to the human race if he’s such a drooling idiot? Isn’t that survival of the fittest?
Fortunately, she saw the dark humor and understood the point I was making. Some mothers would not. Some would call CPS right there. But if I avoided making that point because of that risk, of course, I would have been defeating my own logic.
- mkfreeberg | 07/18/2008 @ 12:38