Nanny State Gone Wild—More Stupid Rules to Make School More Unpleasant
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| Image from Flickr, by KazVorpal |
Last week, in her column “The Answer Sheet,” Valerie Straus listed “eight weird things schools banned this year.” Some of the bans were absurd overreactions to freak accidents that were unlikely to ever occur again and that could be averted much more simply through greater caution by students and teachers. For example, frilly socks were banned at Kingshold Primary School in Gloucester, England, after a child tripped over her dangles and fell, according to the Independent. In another bizarre example, Castle View School in Essex, England, prohibited triangular flapjacks (in England, flapjacks are hard cookies, not pancakes) after one was tossed and hit a student in the eye, the independentreported. To “solve” this dangerous problem, school officials are now requiring that flapjacks be square—apparently these officials had flunked geometry class or missed the lesson in which they were taught that squares have more sharp corners than triangles.
Other bans stemmed from the hysteria over bullying, (here andhere), and are equally misguided. The Eagle-Tribune wrote that the Wyndham School District in New Hampshire, for example, has banned dodge ball and other “human target” games as a way to reduce bullying. Yet bullying (as well as run of the mill teasing,