Playing Tag Outlawed

At McLean School, Playing Tag Turns Into Hot Potato – washingtonpost.com
Robyn Hooker, principal of Kent Gardens Elementary School, has told students they may no longer play tag during recess after determining that the game of chasing, dodging and yelling “You’re it!” had gotten out of hand. Hooker explained to parents in a letter this month that tag had become a game “of intense aggression.”

This tag involves grabbing people who do not necessarily know they are playing and possibly bumping them to the ground. “Then the kids do ‘pyramiding’ or ‘towering.’ They pile on each other. [Sometimes] they call it ‘jailhouse’ or ‘jailbreak,’ ” because the child has to break out, she said.

Ms. Hooker is right when she describes this game as intensely aggressive, and she’s right that it ought to be outlawed. But rather than outlawing tag and dispatching a squad of phys ed teachers to monitor the playground, she ought to implement this common-sense suggestion: Punish the miscreants.

… Michael Haaren, a father, said that if some children are being too aggressive, they should be disciplined. Limiting the activity is a “draconian” measure, he said.