Playground Politics
The playground-pacification crusade reminds us that our schools are increasingly run by hysterics.

June 21, 2001 9:00 a.m.

he other evening, while sharing a beer with a housepainter friend, the latter brought up the current assault on rigorous playground sports, especially dodgeball. The points he made were the obvious ones: The schools are turning out generations of wimps and softies, to the point of tempting invasion from the north. Furthermore, he added, it's not a good idea to keep boys from experiencing the thrill of highly regulated assault. "No wonder some of them go all-or-nothing and start shooting people."

Such analysis is pleasing, and perhaps even on target. It also brings to mind earlier days when playgrounds were proving grounds, as well as forums of the deeper type of learning. No longer, it seems. Published reports, including a thorough assessment by Matt Labash in the current Weekly Standard, indicate the traditional playground, like the stag room, has been marked for extinction by the forces of enlightenment. Instead of games rewarding physical gifts, we now have an "everyone wins" regimen of games that require no talent, other than perhaps the ability to stand erect and remain awake while doing so. There is no mocking of losers, because everyone gets a trophy.

The result is supposed to be a more civilized, peaceful, harmonious youth population. One reasonably expects a level of success to rival that of in-school anti-smoking campaigns (that is to say, zero). But the playground-pacification crusade does remind us that our schools are increasingly run by hysterics who cannot watch a child throw a ball at another child without thinking of Columbine, or at least without calculating the amount of therapy some participants will eventually need to transcend the trauma.

This is no exaggeration. Labash found an influential group of "dodgeball scholars" (nice kick in teeth) who have created a full-scale indictment of the game. These people produce movies with titles such as No More Dodgeball: A New Beginning and articles entitled "Premeditated Murder: Let's bump off killer ball." Those of us who are generally under the impression that sedatives are too widely prescribed may have to admit that some deserving hamlets have yet to be pacified. We can also assume that these attitudes will only get worse, for standing up to dodgeball clearly represents the progressive position, while those who advocate the game find themselves in the same category as ear-twisters, back-caners, and tongue-soapers.

There is no end to the list of crimes for which this latter group is held accountable. Just the other day, the treachery of accused spy Robert Hanssen was blamed on two causes: a love of porn, and a "domineering father" who, among other things, yelled at the boy. "[Hanssen's] reasons for spying had very little to do with spying and much more to do with his emotional pain," explained the shrink. "He is not mad, but he thinks he's going mad because of the contents of his thoughts. He snaps, and the snapping is in the form of spying." As of now, we don't know what role dodgeball played in this drama, but will probably find out soon enough.

Meanwhile, one wonders how many Americans have been permanently maimed by early exposure to dodgeball and assorted roughhousing. The number must be astoundingly high, for on the playgrounds of the 1950s and 60s (as well as those of earlier years) there was a distinct Darwinian flavor to the proceedings. It was kick or be kicked, smack or be smacked, and when you bled you'd better bleed with a smile on your face or expect withering ridicule and maybe a drubbing on the side.

Indeed, sometimes the toughest players were on the teaching staff. I recall a fifth-grade teacher named Mrs. Bain (or perhaps it was Miss Bane). She not only oversaw the school-safety patrol but rolled the kickball with nearly enough power to pop a kicker's femur from its socket. Should the ball bounce before the plate and shin you, it was like being wailed by a barber's strap. Yet when there was a solid connection with the foot, that ball sailed magnificently, sometimes over the distant cyclone fence. The subsequent glow took one's mind off the throb in his foot during the victory lap of bases.

After school there were other dangerous activities, such as daredevil bike-riding (without helmets), fist-fighting, and the exchange of new information on various aspects of the female anatomy. This was before such information could be gained simply by turning on the television, and instead required surveillance methods of some ingenuity and skill, including one colleague's ability to climb a tree and observe a neighborhood beauty at shower time.

God only knows what crimes are being perpetrated by those people today.

As it happens, several are known to be living frightfully mundane lives — working jobs, raising families, and never once cashing a check for services rendered to the former Soviet Union. Many also wonder how America came to be invaded by hysterics. Such questions occasionally cross my mind, as when, last year, one of my sons was severely punished for an act of nobility. The circumstances are not in dispute. A friend was being preyed upon by a student three years his senior. My son invited the older bully outside to settle things. He complied. Yet after only two glancing blows, administrators rushed in and not only ended the fight, but suspended the white knight for five days.

One hates to pat a kid on the back for breaking rules and getting tossed out of school for a week. But it was one hell of a temptation.