Risky Business
May 19, 2015
At a time when efforts to promote student-athlete health and safety are more obviously than ever at the top of our daily to-do list, it may seem ill-advised to suggest that kids need more danger in their lives. But they do! And that’s the point of 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do) by Penguin Books.
From mastering the perfect somersault (#3) to melting glass (#47), and from climbing a tree (#28) to walking home from school (#18), authors Gever Tulley and Julie Spiegler demonstrate two obvious but often overlooked points: (1) that most of us learn by doing; and (2) that a sterile, bubble-wrapped world teaches us less than one in which we are allowed to play with fire (#45).
After-school sports and activities provide safe and supervised danger. A place to learn new skills, meet different people, perform under pressure and test one’s limits. A supervised place to engage in life before going out in the less supervised real world.
No Guns in Schools
April 29, 2015
It seemed crazy to me when I first learned that “gun-free zones” really were not free of guns.
Apparently, while many school sports administrators and officials hustled to replace blank-shooting starter pistols with different kinds of devices for signaling the start of races at cross country, swimming and track events, state laws were carving out exceptions to allow other people to carry guns into those very same events.
Now there’s an effort by some to trade a ban on “open carry” in exchange for permission to carry concealed weapons onto school grounds.
We’re proud to know our colleagues at the Michigan Association of School Boards and the Michigan Association of School Administrators and the Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals are all saying “No” to any such deal.
I suspect that many of those very same school board members, superintendents and principals are gun owners. But they also seem to appreciate that “gun-free” should mean what it says; that except for law enforcement personnel in the exercise of their official duties, guns have no place in our schools or at school events.