Well, I do remember that the exercise ‘making the two-backed beast’ was banned on the school grounds in my day.

;P

Srsly? Nobody did cartwheels when you were a schoolkid?? I mean no disrespect, but are you by chance pretty young? When I was in school a million years ago, there wasn’t pretty much ANYthing that involved motion, and creative motion especially, that we didn’t do.

The Aussie bureaucrat in question should have been immediately confronted by an angry mob of parents; who then should have made all efforts to initiate proceedings to fire her stupid ass. Just like it should happen here. But in never does…and so they grow ever more emboldened.

Not only do the bureaucrats who first instituted the stupidity locally become emboldened, the practice of instituting absurd rules also tends to spread to more bureaucrats in more locations and more bureaucracies.

The best and most decisive response is to organize as many locals who object to the absurd local rule, so they march on the bureaucrat in question with torches and pitchforks, and carry away his head on a pike. Figuratively speaking of course.

Then that message “don’t tread on me” will spread to other bureaucrats and politicians.

I look at this as one salvo in a continuing debate over just how safe kids should be. I can tell you that the culture has changed quite a bit from when I was a kid (and I’m just 34)… Kids today are simply not allowed the freedoms that were absolutely *normal* when I grew up. Kids don’t roam their neighborhoods playing with each other. Kids don’t get on their bikes and disappear “until the streetlights come on”. Parents who let their kids do that are looked at like they’re negligent, even by parents who grew up with those very freedoms! And the problem is that without experiencing freedom and the responsibility that comes along with it, kids don’t grow up at all, and then get tossed into the “real world” completely unprepared.

All these nannies need SOME voice countering them. Is this somewhat of an outlier? Perhaps, but every new regulation like this just tells parents that their kids need to be coddled, and supervised, and that even things like doing cartwheels should be an organized and “coached” event. What used to be called “being a kid” is now “being shuttled in the back of your minivan to a scheduled, regimented, and licensed to a child activity center.” The only thing kids are allowed to do unsupervised is watch TV, and then we wonder why they’re a bunch of porkers.

Screw it. “Where a kid can be a kid” isn’t Chuck E. Cheese’s place — it’s outside doing cartwheels in the grass with their friends at recess.

I’m certain I have some details wrong, but it was definitely kids of the age who do nothing but run around, fall down, bawl for 30 seconds, get up and run around some more. A quick google didn’t find it.

Not that it would have made much difference.

The Aussie bureaucrat in question should have been immediately confronted by an angry mob of parents; who then should have made all efforts to initiate proceedings to fire her stupid ass. Just like it should happen here. But in never does…and so they grow ever more emboldened.

Please be kind…but I feel I am asking for it.

/sarc (In case you couldn’t tell)

Just last week when I took my son to soccer practice, one of the other parents had a daughter that was doing cartwheels. In the grass! Without the supervision of a licensed gymnastics coach!

I’ll have to have a talk with that mother tomorrow at practice… She doesn’t even know what a bullet she dodged*.

————-
* PS by dodging a bullet I mean that she might have gotten in trouble with an overzealous DCFS busybody, not that her daughter was in danger of serious injury. If we’ve learned anything from Radley Balko, we know that the danger of the cops trying to stop you from engaging in an activity is usually FAR more severe than the natural dangers of said activity.