Tuesday, January 16, 2007

This is too damn much!

Okay, so I found an article in the New York Times that enrages me.

PARENTHETICAL RIGHT-WING NUTCASE THOUGHT: Hardly a day goes by when that rag doesn't infuriate me. I don't know how I missed this one -- it appeared five days ago -- but to me it shows how destructive the "it takes a village" mentality has become.

This particular story, which appeared under the headline New York Tries to Think Outside the Sandbox, lays out plans the liberal loons have for turning children into overweight, neurotic twerps, snotty little future NY Times subscribers who sit around doing nothing but looking down their noses at the dirty, healthy kids from other places. Just as their parents do.

Excerpts from the story about the way NYC is planning to reinvent playgrounds to make them safe and socially acceptable follow:

New York City, with its rich history of public playgrounds, is on the verge of a bold experiment in the way children play, one that could accelerate the trend away from monkey bars, swings and seesaws used by generations of city children.

And what will these marvelous "play areas" have? a playground near the South Street Seaport...will have trained “play workers” on hand to help children interact with features of the new playground: water, ramps, sand and specially designed objects meant to spur the imagination.

Ooh, ooh! "Play workers!" "Interaction!"

But wait, there's more! Based on child-development theories that children need to engage in social and fantasy play rather than just build physical skills, the project was conceived and is being designed at no charge by David Rockwell, famous for creating adult play spaces like the restaurants Nobu and Café Gray and the Mohegan Sun casino and resort. Yup, those are "adult play spaces," all right....

These wacko adults have ideas that certainly don't square with either my memories of childhood or current beliefs: behaviorists and others say planners could go even further to reflect more refined ideas about nurturing children... They also envision groups of children collaborating, for instance, loading containers with sand, hoisting them up with pulleys and then lowering them down to wagons waiting to be wheeled off to another part of the park.

Cripes. I guess they'd wet their pants if confronted with kids "collaborating" to play the kinds of games we played. You know, stuff where one of us might get a cut or a bruise or, worse, get some exercise. We didn't want "nurturing;" we wanted to have some rough-and-tumble fun.

But the planners and social wankers -- excuse me, "scientists" -- of New York City have it all figured out: “We’re creating as many opportunities as we can for collaborative play — thinking of imagination as important a muscle as running,” Mr. Rockwell said, as well as places that children can be in and manipulate as they wish, with the loose objects encouraging them “to understand that they can control their own environment.”

I have news for you jerks. Kids don't give a shit about "controlling their own environment." They want to play.

I don't know why the city doesn't just give each kid a freekin' computer game and sit 'em down in a corner somewhere.

If I had kids and lived in a town that encouraged idiocy like this, we'd be out of there on the next thing moving in any direction.

In the meantime, everyone involved with this, from Mayor Bloomberg to the would-be "play workers," should be barred by law from ever making any decisions involving children.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I fondly recall days of youth where we played on rusty monkey bars, in sandboxes with animal shit and in construction areas.

Hard to imagination playground collaboration in New York of all places.

MrScribbler said...

Me too, t-e. Can you imagine what the "play workers" would think of the abandoned houses, complete with broken windows and rotted, nail-studded beams we used to play "war" games in?

It's a wonder any of us lived through it.

John0 Juanderlust said...

Why are they so excited about "interacting" with other people's kids?
If you want to RAZE children, Hilary is right.

Anonymous said...

I dunno what this world is coming too. We didnt do too bad playing on dirty slides and getting dog poo on our shoes from running around the play ground. We are just raising a load of wimps! ** jumps of the soapbox.

stacycakes said...

its a sad time when kids are told what and how to play,ive seen this get worse in the past 20 years,what ever happened to go out and play,and play we did,we used our imagination,and we played,plain and simple,old fashioned playing...kids today say "whats that?"

Anonymous said...

This is so insane it's almost funny. What is wrong with these eggheads? Here's a novel idea: Build a playground around a big tree. Kids can climb the tree one at a time and the others can catch him when he falls. That's what we did. Is that "interaction"? And one lucky kid even got to call his mom to say he was bleeding. That's what kids do...run, play, climb, ride bikes, fall down, live life. :)

Anonymous said...

Sounds like Montessori has invaded the park...
lz

Anonymous said...

OMG!! The committee who sat down and actually voted on this should all be shot in the head. This is a fucking JOKE!!!

UNbelievable....

It seems that this nation WANTS our children to be fat and lazy.

This just brings me even more gratitude that my son did not wind up as a fat, lazy kid sitting in front of a PlayStation -- But instead: went out and took advantage of stuff like hiking down steep trails to cool places where he can jump off cliffs into the ocean, and climb back up again to do it again (and stuff like that)...

Activities where he was getting exercise but didn't even know it.

I've got the best son in the whole entire world.... **Proud grin**

Anonymous said...

I was a bad mom. I let my kids play games like Tag, and Hide and Seek.

How stupid this is!