Oh, for heaven's sakes. California just keeps getting sillier....
Cartwheels and handstands have gotten an 11-year-old girl temporarily bounced out of her Los Angeles-area school. Deirdre Faegre was suspended for a week after repeatedly disobeying school officials who told her not to perform gymnastic stunts during lunchtime.
"Our first concern is the safety of all children," San Jose-Edison Academy Principal Denise Patton told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Patton said Deirdre could accidentally strike another student, or injure herself, and other children could get hurt trying to imitate Deirdre, who has been doing gymnastics for five years.
Deirdre's father, Leland Faegre, said it was absurd to suspend his daughter for doing gymnastics when students were allowed to play basketball and other sports. "Contact sports, apparently, are fine. But this one is so dangerous it requires the cartwheel cops," Faegre said.
California, California - can we talk? Someone is not telling you what you need to hear. Apparently, you've spent the last 30 years surrounded by snake-oil salesmen pushing bogus child-rearing theories about self-esteem, creativity, the evils of discipline, and the supposed fragility of children. At some point, you've become convinced that it makes sense for the State to do everything in its over-reaching power to prevent children from ever encountering anything nasty, offensive, challenging, problematic, or painful. You've become convinced that no child should do anything unless all children can do it without fear of any pain being involved.
But if I may paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke here, pain is good. Pain is useful. Pain is Mother Nature's way of telling us that we're all boneheads, and that's a very good lesson to learn, as soon as possible. A student who is afraid to do cartwheels for fear of injuring one of the masses - or a student who is afraid to even try a cartwheel because they can't handle landing on their bum - is not a student who's going to grow up to be a leader in the global economy.
I spent a good two years (ages 7 to 9, if I recall correctly) doing a cartwheel every time I went through our living room, and somehow I survived to the ripe old age of 36. I even learned to do one-handed cartwheels, after falling on my head numerous times - which prepared me for the pain of facing a dissertation committee.
Pain is good, California. Let your children risk it.
Update: Oh ho! A commenter says:
I happen to know that this child was repeatedly told not to do these stunts in the walkway in the middle of foot traffic in front of the school office. She chose to disobey multiple times and for that reason she was suspended.
Get a little perspective and stop sensationalizing the antics of a disobedient child - this is not national news fodder.
Hey, I'm not the one that chose to put it out on an international press wire. And what I was mocking was the school's statement that they did worry about other children imitating the cartwheeling child, as though this were a terrible thing. I also now wonder if the kid was given a choice of an alternative place to do cartwheels, which would seem like the first line of response, rather than suspension.
Posted by kswygert at November 14, 2004 02:34 PM