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Originally Posted by KnifeMissile
There is definitely something new to all this wussification.
If I recall correctly, Charlatan, you live where I grew up. I remember when the kindergarden apparatus of Withrow public school was first erected, back in the very early eighties. It was a two story structure with nothing but wood banasters to prevent kids from falling off. "The pit" (as it was called because, when I was a child, it was an enormous pit of sand walled by wood logs) was home to a slide the length of an entire hill, a one story bridge, and a two story fire pole.
I used to play excellent games of sand tag (tag where you weren't allowed to touch the sand. Quite a challenge in a sand pit) in the kindergarden apparatus (off school hours, of course) and the more daring kids were able to jump off the three story tower without injury.
Now, the pit is nothing more than a mildy sloping grassy hill and the kindergarden playground is just a giant sand box. The latter was a structure that was erected while I was in school, only to be taken down later by some movement that I can only assume is new... |
There are two playstructures at Withrow as well as the pit. The "friend ship", which is for the older kids, recieved only minor changes... some additional wood chips below and some new railings that kids couldn't slip through.
It was the kindergarten structure that was removed entirely. It has been replaced by one that is "safer". They also completely altered the ground below so it is softer.
Now all of these are reasonable things, there is nothing wrong with safer per se. The issue is that the decision wasn't made in effort to be safer. It was made so the schools would be less liable to litigation.
The structures were uncermoniously ripped out across the city with no funding in place to replace them. It took a year or two to get ours replaced and there are still some inner city schools that are going without.