Coming to a School Near You

RUSH: This is a story from the American Spectator, but it’s about what’s happening in the UK.

‘Just as you think Britain’s local authorities have reached the edge of the envelope in vacuous, bullying stupidity, that they can go no further in their efforts to create a society of politically correct sheep, they excel themselves once again. It’s old news now that at Seagry in Wiltshire, children were banned from playing on a veteran steamroller which had stood in the school’s playground without accident since 1964. It was deemed ‘not proper playground equipment’ and ‘failed to meet any required standards whatsoever.’ Something — actually a quasi-official national body — called ‘Sports England’ proposed eliminating games like sack races, three-legged races and egg-and-spoon races from kindergartens and nursery schools in order to prevent children learning a competitive ethos, proposing problem-solving exercises instead. The government also supports banning games of musical chairs at nursery schools because they may lead to aggression,’ and of course somebody is always left out.

In fact, we played musical chairs once on my TV show, and Snerdley was the odd man out, called me a bloated bigot as he stormed off the set. Anyway, they’re taking anything that is normal behavior for children out of the realm of possibility. They’re eliminating it. ‘At the village of Great Somerford, Wiltshire, playground swings were ordered demolished for being too tall. A charity kite-flying contest for children was banned by a Lancashire council on the grounds that they did not have health and safety insurance. At Torbay, palm trees were condemned by the council because ‘they have very sharp leaves.” They’re not leaves. They’re fronds. They’re called palm fronds. ‘Liberal Democrat councillor Colin Charlwood is reported to have said, in what sounds like dialogue from The Day of the Triffids: ‘what if one of those leaves caught a child in the eye for example. It’s a little bit like keeping tigers – they are beautiful to look at, but you wouldn’t want them wandering the streets.’ These are trees they are talking about!’ They’re talking about palm trees and comparing them to tigers. A palm tree is a palm tree, but it doesn’t attack.

‘Children at one primary school were prohibited from making daisy-chains in case they picked up germs from the flowers. Another school stopped children making hanging flower-baskets for the same reason. Playground pursuits like handstands, tag, yo-yos, tree-climbing and skipping have also been banned in various places,’ in the UK. As I say, this is coming to a school near you. I had this story in the stack today, and I was just thinking back — also, some places in the United States are already banning recess for many of these same reasons. When I was a kid, I always said, ‘When I get older I’m not going to be an old fuddy-duddy. I’m not going to be one of these people constantly telling kids I had to walk ten miles in the snow to school every day. I’m not going to become that.’ But I tell you, this takes me back. You know, when we were all kids, the anticipation of the clock reaching that moment in time where we got to go to recess was one of the only decent things about school — well, for me. It was something that we all looked forward to. We went out there, we ran around on the playground, and they did it, by the way, because, you know, with a bunch of little kids, you gotta burn ’em out. You have to have ’em use up the energy. They don’t do that now. They give ’em Ritalin when they got too much energy. They don’t let ’em out and do recess. Instead, drug ’em up, dope ’em out. That’s how we control them today instead of just letting them burn off some of this excess energy.

I remember the playground in my school was big, huge, but it was fenced. Big chain-link fences and teachers were out there playing around, too, making sure everything was okay. But the fence, you know, provided a boundary. And we were allowed to play safely inside the boundary, had a teacher or two out there with a watchful eye making sure that it was okay. I remember snowball fights during recess, all kinds of things. We’d go out there and it was only ten or 15 minutes, but we’d try get a kick ball or something like that. When I see this story from the UK about all of these things being banned because these liberals just have to control everybody’s life and they have to assume that everybody’s life is rotten; it’s fraught with danger out there; it’s a dangerous world, and we must protect and shield our little children from all these potential dangers and hardships. In the process, they learn nothing, and they are not learning boundaries, either, because liberals don’t want boundaries, folks. They don’t want guidelines, such as right and wrong, or morality or lessons that you might find in a Bible. They want all of that wiped out. They don’t want there to be a framework for anything so that people can know where the line is that’s not to be crossed.

By the way, the reason for the line being there is so you do cross it now and then. That’s how you learn not to cross it. It’s how you learn where the line is. They want to obliterate the lines. They want to eliminate the fences. They want to eliminate the boundaries. The guardrails of life is what they’re trying to eliminate here. Aside from liberals, they don’t want anybody saying, ‘You can’t do that.’ The liberals are going to be the ones saying you can’t do that and what they can’t do is pretty much what are normal things for kids to do. Human beings need boundaries, need guardrails, need defined rules and schedules and expectations. Society needs these things, and now they’re being obliterated from schools in the UK, and it’s starting to happen here, too, and it will spread. Liberals are liberals. Doesn’t matter where they live, Sri Lanka, the UK, liberals are liberals. Look at what life is like for kids these days. We just had a story in the first hour, a charter school in Ohio is serving kids gin with water. It’s an ancient African tribal thing that teaches honesty. They give the kids plain water, and then teaspoon of gin, a teaspoon of water mixed and the kids have to say which is which, and when they correctly identify the gin — how hard’s that, if you’re a sixth grader? Then they say, ‘Oh, good you have learned your lesson for honesty today.’ Man, would I have loved to have had gin when I was six or eight. Look at all what’s happening now. They’ve got cell phones, kids got cell phones; they’ve got DVD players in their cars; they all have a MySpace page out there; they got PlayStation3s. Heck, teachers are even giving ’em sex, folks.

None of this was happening when I was in school, none of it was. Look at the things that they are doing for kids and look at what they are denying them. Are you telling me that the things that they are denying are more harmful than the things that are going on in school? Snerdley was telling me — because I was talking to him about this during the break back in his office, the way you had a couple 16 year old kids come over to mow your grass? Yeah, they come and help and you do some of the yard work yourself. Oh. Good for you. I don’t do yard work. I was punished as a kid. One of my objectives in life was to never, ever have to mow a yard. At any rate, Snerdley says these two kids come over, 16 years old, and it’s summertime. They’re out of school, and what did you ask them? What was the question? Oh, yeah, ‘What do you do in the summertime?’ Oh, we’re working on my MySpace page on the Internet. Snerdley said, ‘What do you do?’ ‘Oh, I’ve got this great girl I met on my MySpace, we’re going to back and forth.’ Snerdley was beside himself, said to the 16-year-old kid, ‘There are real girls out there. It’s summertime. They’re waiting for you. They are actually out there and you’re involved here in a virtual relationship on a computer?’ And I said, ‘You’re getting the wrong idea of this, Mr. Snerdley.’ This is actually something I wish I would have had, too, when I was young. Can you imagine if this 16-year-old marries this woman that he’s having the virtual relationship with? Perfect marriage, you’ll never meet her, never even see her.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Jennifer in Canyon Lake, California. Jennifer, one of the top ten all-time favorite female names of mine, by the way.

CALLER: Oh, well, thank you.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, it’s an honor to speak to you. My husband and I are huge fans. He’s been listening since he was like 12 years old and turned me on to you. Thank God he did.

RUSH: Wow. Rush babies.

CALLER: Yeah. Definitely. My comment is you were talking about schools, and I’m actually a first grade teacher, and at my school a parent is attempting to sue our school because his little girl got stung by a bee on the playground.

RUSH: That doesn’t surprise me, sue the school, yeah, for a bee sting, the school is supposed to prevent that by not letting the kids outside, right?

CALLER: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking when I heard what you were saying, that’s the way it’s going, taking everything away from the kids.

RUSH: Well, that’s just a money grab. That’s just a litigious parent.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: That’s something that ‘back in my day’ it wouldn’t have happened because it’s asinine.

CALLER: Yes, very.

RUSH: It’s literally asinine to blame the school there’s a bee anywhere running around, especially outside.

CALLER: Right. Yes.

RUSH: I appreciate that news. It doesn’t surprise me.