Toronto elementary school’s tag ban criticized

Add tag to the list of things that have changed since you were a kid. A Toronto Catholic elementary school has banned the classic schoolyard game, along with other overly rough activities, after children were injured.

At the start of November children at St. Luke Catholic School, a kindergarten-to-Grade-8 school in the city’s west end, were told to refrain from playing tag and other games involving physical contact.

“The whole idea behind suspending the physical-contact type of tag was in the best interest of student safety," Toronto Catholic District School Board spokesman John Yan tells Yahoo Canada News.

Students were playing a particularly rough variation of the game, Yan says. The Toronto Star reported that the game was leading to two or three injuries during each recess in the small schoolyard.

Though no students suffered concussions, Yan said, the school chose to be cautious, particularly in light of Rowan’s Law, an Ontario private member’s bill that would change how concussions are managed in schools.

The ban was criticized on social media by people who accused the school of going too far.

“Toronto school bans games of tag and all physical contact. Sorry kids - Just sit down at recess. Really?,” tweeted @authorsgen.

“The more we bubble wrap the harder it will be to adapt. It’s rough in the real world,”@phillipbrown11 wrote.

“Don’t know whether to laugh or cry. A ban on play and rough housing - pathetic,” tweeted@PayneZulu.

This isn’t the first time Toronto schools have restricted playground activities because of safety concerns. Runnymede Junior and Senior Public School was criticized for a reported ban on cartwheels in September, though the Toronto District School Board said that was a misunderstanding. And parents spoke out when Earl Beatty Public School asked students to leave “hard” balls like soccer balls and footballs at home in 2011.

St. Luke Catholic School has contacted Toronto Public Health (TPH) for assistance in providing safe alternatives to contact playground games. The health agency runs an initiative called Physical Activity Leaders in Schools (PALS), which encourages physical activity in schools.

"It’s actually a unique program offered by Toronto Public Health that assists schools in helping train and inform their students on how to develop games on the schoolyard that help to avoid bullying and create a more inclusive environment in the schoolyard,” Yan says.

St. Luke has a workshop with TPH scheduled for Dec. 14, he says, and that was in place before the news of the tag restriction broke. Yan expects that once the workshop has been completed and staffers have the information they need to help students find safer ways to play, touch tag and other games with physical contact will no longer be restricted at the school.