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Somebody didn’t do his or her homework.
A flap over removing swings from all Cabell County elementary schools because of a lawsuit had all the makings of a rip-roaring good controversy.
After all, what is more synonymous with childhood than soaring on a swing or twirling in the seat until you are dizzy.
School system safety manager Tim Stewart announced earlier this week that the swings had to go because Cabell could not afford to upgrade the safety barriers that surround them.
Monkey bars, another playground staple that was also the object of a lawsuit by the same parent for a different child with a different injury, were going to be allowed to stay.
Even the politicians were getting involved with Sen. Evan Jenkins, D-Cabell, calling for a moratorium on the ban until he, school board officials and its casualty insurance provider could meet and gain a better understanding of what the surrounding factors are.
“We want our kids to be safe, but we don’t want to keep them in a bubble, either,” Jenkins said.
But late Thursday afternoon, Cabell school officials announced that it had halted its planned removal of swings. It seems that after consulting with the state Department of Education’s Office of School Facilities, they discovered that swings are required at its elementary schools.
Who knew? Apparently not Stewart.
We see several important issues that arise from this flap that suddenly wasn’t.
First, when are adults going to stop not letting kids be kids? Children today grow up too fast as it is. Taking their playgrounds away will make that problem worse.
Second, parents need to stop blaming everyone who comes into contact with their child for the mistakes that child makes and trying to make someone else pay for that mistake.
According to the original news story about the swing ban, Stewart said the child whose father sued Cabell schools “jumped out like Superman with arms extended.” That sounds like a kid being a kid, not a conspiracy of negligence on the school system’s part.
Children have been getting injured on playgrounds since they were invented — and that goes for both the children and the playground.
Back in the day, playgrounds were all hard asphalt with no safety areas of mulch, pulverized rubber, sand or any other material to break a fall. The majority of us survived.
It’s part of parenting to coach your child not to be foolish and to instill them with a sense of what the child must do — or not do — to keep themselves safe. Not helping them learn to take responsibility for their actions sets them up for greater problems than a skinned knee or broken arm later in life.
Had the child had the accident on a home swing set, whom would the parent have sued?
Again, it appears to us that everyone forgot to complete their homework.
