Childcare ban on caped crusaders

[Tony]

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6998007%255E13762,00.html full article


MELBOURNE childcare centres have banned crime-fighting superheroes.

Superman, Batman, SpiderMan and the Hulk are no longer welcome as alter-egos for role-playing kids.

The centres claim superhero costumes transform children into super villains by encouraging aggressive play such as wrestling, hitting, karate kicking and jumping from heights.

But parents and childcare experts disagree, saying superhero play is a healthy form of expression.

They say banning the crimefighter costumes is an overreaction and will not make playgrounds more peaceful



What do our austailian posters think of this?

[reprise]

We think that it's every bit as stupid as it sounds.

[Tony]

That's refreshing to hear. :) :)

[Lothian]

Ok folks. Move along now. Nothing to see here.

[Mr Manifesto]

How about comic book characters that aren't really crime fighters, like Magus: Robot Fighter and Cerebus the Aardvark? Are they okay?

Still, this has been nipped in the bud just in time. We used to play "Battle of the Planets" when I was a kid (I was always Fat Tiny even though I was skinny then. Then.) and you wouldn't believe the carnage. All those little dead bodies on the ground from those karate kicks and jumping up and down and going Brrrruck dup! dup! It was tragic. I still have nightmares.

[reprise]

When I was a kid we didn't have superhero costumes, so we had to requisition the tea-towels and bathtowels to improvise capes. Nonetheless, we still managed our fair share of hitting, kicking, kapow-ing, and jumping off rooves (my brother spent two years in hospital after he fractured his hip jumping off the shed roof whilst being Superman).

[BillyTK]

This is so old; psychologist Albert Bandura (http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/bandura.htm) was studying this kind of thing in back in the '70s; his theory of social learning suggests that violence on tv causes agressive behaviour in children because children imitate what they see around them. In one of his studies he observed the behaviour of children at a care home who watched Batman (the 60's tv version) on a regular basis and acted out what they saw; however stopping them from watching Batman caused violent behaviour as well...

[reprise]

You certainly can't blame TV for my brother's Superman antics. Television only came to Australia in 1956 (a good 10 years after my brother broke his hip) and for many years after that was a luxury which only the affluent could afford. Nonethless, my brothers all grew up playing cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, and Superman.

Edited to add that the only violent imagery to which my brothers were significantly exposed during their childhood was that of World War II.

[a_unique_person]

I can understand the sentiment, I don't know if it will achieve much. All I know is that when I was at school, the acknowledged rules of what was a fair fight then and now have changed a lot.

There is a lot more kicking now than there was then.

[Ove]

There is a lot more kicking now than there was then.

Yes that is one of the things that worry me too. I absolutely think a ban against superhero costumes is stupid, make no mistake of it but i DO find the rising amount of kicking worrying.

Over here it started with "Power Rangers", (one of the most amateurish superhero series i have ever seen btw). Not very long after that serie had started on tv i saw kids running around kicking each other. The point is that you can kick much harder than you can punch and even small kids can kill with a kick.

[Tricky]

Originally posted by reprise
When I was a kid we didn't have superhero costumes, so we had to requisition the tea-towels and bathtowels to improvise capes.
You had tea towels? You were lucky! In my day I had to be Green Lantern using a plastic ring from a Cracker Jack box and an old coffee can (for the lantern). I had to choose a character that didn't wear a cape.

Originally posted by reprise
Nonetheless, we still managed our fair share of hitting, kicking, kapow-ing, and jumping off rooves (my brother spent two years in hospital after he fractured his hip jumping off the shed roof whilst being Superman).
Bad luck for your brother. I can't count the times I jumped from the garage roof. Of course I usally jumped from a sitting position on the lower edge of the roof, rather than leaping from the top. I was a rather *********** hero.

But like others, I am dismayed by the trend towards children these days to imitate the violence of their heroes (which I believe started with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Even with the Green Hornet and Kung Fu, I don't recall kids ever acting out the violence. The worst we had was kids chopping other kids over the back of the neck (like The Man From U.N.C.L.E). If you got caught doing that in school, you were immediately sent to the Principal's office.

Now, when my nephew comes over, his idea of fun is to hit and kick people. I worry about him.

[reprise]

I wonder if our perception is that children are more violent today than in previous generations because they spend more time under adult supervision than in the past. The "be home by dinnertime/when the streetlights go on" rule of my childhood meant that our parents didn't see much of the kicking and hitting and punching that was part of our play.

There is certainly much less aggression in school playgrounds than when I was a child, and children seem to come home with less "battle scars" in general than when I was young - possibly because the range of physical activities in which we used to engage involved considerably more risk-taking than many parents, schools, and community facility providers would find acceptable today.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by reprise
I wonder if our perception is that children are more violent today than in previous generations because they spend more time under adult supervision than in the past. The "be home by dinnertime/when the streetlights go on" rule of my childhood meant that our parents didn't see much of the kicking and hitting and punching that was part of our play.

There is certainly much less aggression in school playgrounds than when I was a child, and children seem to come home with less "battle scars" in general than when I was young - possibly because the range of physical activities in which we used to engage involved considerably more risk-taking than many parents, schools, and community facility providers would find acceptable today.

No, my kids fight, as they do their peers in the playground, using tactics that were not used when I was a child. I have to tell them, for instance, that twisting the neck, while commonly seen on TV and video, is in fact a dangerous thing to do to a person, and definitely not to be done by themselves as it can lead to permanent injury or death.

[BillyTK]

Originally posted by Tricky

You had tea towels? You were lucky! In my day I had to be Green Lantern using a plastic ring from a Cracker Jack box and an old coffee can (for the lantern). I had to choose a character that didn't wear a cape.

Hey! Green Lantern was my favourite! I had the metal bit from a wooden peg as my power ring and a watering can as my lantern...

Btw, who remembers concerns about the effects of comic book violence on children, and particularly Fredric Wertham (http://art-bin.com/art/awertham.html)'s book Seduction of the innocent? Well, not me because I wasn't born yet, but anyway, my point is that maybe it's just a question of sensitisation (poss. not a real word), and in the future parents are going to be concerned about the effects of immersive virtual reality or some such...