Playing tag (and not playing hookey)

Chilling little tale from the New Statesman New Media Awards 2005 Weblog - a teacher in a Welsh school with a rather panoptical view of schoolyard security:

A Welsh primary school is considering whether to supervise its pupils with electronic tags due to a shortage of teaching assistants.

Under the proposed system, an alarm sounds if any of the 350-pupils leave Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Lonlas Primary School, Swansea, at any point during the day.

The Deputy Children’s Commissioner for Wales, Sara Reid, said: “I understand that schools need to worry about the safety of the children, but we are concerned about the effect this could have on the human rights of children.”

The school’s head teacher, Dyfrig Ellis, has started talks with a Dutch tag manufacturer. He said: “The tagging system does appear extreme, but I believe that it’s an option I have to consider when the safety of pupils is in question.”

"Put your tags on, children": why does this alarm me so? Perhaps, as the article says, it's the thin end of a wedge:  "Similar concerns could justify the use of tags to limit freedom in other areas of life".

In my contacts with play-workers throughout the children's sector, it's this disintegration of faith in the public or community realm which is their biggest bugbear. There's a beautiful article from the Guardian on what it means when children can't be seen and heard playing in the street:

As with birds, so with children: their presence all over the place, in diversity and numbers, is a sure sign of a healthy human habitat. To achieve that, our transport and planning priorities need to change, including such measures as 20mph speed limits in the streets where children live. That, in turn, implies a change in adult attitudes - something that pessimists say just isn't going to happen.

The success of home zones - child-friendly streets - suggests the pessimists might be wrong. They show that many local communities want to live in habitats where the noise of children playing outside is not a sign of neglect but a sound to raise the spirits. Like the first cuckoo of spring.