【文稿】课间休息不许出去活动！？

Heyang: Rope skipping and throwing sandbags during the class break have been fond childhood memories for many of us. But these days, some students in primary schools in Beijing are kept in the classroom during recess. Why do teachers ban them from going to play outdoors? What is going on with this very obscure and very weird school regulation? Brian: Well, you see different things. Some places, you are just not allowed to go outside the classroom at all. Other times, it would be you can go on the corridors or maybe you can go on the corridors, the hallways but you are not allowed to run around and jump whatever. So there’s different ways. But very much there’s this trend here in Beijing but also in other parts of China of not letting kids do what I think we can say they are naturally going to do and should do, which is go run around and have fun or whatever. Luo Yu: Well, I think the school just banned the behavior of students out of very good intention. For one thing, most of the schools’ space is very limited, and consider about those very naughty boys. And not to mention from the safety perspective, I think in last year Sep. 26th, at an elementary school there in Kunming, basically a lot of children tramped over children who were crashed under the mattresses. This accident actually caused six people dead and more than twenty hurt. Parents are very much concerned about their children’s safety, so if you just let all the students go out there on the playground whatever, probably the tragedy will happen again. My concern is how to have some of the very innovative ways for children to not keep sedentary, let them play but in a proper place through proper means. You know what I mean? Heyang: Not really I’m sorry. It sounds like in heaven where there’s just unlimited space and we just jump around, floating on those clouds. And Luo Yu, I understand what you are saying, but just give you another question. Sorry so many questions. That’s just my job, all right? So basically, if you are afraid, let’s say the students, you don’t want them to get hurt so you keep them indoors. Then I mean there’s always the danger when I go out in the streets, knock wood, that I could get hit by a bus. But that doesn’t stop me from going out because you need to do so and you want to stay fit. And you know that’s a good reason for the students too. So don’t you think that the way that the school is managing this difficult matter is not right? Brian: Right. I would say safety is obviously important. If your playground is not in a safe area, if there’s construction right next to it, something needs to be done about that. Maybe you need to do some with the construction. But I think kids should go outside and they should get hurt. They should get hurt a lot. But if you getting, you know, you fell down you get a scratch whatever or you get bruises, that is normal and that is a good thing. Because that’s what life is. Like you can’t just stay and locked up in your room inside and just expect to get by with that. And kids, if they don’t do it here, they’ll do it outside there. So better to do it in a safer environment where they might get a little bit hurt but so they can learn how not to get hurts and how to deal with this rather than just hide them away from dangerous of the outside world. Heyang: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of reasons like if you keep people staying in, you could get fat, you could get bad eyesight, you could… all kinds of things. Do you think there are, just very quickly, any good suggestions? Not really, OK. Luo Yu: Probably have them learn some very nice dancing moves inside the classroom? Otherwise the space is limited. Heyang: Yeah, square dancing inside!