….Well, because they can save kids from socially engineered micromanagement like this (courtesy of Jim Caple, writing for ESPN’s Page 2):

If you thought some schools went overboard when they banned dodge ball last year, consider this: A Santa Monica elementary school principal recently banned tag, saying the game can only be played under the strict supervision of physical education teachers and not at all during the lunch hour recess. That’s due to: one, the risk of injury; and two, a ‘self-esteem issue,’ because whoever is ‘it’ could be considered a ‘victim.’

‘We had some children who were not playing “it” appropriately,’ Franklin elementary principal Pat Samarge said, adding that ‘Little kids were coming in and saying, “I don’t like it.” Children weren’t feeling good about it.’

And here I was having trouble understanding how an appellate court in the United States could rule (in all seriousness) that hearing a benign two word phrase in the midst of a phatic oath could come to count as “injurious”…

*sigh*

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