Schools Ban Children From Playing Outside During Heatwaves
Schools are banning children from playing outside during heatwaves, keeping them inside for ‘hot play’ breaks when their playgrounds are deemed to be ‘too hot to use safely’. The Telegraph has more.
The move is designed to keep children away from outdoor surfaces that can become very hot to touch in the sun.
But the concept has been branded “absolute nonsense” by critics, who warned that it risked raising a generation of “wimps” taught to “hide from warm weather”.
Schools routinely hold ‘wet play’ sessions when it rains, where children play indoors between lessons instead of going outside.
But ‘hot play’, which is the equivalent for heatwaves, appears to be a relatively new idea.
The practice has been highlighted by the WWF, the environmental group, which is calling for schools to use more natural surfaces, as opposed to artificial ones, to “mitigate the effects of extreme weather”.
Chris McGovern, a former head teacher and Chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, warned that keeping pupils indoors during hot weather was the “worst thing” for them.
He said: “I taught for 35 years. Any teacher knows that the worst thing you can do on a hot day is to keep children confined in the classroom. It’s about the worst thing you can do.
“Of course, there can be situations where a particular child needs to stay indoors, and of course there should be areas of shade within the playground. But using common sense, it’s the worst possible way forward for helping these children.
“Just as in cold weather, they should be out running around. So we’re making them into wimps. We don’t want to make children into wimps. We want to toughen them up a little bit.”
He also warned that constraints on children’s freedom risked damaging their mental health in the long term.
He added: “It’s an awful childhood we’re inflicting on children. And, of course, it encourages them to use their iPads and mobile phones if they’re confined.
“The worst thing they can be doing is staying indoors, playing on their mobile phones, and this is sort of encouraging them to do that. So yeah, it’s the opposite of what we want.”
Greg Smith, the Tory MP for Mid Buckinghamshire, said it was “absolute nonsense” to attempt to “wrap children in bubble wrap and away from anything that might be a bit uncomfortable”.
“The correct answer is to take precautions in heat – hats, sun cream, light clothing – not hide from warm weather,” he said.
Worth reading in full.
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Madness
And I never wore suncream as a child. Horrible stuff. I learned to moderate my time in the sun – one bout of severe sunburn when kayaking for a whole day taught me that.
It also taught me that the sun is very powerful, and that it controls everything about our climate.
This is not madness, it’s evil. It’s people seeking to harm children who cannot escape them for political posturing and manufacturing support for their political agendas.
It’s clearly all part of the campaign to make children terrified of the “climate breakdown” and brainwash them into accepting all the Net Zero nonsense.
I have heard of cases of parents being so paranoid about their kids getting injured, they had to wear a safety hat even when they took them for a walk. I doubt you can grow up to be a normal adult after a childhood like that.
Ah, my happy childhood days in the 70’s! During the summer holidays I would get on my bike and only went home for meals. Nobody thought anything of it – that was considered normal.
I used to be an outdoor pursuits instructor and it’s genuinely true that one school insisted their kids wore helmets when on a walk in case they walked into a low branch. At least one school wouldn’t let their kids walk over a cattle grid in case a foot slipped between the bars. This was over 10 years ago so goodness knows how much more ridiculous things have become.
I’m glad I got out the industry years ago, if not I’m sure I’d of been sacked by now for not using a 10 year old’s preferred pronouns or some other transgression of woke ideology.
Exactly it’s about learning about (as my grandmother used to say) all things in moderation.
And what happens after school? Will the responsible headteachers incarcerate pupils in the school’s basement when they deem its to hot for them to return home safely? That would certainly climate-change-traumatize them all the more effectively.
The correct answer is not “take precautions against extreme heat” but “immediately get rid of all headteachers seeking to harm children to further the Dangerous climate change! political agenda” because that’s what’s going on here, presumably brought to us by people who still not-so-secretly regret that that may not force-swab children at their mercy until their noses bleed anymore and had to allow them to attend school unmasked again.
Great idea.
Just to be on the safe side, I’d also ban any parents accepting this tosh and the teachers and local authority people who are imposing it, from flying to any country with a mean summer temperature higher than ours. For their own safety, of course.
In E M Forster’s short story The Machine Stops everyone lives in safe, sanitised pods with no access to the horrid outside world, or even other people. This seems to be direction of travel for our deranged “education” system.
Another step, along the road to the total infantilisation of the populace.
lt is indeed a bit nonsensical.
But regarding suntan creams only use organic/reflective ones and not the mainstream ones beloved by bigpharma and their pet dermatologists.
Arguably they lead to an increased risk of skin cancer by-
1 Chemically reducing the pain of sunburn- let’s you stay in the sun longer but masks the damage being done so you stay outside longer.
2.Causing changes in the delicate but highly regulated layers of lower skin.
Please see “A Midwestern Doctor” substack on this hugely important topic
Dermatologists/bigpharma = usual playbook.
Letting a child outside even for five minutes with no sun tan cream is on a par with refusing vaccination…
Furthermore sunlight is essential for a healthy immune system- Vitamin D and all that.
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/dermatologys-horrendous-war-against
So, on the contrary, children should be outside more often when it’s sunny, not less.
When I was a kid there were no such things as ‘sunscrees’. When the sun shone my mum used to slather us in olive oil so we didn’t get ‘burnt’. Oddly enough I can never remember a time when we got sunburnt despite being outside all the time and usually out of any shade.
Weird huh?
Yes I also remember putting “sun tan oil” all over my body and going to lie outside on the sun lounger. It never seemed to have any noticeable effect though!
I’m on the beach it Italy. It is fairly hot. Schools have long since broken up and every section of beach has a quota of teenagers who have booked umbrellas for the season.
I too am in Italy at home, it’s cooler this week but last week was hot, and hardly anybody wears suncream and all that bollocks, thy just enjoy summer weather.
Yeah we’re in Pesaro – fewer tourists than back in the day but lots of locals enjoying the beach. It’s nearly midnight and lots of people out and about. Noisy on the lungomare where our room is, just as well I’ve drunk plenty so sleeping won’t be a problem.
Lucky you.
I am also aware of primary schools that do not allow children to have squash drinks with them – they pour them away and refill with plain water. This means that children who prefer squash can spend a hot day without any drinks. I know there will be people who’ll say they should be drinking water anyway, but the thought that a school would let a child be thirsty just because they have squash fills me with horror.
I used to live in north west Western Australia where the temperature sat about 40C during the day for months. Kids played outside. Just give them some water to splash in.
The Climate Scam Education Department. Wokery Division.
I suggested to my son’s primary school teacher that they changed their hours around and had the children play in the morning when it was cooler – and then in the later afternoon – she was horrified. Impossible to change the school day,
School and teachers are just awful and awfully set in their ways.
When 70 and 80 year olds can play bowls outdoors in the sun, for three hours on the hottest day of the year, surely kiddies can manage an hour recess in the play yard.
It’s not about what they can, but about what they’re supposed to. In this case, hide in a cupboard in the basement until the deadly heatwave caused by climate change is over. That there is no such deadly heatwave is no more important for that than that schools weren’t hotbeds of deadly COVID infections was relevant for their closures.
I still wonder just how I survived the Summer of ’76 given that I was unaware of all the dangers. In hot weather we were allowed to take our jackets and ties off and go onto the school field.