Monkey Bars

There is something missing from the school yards of today - monkey bars.

The ban on playing dodgeball at most schools has gotten a lot of attention the past few years but who has spoken up for monkey bars?

When I was a kid there was two focal points on the school yard - the basketball hoop and the monkey bars. The basketball hoop was good for just playing basketball while the monkey bars had many purposes. You could climb the monkey bars and thus develop upper body strength and the monkey bars also doubled as "gouls" (I wonder where that word came from) for tag and as the jail in jailbreaker.

Yes kids fell from the monkey bars on occasion and yes some arms were broken as a result but that's the way real life works. The arms were usually broken by the more nimble kids trying something daring or by the less nimble kids trying to do something the others kids did. The monkey bars were a very good place for kids to learn about limitations and consequences. Now they are gone.

The monkey bars are gone primarily because schools didn't want to face litigation from the parents of children who got hurt using them. The reason why monkey bars are no longer on school yards or playgrounds is just as sad as the actual absence of the monkey bars.