Lo and behold! Another article pertaining to concussions on the cover of another esteemed publication. That sounded sarcastic, but it really wasn't. For those of you who follow sports (in particular, the NFL) closely, you would already be well aware of concussion debate going. A few weeks ago, the TMQ (Tuesday Morning Quarterback of ESPN.com) had a great article on concussions, calling for not only more attention to concussions at the high school, college, and professional level, but the youngest level as well. The main focus of his article is how concussions at a very early age, before the age of 12, has an even greater effect on the development of children than at the later stages. This seems to be a big theme this year, and even though it is in part due to the death of the UPenn athlete mentioned in this article (which I honestly don't think had anything to do with concussions) it is important that more attention is drawn to the subject. I'm happy that wrestling wasn't one of the sports listed in the article as having a large number of unreported concussions because I wrestled in high school and I will tell you that our trainers didn't let anything get by. It also helps when the rules of the sport are designed to promote the safety of its athletes and punish those who break the rules. I remember a match in high school where a teammate got "slammed" (official term) to the ground and the match was immediately stopped and he was evaluated for a concussion. Not showing any symptoms, he was allowed to continued the match and his opponent slammed him again, at which point he was disqualified and my teammate won. Of course, in football, big hits are praised (another thing mentioned in TMQ) and there is more incentive to hit big and also more incentive to stay in the game after receiving a big hit. I was surprised at how little of this article actually pertained to education, since it was relegated to pretty much the last paragraph...
Another article I found very interesting was the one pertaining to the sale of video games to minors. Being a kid who grew up on video games, and being frustrated at the idea of not being able to buy a video game if I wanted it, my history says I'd be slightly biased towards arguing the point that kids should be able to buy "expressive media" as the article likes to call it. I do express some concern about very young kids playing games that depict violence such as heads being lopped off etc. It largely is a job that falls on the parents of children though. It is not the state's or the governments job to raise children. If you think that, you probably should have not had kids yourself. This feels like a growing trend in which parents shirk their responsibility to their kids and is absolutely ridiculous. Also the article mentioned a brief from the Entertainment Merchants Association and the Entertainment Software Association about violence playing a long standing role in expression properly consumed by minors." What does it mean when something has been properly consumed by a minor? Under what circumstances is violence properly consumed by minors? In school? Only in books? Feels all very wishy-washy to me!
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