School bans clapping at assemblies

[Jazzy]

Article Source

If you’ve been to a school assembly (and we all have) you’ll know they can be pretty noisy affairs.

But a primary school in Australia has taken the unusual move of banning its students from clapping in them – permitting ‘silent cheers’ and even a bit of air punching instead.

Elanora Heights Public School announced the new policy in its school newsletter this month, reports News.com.au

It said the news has been introduced to ‘respect members of our school community who are sensitive to noise.’

And that instead of clapping students are free to ‘punch the air, pull excited faces and wriggle about on the spot.’

It said teachers will ‘prompt the audience’ if a silent cheer is needed and have found the new policy is a ‘great way’ to ‘reduce fidgeting’.

In a statement, the school said the ‘clapping ban’ would only apply to assemblies that are held once every few weeks.

It said they had been introduced to help a teacher with a hearing disability.

Is this clapping ban a good idea?

 

[Ghoul]

I read the title for this and instantly started saying 'please don't be British'.

But as always it's the world going mad, everyone is too easily offended/sensitive to everything.

 

[APS]

I know it was a long time ago but I don't remember ever having anything to clap about in Assembly.
Perhaps it is all different now.
But surely any pupils etc who are noise sensitive would have that problem out in public places.

 

[South Of Heaven]

Oh for crying out loud, what do these sensitive people do at playtime? I used to live in a house that backed onto a school and I couldn't hear myself think when they were outside much worse than a little bit of clapping.

 

[Daniel]

Uhm...I think it's a bit rediculous myself.

 

[Worldwide]

It makes about as much sense as the sports teams that play and don't keep score so that no one is a looser but all are participants ...
It's insane

 

[Mandy]

Weird, but they can just "clap" like how deaf people do.