A state-of-the-art, “ultra-interactive” pit of bark has been installed in a Whangarei school, replacing an old playground that had actual things in it.
Onerahi Primary School, in an attempt to curb rapidly rising costs, has ripped from the ground and sold its only remaining playground, leaving behind nothing more than the pit of bark it used to sit on.
The school has billed the remains as a “first of its kind bark pit of imagination,” and says that kids’ fun in the pit will be limited “only by their minds,” but potentially also by the sharp shards of metal left over from the old playground.
“We are not liable for that,” school principal Gerald Koberstein told local media this afternoon.
He described the pit, littered with cigarette butts and used condoms, as an “incredible opportunity” for both the school and its students.
“The problem with the old playground,” he said, “was that we actually had to spend quite a bit of money on maintenance, just to ensure that kids didn’t get their heads stuck in the swing, that the ladders didn’t break, that they didn’t suffocate to death in a tube or hang one another from the climbing rope; you know, things kids do.
“And all we really got from all this was what? Kids could climb a thing, they could spin some tic-tac-toe blocks without ever actually playing the game properly, and swing on a flying fox from one platform to an identical platform 3 metres away.
“The pit is much better, because now they can do anything, from summoning Captain Planet, to opening their own restaurant, to selling hookers and blow to other kids.”
“Imaginary hookers and blow, of course,” he clarified.
A sign outside the bark pit reminds parents that the school is not liable for any injury to their children while they’re playing in the pit, whether that injury be sustained from the pit itself, from another student, the sheer power of their imagination, or an angry teacher.
Koberstein said that kids had been “fairly upset” to lose their playground, but he had assured them that their imagination was much greater than that of kids in other schools, so they didn’t need “actual things” to have fun.
The new bark pit is only the first in a series of cost cutting measures that will see the school employ the use of imaginary classrooms with imaginary teachers.