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Competitive sport in school

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Competitive sport in school

Postby Hennessy on Fri Dec 10, 2010 1:26 pm

Embedding schools within wider communities, as the school sport partnerships aim to do, is admirable. However, if we fetishise "competitive school sport" we hark back ideologically and nostalgically to empire, a movement culture of hierarchical male leadership, and to what Professor Fred Coalter of the University of Stirling calls the mythopoeic nature of sport. Further, we ignore the breadth of movement culture and, in particular, neglect outdoor, adventurous and dance activity.

Full article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -education


I was pretty useless at football in school, cricket too, and I could just about be trusted to catch the ball in rugby. Never once did I question if being sent to play rugby or football in the freezing cold or pouring rain was wrong, and I expected that even if it was it would confer some good on me to have a run about in a green, open environment, whatever this deeply misguided woman thinks about sport in schools. Rather than tackle some of her absurd statements, such as that cheerleading (which only exist in this country because of US television and film influence, really) somehow prepares women for "secondary roles" in life, let's look at why she exists in a professional sense.

Once again (and I rail against this kind of thing) it's obvious we have an academic whose opinion has escaped the play-pen and ventured into the real world. Her professional biography starts off well enough, with a BA in Biology, but rapidly descends into self professed "eclectic" areas. What I find most galling is her list of preferred sports include windsurfing alone, climbing, kayaking and hill walking, none of which are the kind of competitive sport she attacks. It's normal to find this kind of tosh in the Guardian but I am getting tired of the sickening feeling whenever I read one of these touchy-feely examinations that someone somewhere is going to be saying:

"Wow, that's why I couldn't catch a ball in rounders, because my school full of wicked white middle aged male teachers were force-feeding me the outdated movement culture of the British Empire when what I really wanted was space to explore my interest in yoga aged 12. "

It's this kind of apologising which I hate, it encourages the self-delusion of those who weren't any good at sports at school. So you were a bit crap and ended up being chosen last in the playground. Big deal. Get over it, don't seek awful, complex & contrived reasons years later for disliking competitive sports and don't you dare pass that on to your stinking children, because they might actually be able to catch that ball you couldn't, or run that try in that you were too overweight to do, or score a goal and feel genuinely a sense of importance within a team. That alone is valuable enough to make every child do competitive sports, at least for a while before they pussy out and the only exercise they do is as part of a diet.
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Re: Competitive sport in school

Postby Senethro on Fri Dec 10, 2010 7:45 pm

What about your post is not reactionary, ad hominems against the author or "GET OVER IT NERD PLAY SOME FUGGIN SPORTS"?

(note: the only exercise I do is purely as health maintenance/socializing and I've literally got a diagnosis for not being able to catch a ball)
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Re: Competitive sport in school

Postby Hennessy on Fri Dec 10, 2010 9:18 pm

What about your post is not reactionary, ad hominems against the author or "GET OVER IT NERD PLAY SOME FUGGIN SPORTS"?


Nothin' wrong with being for the status quo ante, history isn't one great big progressive march towards utopia. Certainly not in education and most astonishingly so in school sports. 50 years ago nearly every boy or girl played a sport, mostly competitive in nature, and we were fitter, healthier and (dare I say it) children had fewer learning and attitude problems.

Also all this "you're appealing to base emotions and that's a logical fallacy" crap is for sissies, good arguments should have some guts behind them, I'm not playing Dungeons and Dragons with arguments and I'm certainly not trying to be Aristotle, I'm attacking someone who is so wrong it makes my blood boil. I'll leave the fancy argumentative swordplay to those gentlemen and women whose interests lie that way.
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Re: Competitive sport in school

Postby Al on Fri Dec 10, 2010 9:28 pm

People may have been fitter in the past but it had very little to do with the playing of competitive sports at school. People were much more physically active in their everyday lives, and so would be more physically fit.
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Re: Competitive sport in school

Postby malcolm166 on Fri Dec 10, 2010 11:01 pm

There have been "anti-Imperial", "we're not cannon fodder" elements running through education for decades now as various individuals and bodies have tried to reduce the place of physical fitness in the social make-up of this country.

Just as there have been similar arguments in the other parts of teaching of subjects. With the net result, that with a determination not to psychologically scar the little darlings, we will soon be moving further down the alphabet to classify exam passes. Soon the day will come that "M" and "N" passes will emerge to avoid suggesting that anyone has failed anything.

What isn't covered in the article, for instance, is why girls at school eschew sport of pretty much any kind. And yet what most better researchers will find is that the reason lies in the notion of body shape and the belief that somehow any form of concerted physical exercise will "give them muscles" or make them "look like boys" or female body builders. And given the constant deluge of a perception of how women "ought to look" young women tend to give it a massive body swerve. And presumably also because it takes up good time that could otherwise be used to hurl energetically into the porcelain to keep the weight down. What we also know is that misguidedly more and more younger adolescent women are turning to smoking to assist in this determination to present the right, "attractive" form to their mates and the outside world.

With the result that the latest tests have shown that the average 55 year old man is "fitter" - in terms of cardio-vascular performance and practically everything else, than a 15 year old girl. That is some indictment of the world we live in.

In terms of "earlier" days, the working population might have been "stronger" - as in capable of lifting heavy loads and the like - but through the 1930's - as part of preparation for what was becoming increasingly regarded as an inevitable war against Germany - the research was showing that British men were horrendously unfit compared to their German counterparts and would fare badly in any confrontation. All due to social conditions diet and working conditions. The result was a concerted effort to undo that and for instance the emergence of the National Playing Fields Association who were part of the effort to increase the general fitness and well-being of the population.

We've moved on from that now unfortunately. The emphasis now seems to be on NOT expecting any growing child to participate in anything that might result in "losing" and a concentration on face and form directed towards being socially acceptable and attracting the "right" sort of interested party.
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