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catch a ball in rounders, because my school full of wicked white middle aged male teachers were force-feeding me the outdated movement culture of the British Empire when what I really wanted was space to explore my interest in yoga aged 12.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.