Wednesday 19 May 2010

Does Sports Day have to be so... P.C?? Grrrrrrr........

There was great anticipation among the ranks of my girlfriends recently. We held our collective breaths as our children's school met to decide whether Sports Day should be revamped.In our minds we dreamt of a Sports Day where children actually played sports and were not restricted to politically correct bean bag throwing. Maybe they would be allowed to run and jump, compete in relay teams....


Were we fools to even consider a change? It would seem so... Back came the decision from school that the format would remain the same - a round robin of events including running ( not too quickly mind... ) to a hoop and throwing a ball up, then returning to wherever you started.

The concern was that children not gifted at sports would be 'humiliated'... Humiliated? I was rubbish at sports at school, but I loved sports day.Its how you do it surely that counts? How do they know so many children will be humiliated? You might not be great at sprinting, but you might be genius at javelin!! What is wrong with giving kids who are good at sport a chance to shine? Surely in life you have to learn how to be both a good winner and a good loser - to meet both defeat and victory head on? And children are not daft - they know who is good at maths and English just the same as they know who is good at football or running. Why not celebrate both ?

I don't know... We can't all be good at everything. I am not saying that you should take a couple of slow, overweight children and line them up against the school's Ussain Bolt in a 100 metre dash - but surely to goodness there are ways to instill competitiveness in a good way? Surely wanting to win is a good thing? Wanting to be successful is a good thing? Do we all have to sit back and cater for the lowest common denominator? Do we have to not try at anything because we might fail?

Drives... me.... nuts!!!

3 comments:

Gail said...

Wonderful! You have taken the words from my mouth.

They are trying to have a variety of things besides just basketball here. We now have golf, football, and basketball for both girls and guys.

I would love to see some track but I guess the school is not large enough.

Football has given my grandson a confidence he did not have before.

Urban Cynic said...

I'm with you on this one. I don't have any kids but nobody wants to see them growing up into self-entitles pussies!

We're not equipping kids with the ability to fail well. nobody wins all the time & the sooner they lean that life isn't fair but it's not the end of the world, the better!

Julia Christie said...

Well Said!