School sports day? What a farce!

[Canrider]

It's easy to trot out hard man lines like 'You need to lose in order to gain the desire to win'. This presupposes that someone is going to pass that message along to the loser themselves. You could just as easily take away from it the message that 'You've lost, and you're always going to lose, so why bother trying in the first place?'.

Take 'high jump' day in primary PE. Line up all the kids* and have them them attempt the jump. Anyone who fails get a second shot, everyone who fails the second time gets to sit down and wait for everyone else to be eliminated. Raise the bar and repeat until you've selected the ultimate 'winner'. Throw in a Czech PE teacher who likes to yell at kids when they knock the bar off for good measure.

Now convince me that the kid who's eliminated first** is absolutely, necessarily, guaranteed to think 'Shucks, I'll try harder next time'. Like hell he will.

*Lots of standing around waiting, must be 'sport'?
** Not me, incidentally, thank Crom, the stress of the *possibility* of being first out was bad enough

 

[Globalti]

MacB I would suggest that your need to analyse your beliefs on this points to the very nub of the confusion caused when political idealism clouds some very simple facts: all animals including humans will always be competitive. We compete to demonstrate our physical and intellectual fitness and therefore our attractiveness as a mate. Anybody who claims we are not innately competitive is talking bollocks. Why do all animals try to out-compete each other with displays and sounds during mating season? Teamwork and cooperation do appear in the animal world but only when the clear result is food.

 

[Canrider]

From the preface to 'Cooperation and Competition in Humans and Animals' (1982)

"Cooperation and competition are the very foundation stones of social life. It is difficult to think of any form of social behaviour, whether primitive or sophisticated, simple or complex, that is neither cooperative nor competitive at its most basic level. This is because a person's or an animal's behaviour, if it affects others, is generally calculated either to promote the common interest or to give an advantage to the individual at the expense of others."

I guess if you're obsessed with competition at the expense of all else, you could say you're only living half a life..

 

[yello]

The saddest thing for me is that school is often the only place that kids get experience of track and field events

Yes, personally speaking, I'd agree there.

I suppose a great deal depends on what you expect of a school. Are they there to provide access to sports? You have to keep in mind, particularly at primary level, that many teachers simply aren't qualified to (nor, for that matter, do they want to) give sports lessons.

I consider myself lucky to have been schooled in New Zealand. There, access to sports both within the school and outside within clubs was easy and common place. Our PE lessons might even have been considered a taster for sports, as we did all manner of stuff; track and field, athletics, gym, volleyball, basketball... as well as the more common sports. But we never played rugby during PE! (You could play it on the sports afternoon though).

 

[User482]

Kids are overweight often because their parents drive them everywhere and feed them rubbish. Then they threaten to sue if little johnny falls over and hurts himself. Don't blame the schools...

And I do think everyone is looking back at sports day through rose tinted glasses. I thought it was rubbish - if you were no good at running then it was a pointless exercise in public humiliation. Then there was the kid killed by a javelin thriugh the neck a few years back.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

MacB I would suggest that your need to analyse your beliefs on this points to the very nub of the confusion caused when political idealism clouds some very simple facts: all animals including humans will always be competitive. We compete to demonstrate our physical and intellectual fitness and therefore our attractiveness as a mate. Anybody who claims we are not innately competitive is talking bollocks. Why do all animals try to out-compete each other with displays and sounds during mating season? Teamwork and cooperation do appear in the animal world but only when the clear result is food.

The funny thing is your argument against 'political idealism' is itself, err... political. You have just decided that what you think is 'natural' and anyone who disagrees is talking bollocks. Not quite the case.

As it happens though, I agree with your initial post. I think there is a place for competitive sports and games in schools and elsewhere, and whilst I also have plenty of experience of the pain and misery and abuse involved in school sports, I really enjoy them now. But I am not going to try to turn it into an argument about the decline and fall of western civilization!

 

[bonj2]

One could argue that blah blah blah ... question thine philosophical ideals .... blah blah blah

What've you done, swallowed a shakespeare book for lunch?

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Here's the other side of the coin being very well demonstrated - what happens to people think sports are more important than learning...

 

[Keith Oates]

Sport is also learning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Lazy-Commuter]

<snip>

Now convince me that the kid who's eliminated first** is absolutely, necessarily, guaranteed to think 'Shucks, I'll try harder next time'. Like hell he will.

<snip>
** Not me, incidentally, thank Crom, the stress of the *possibility* of being first out was bad enough

.. nope, it was me!!

I was built more for shot putt than jumping. Still am, as it goes.

 

[MacB]

MacB I would suggest that your need to analyse your beliefs on this points to the very nub of the confusion caused when political idealism clouds some very simple facts: all animals including humans will always be competitive. We compete to demonstrate our physical and intellectual fitness and therefore our attractiveness as a mate. Anybody who claims we are not innately competitive is talking bollocks. Why do all animals try to out-compete each other with displays and sounds during mating season? Teamwork and cooperation do appear in the animal world but only when the clear result is food.

Hey I did mention that these were my musings on my commute, I think cycling is an ideal time to let the mind wander. Does help that I have a pretty quiet commute though

I may be talking bollocks, I may not, but I'm looking a little deeper than face value and preconceived understandings. If we are innately competitive would it not be wiser to channel that into group benefit style activities rather than individualistic goals? I've always been interested by the idea of true synergy, where the output is greater than the sum of the parts. This would be the essence of teamwork and is striven for in both the sporting and corporate worlds. Is it achievable? arguable that it has been already within sporting teams. If you consider instances where the lesser team, on paper, has triumphed against the odds. Then terms often used are teamwork, co-operation and morale, coalescing to raise the team to levels that exceed expectations. It can also be seen within the armed forces, camaraderie springs to mind, or viewing the unit as an extended family. I'm sure you've come across corporate examples of attempts to replicate this. Unfortunately my experience of corporates has been one where the team spirit is incomplete and childish, vindictive and petty power games take prescidence.

These are all areas where the competitive edge is used to further the group, not individual, ambitions. The individual success is present but is secondary to the team. Also the reward for individual successe is often the respect/gratitude of your team/group/family members. Expand upon the group idea until it includes all of humanity and you have something pretty close to competitive altruism.

Alternatively you can just take the view that it's a dog eat dog world, survival of the fittest, it's the way things have been, are and always will be. Down with the meek and march forward the strong. I just find that view a little on the narrow side.

 

[MacB]

Did you just find a Thesaurus on your desk?

And do you talk to yourself in your head like that?

I find it keeps me sane when cycling.........or maybe not

 

[got-to-get-fit]

Went to my son's school sports day yesterday to discover that the PC brigade and fear of litigation have wrecked it. It would be better called School Skills Day because there was nothing sporting about it; no kids ever got out of breath, nobody ran, all that happened was that the kids rotated in groups around ten "stations" where a member of staff got them to limbo under a pole, throw a medicine ball, throw a soft foam dart, throw beany bags into a hoop or jump and try to reach the highest up a pole.

It was carp and very few parents had bothered to come, can't blame them.

Im shocked.......

Did the teachers risk assess the danger of ankle injuries when jumping up a pole
Did they consider the full ergo range of body twisting and bending movements and consider a manual handling assessment for the children throwing the medicine ball?
Did they assess the danger of contact dermititis in certain groups from contact with foam darts?

Sounds like they have introduced a whole new range of risks when trying to mitigate a different set

 

[Fnaar]

I think for sports day they should wrap the kids up in giant foam suits, cloak the walls and floor of the school hall in foam, shove all the kids in there, close the door and go to the pub. Kids would love it, and the parents might enjoy it too.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

I think for sports day they should wrap the kids up in giant foam suits, cloak the walls and floor of the school hall in foam, shove all the kids in there, close the door and go to the pub. Kids would love it, and the parents might enjoy it too.

Sounds like 'It's a Knockout' Fnaar!!!