j4 | Picked last

Wandering around articles on sports in schools as a result of

nja's latest post, I came across yet another article that made me annoyed.

From that article:

"More than half of all teenagers agreed that young people are fat, lazy and addicted to computer games, but blame school and councils for failing to give them opportunities to exercise. [...] 'I don't think it's an issue of kids being lazier than children before us,' said Alexandra, 16, at a north London Youth Debate panel. 'Sport isn't accessible enough. There aren't enough proper facilities for us.'"

No, Alexandra, I think you are being lazy. I think you want these "opportunities" and "facilities" handed to you on a plate, delivered to your door. Then, when you don't get them, you can blame somebody else for the fact that you won't get off your lazy arse and do something.

As a teenager, I was fat, lazy and addicted to computer games. So whose fault was that? The school's? Hardly, with two or three compulsory games lessons a week and plenty of sports societies at lunchtimes and after school which I could have attended if I'd cared. The council's? Well, there was a public swimming pool, there was a playing field in the village (where people often organised football games), there was (I believe) a village cricket team, and there were tennis courts (though you had to get the key from somebody so it never seemed worth it when you could just have a knockabout against a wall or on the playing-field). There were several parks where I could have jogged if the urge had ever so taken me. (I've really no idea what other public sports facilities there were; I never made an effort to find out.) Sometimes, in rare energetic moments, I could be persuaded to cycle around the playing fields, or rollerskate on the carpark, or play with a frisbee.

Now, yes, I know, not all councils and not all schools make such good provision for sports. It's possible that Alexandra's school has no games lessons, no field of any kind, rules against kicking a ball around at lunchtime, or even running, and that there are no public sports facilities or even public parks in the North London area.

It's possible.

But how much more likely is it that it's just so much easier to blame your school, blame the council, the government, anything, anything except your own sweet self?

Of course, in standard journalistic rants it's considered the done thing to stop there, with the question. Having sneered and raised people's awareness and hackles, one has discharged one's moral duty. But this isn't a newspaper. I'm still here when the article's finished. So what's the answer? How can we change people, change the prevalent attitudes of our times, change the world?

Perhaps the facilities for changing the world just aren't accessible enough. Nobody's providing me with a means to change the world. Nobody's providing me with the answers. I'm not lazy; the system is to blame. It's not my fault, not my fault, not my fault.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

juliet

On the other hand, the comment made by one of the other kids was more relevant: that they don't get any choice in school sports, so half the kids forget their kit because they don't like what sport they're supposed to be doing (just as I used to deliberately schedule flute lessons during PE, or whatever). I think that schools *would* do well to try to help kids find the sorts of physical activity they enjoy - although how this is to be funded I'm less sure. Standardising on a games afternoon at schools across the borough & mixing provision between schools might help? (or at least sharing between nearby schools). Not sure that that's terribly feasible, either :-/

I think the other issue is not necessarily so much provision of facilities, as access to those facilities. Some of that is issues with parenting - if you're 10 or 11 and your parents won't take you to the swimming pool, chances are you won't get to go, & then later when you are going out on your own, that sort of activity has slid down the popularity list (although when I was 14 or so, the local pool got a wave machine installed, & other exciting stuff, & suddenly swimming became a popular weekend activity for groups of kids). More generally, if you're not encouraged by your parents to go out and do active stuff, & you're not supposed to go out on your own, then it just doesn't register as a Thing To Do. I was the sort of kid who spent vast swathes of time sitting at home reading; but my sister & I also spent lots of time rollerskating on the driveway/next door's driveway, or taking the dog round the park, or exploring the undergrowth in the *other* park...

I'm not sure. I agree that there's a certain amount of entitlement culture going on here, but I also think that making things more attractive (whether that's wave machines in the swimming pool or more options in school sports or sport stars being roped into holiday sports courses or whatever) is not necessarily a bad thing.

To your last point: I don't know that either. It's something I think about fairly often. Mostly I approach it by just trying to act in what I see to be the right way myself. Small changes add up, sort of thing.

From:

j4.livejournal.com

they don't get any choice in school sports, so half the kids forget their kit because they don't like what sport they're supposed to be doing

So what's the solution? Should schools be forced to offer every sport under the sun because some kids don't like the sports on offer? What happens when 3 of your class want to do cricket, 5 want to do football, 1 wants to play golf, 1 wants to fence, 6 want to play basketball... and so on, and all of them will "forget" their kit or bunk off if made to do anything but the thing they want to do?

When I was at school, you didn't get to stand up in lessons and say "I don't like this stuff, you have to teach something I like or else the school will be held responsible for me not learning anything." Yes, there are ways in which sport differs from other lessons, but I think to some extent the basic principle still holds!

I do agree that trying to make school sports more attractive, more fair, more interesting, etc. is a good idea. But it has to be a two-way thing; there's no point in wasting millions of pounds on getting some Olympic star in for lessons (and why do that only for sport? We don't get Stephen Hawking coming into school to show people that physics is worthwhile, we don't get Andrew Motion coming to convince us of the merits of poetry... not that he'd be likely to convince many people IMHO!) if pupils just aren't interested and aren't willing to try.

I don't know how you can make that sort of bargain, though. How do you convince people that you're willing to make the lessons more interesting but that they also have to do their bit and turn up, and be willing to have a go?

And I can't help thinking that it would be easier if people weren't so focused on the idea that it was their inalienable right to be entertained at all times.

From:

juliet

Well, you see we *did* have a version of that in 6th form. All the 6th formers had PE on the same afternoon, & there were a list of things to choose from (including fencing, badminton, use of the (smallish) gym/aerobics, & a handful of more standard things). You had to sign up to one per term, but I enjoyed it a lot more than the forced team games in the lower school (I liked athletics more. I don't like team things, in general). I don't see why you can't extend this to other year groups - with 100+ kids in a year group, I don't think it's impractical to offer, say, a couple of season-appropriate team-sport-type activities, & a couple of more individual things. And, yeah, they should be made to do *something* (& forgetting your kit is a crap excuse! What happened to the Spare Kit Box that our school used to have?), but a small amount of rearrangement of timetables might give a bit more choice.

I'm also, partly, thinking of the trouble with team sports that you refer to - the increased room for humiliation & upsetting other people if you're crap. If you're crap at something individual, fewer people notice or care (although obviously it doesn't entirely remove the scope for teasing, but then nothing can, in sports or anything else :-/ )

And I also don't see why we *shouldn't* have decent physicists doing school outreach & stuff like that. Apart from the fact that a lot of professional physicists would be a bit uninspiring... And, again, my school got a Poet-in-Residence in (we had Benjamin Zephaniah, one year, who was pretty cool) to encourage people in English. I know I was very fortunate to have a school that *did* do things like that, but surely that just means that more state schools should be trying this sort of thing.

In terms of the bargain - maybe getting kids more involved in making decisions/choices would help?

From:

j4.livejournal.com

we *did* have a version of that in 6th form

So did we, but it was one afternoon a week, for upper and lower sixth, and it relied on things like us being old enough to walk to the leisure centre on our own to play squash (or to get the bus to the golf course). Somebody came in for that afternoon to teach fencing, I doubt if they could have persuaded him to come in every day so that each of the 21 forms in the school could do fencing. One of the art teachers took an aerobics session -- the rest of the time she was teaching art!

Okay, perhaps if they were all taught in year-groups rather than class-groups it would be easier to offer more choices. But getting 100 17- or 18-year-olds to be sensible is a lot easier than getting 100 11-year-olds to be sensible...

I'm also, partly, thinking of the trouble with team sports that you refer to - the increased room for humiliation & upsetting other people if you're crap.

If a maths teacher bullied their pupils or made no attempt to stop pupils bullying each other they'd probably get sacked; but if sports teachers do it, we have to revise the sports syllabus. There's something deeply wrong here.

The problem with team games is not that they're fundamentally evil but that they're so often badly taught.

addedentry points out somewhere else in this thread that he was never taught the rules of football; I remember being told off for breaking the rules of hockey when I hadn't the first idea what they were. Combine that with freezing your metaphorical bollocks off on a muddy field in early November, when you can't hear the instructions that the teacher is shouting, and ... well, it's like playing Mao without the chatty, welcoming atmosphere.

On the other hand, I'm surprised to see you playing down the value of learning a game which involves remembering rules and using a combination of strategy and physical skill to co-operate with one's peers and achieve a well-defined goal... :) Buzzwords aside, I think there is plenty to be learned from team-games, but there seems to be an implicit acceptance that sports teachers are Nasty People and the only way to deal with this is to arrange the syllabus so they can't be too nasty. I don't think this is solving the right problem. Certainly our games teachers were quite capable of being nasty even in sports which needn't be competitive -- it's quite possible to run/jump/throw/swim and concentrate primarily on improving your personal best, but it's hard to feel proud of your achievements when you're being laughed at for failing to come up to the standards of the Olympic hopefuls. Or, say, being mocked for being out of breath after running the 1500m (I was pleased with myself for finishing it), particularly when no attempt has been made to do warmups, stamina-building exercises, etc. so of course you're going to be in a right state by the end.

Having a poet-in-residence is deeply cool, but I really do think it's the exception rather than the norm. Maybe more state schools "should be trying" this, but where does the money come from?

In terms of the bargain - maybe getting kids more involved in making decisions/choices would help?

Perhaps. I can't help doubting that it would do the trick, but I think that's more to do with my cynicism than anything else.

From:

addedentry.livejournal.com

What happens when 3 of your class want to do cricket, 5 want to do football, 1 wants to play golf, 1 wants to fence, 6 want to play basketball...

In north London, at least, it would be feasible to bus them all of to a large sports centre to match up with children from other schools, and everyone's happy. (In practice they'd probably start gang wars.)

Cf. new Labour's insistence on making every school a specialist school - what happens when your nearest schools specialise in sports, languages and music and your talent happens to be for art? (Mu.)