Picked last

[j4]

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.

Comments

[martling.livejournal.com]

You're right, and I will still do it unless I find some better way by the time I come to do this - teaching full time is what I plan to do later in my life, rather than as a first career, though I'm still intending to take other opportunities to teach in some form before then.

What bothers me about school teaching isn't that I don't think you can effect any change with it, but that teachers have limited scope to make a personal difference because of the pressure from an enforced curriculum and emphasis on test results which basically disregard utterly the need for healthy, individual development. I couldn't participate in that system with a clear conscience if I wasn't openly expressing serious concerns with it and trying to do things differently as much as possible. And I don't know how that would go down with the administration.

If I worked in a school the first thing I'd tell the kids is that they didn't have to come to my lessons if they didn't want to. I'm in favour of compulsory schooling in general, but down to the level of individual lessons that just goes right out of the window. I don't think there's any point trying to teach things to people who's not interested; it causes frustration to both teacher and pupil, disruption to everyone else, and achieves nothing. And yes, maybe some of them will never be interested, and never come, but if we never give them the choice then how will they ever realise they actually are interested sometimes, and stop thinking of learning as a chore?

Other ideas basically come down to any sort of teaching that kids can voluntarily attend - either extra-curricular, or as an alternative to current schooling.

This starts with doing something for the courses me/Juliet/jdc/etc used to go on.

[j4.livejournal.com]

If I worked in a school the first thing I'd tell the kids is that they didn't have to come to my lessons if they didn't want to. I'm in favour of compulsory schooling in general, but down to the level of individual lessons that just goes right out of the window.

I see why you think that wouldn't go down well with the "administration". I doubt if it would go down well with the parents, either.

I'm also interested to know what you propose to do with the children who don't come to your lessons; to an extent you're in loco parentis as a teacher, and while some of their parents probably do tell them to just fuck off, it doesn't seem like a particularly good attitude for a parent or a teacher.

I think your approach might work with the sort of children you've encountered -- the "gifted" ones, who happily teach themselves skills and languages that most adults couldn't learn while their peers are still fighting over the sticklebricks -- but do you really think it would work with everybody? Do you think the average 11-year-old is going to be able to make a wise choice about whether or not s/he needs an education?

I'm having this argument on another forum as well, and what I wrote there is sort of relevant here:

I agree to some extent that people should have a choice. But (as I've just said in another forum -- funny how different groups all seem to have these conversations at the same time!) when I was at school we didn't get to opt out of *anything* until we made our GCSE choices. Now suddenly it seems to be vital for pupils to have "choices" about everything, because it would constitute "abuse" to force them to learn something useful which otherwise they'd shirk. And it seems to me that the illusion of choice is actually
*not* empowering them, but rather disenfranchising them by giving them the "freedom" to avoid learning basic life skills (for which loss they will later blame "their education" or "the school").

As an adult I'm actually quite grateful that I was "forced" to learn maths, a language, some science. I'm even, though my games teachers would fall over backwards in shock to hear it, grateful that I was made to do *some* exercise at school in the form of compulsory sport; I wouldn't have done any otherwise, and my health would have suffered. These days it seems that "choice" is the _sine qua non_ of education, and to deny children absolute freedom in what they learn is to deny them a basic human right. If that's really the case, then why have compulsory schooling at all?

I think we have a responsibility to ensure that children get a basic education. For anything beyond that, yes, there should be -- and there are! -- choices; but giving people the "freedom" to grow up uneducated is no freedom at all.

And yes, maybe some of them will never be interested, and never come, but if we never give them the choice then how will they ever realise they actually are interested sometimes, and stop thinking of learning as a chore?

If they never come, how are they going to find out that they're interested?