Columnist: Get rid of team sports in gym class

But, see, you were good.

And your kids are going to be good, most likely.

It has to color your opinion on it a little bit.

And, don't get me wrong, I think team sports are important, too. I just don't know how you prevent it from being lord of the flies for that age group. If she's right, if it's psychologically damaging for a lot of people, long-term, I think it's fair to re-examine its usefulness under a cost-benefit analysis.

 

Bingo.
I wasn't good at volleyball. I worked my ass off in practice to help the first team and so when it was time to get the scrubs in, I would get playing time. There is nothing wrong with that.
There is nothing wrong with sucking at sports. There is something wrong with saying you tried and were terrified of being ridiculed because you were terrible when the truth is you were ridiculed because you gave zero effort. It's not cool to not try and say you tried and it doesn't make you a victim if that's what you're doing.
But let's just ignore that and focus on the "bullies."

 

Are we ignoring it? Or are we weighing one against the other?

 

Maybe they should just play "bingo " in gym class. It would help
kids learn the alphabet and numbers.

 

Yeah, but gym class isn't where your sons are going to learn that. Also, it's possible to learn that level of respect and teamwork in competitive chess, or theater, or music, or mathletics. I agree that team sports can be a great way to learn all of what you're talking about, but team sports doesn't have a monopoly on that stuff.

 

That's a mighty big leap you're making.

A lot of kids ARE ridiculed because they are terrible. And, sports being sports, that makes them even more tentative and all that. An eighth-grader playing basketball for the first time isn't even going to know where to stand on the court against an eighth-grader who has been playing all his life.

It sounds mostly like another thing that falls on the teacher to not allow the Lord Of The Flies atmosphere. My son is in seventh grade, decidedly a non-athlete, but he has fun in gym and is pretty good at the mile run and the burpees and some of the other stuff. When they've done basketball or soccer, he has found a way to move around and mostly just stay out of the action.

But to Mizzougrad's point, team sports are great -- except for the kids who are terrible, have no interest and are only doing them because of a state mandate to attend gym class. Probably they tried when they were 6 or 7 -- doesn't everybody? -- and quickly realized it wasn't for them. I see no reason to make them continue to serve as fodder any more than I would insist everybody get to trigonometry, which is undoubtedly better for future success than is gym class.

 

No. Not true for me & my kids anyway. Especially NOT in sports. Haven't seen anyone flourish at an activity that they have little ablilty or interest in by being humiliated.

I didn't learn to compete by being shit on & embarassed. Those humilating types of events kept me from doing some things for many years that I now find very enjoyable.

 

I was ridiculed in basketball because I gave effort. If I'd have just slunk off to the side and let the big boys have at it, I would have been fine. But I tried to get involved. I tried to prove I was competent when I wasn't. That's a far worse sin among seventh- and eighth-grade boys than giving "zero effort."

 

I bet that poor dad in the VW commercial teaching his kid to
throw a baseball hated gym class.

 

Who gives a shit how much time the varsity athletes have to put in on their sport? They made the choice to do that.

When I went to high school nobody was excused from gym class.


The root problem here is the "captains pick" method which of course ends up with the "Waldos" going last.

What is needed to fix it is the PE teachers need to get off their asses and come up with other methods.

In our gym classes one of the more frequent methods was the gym teacher would have everybody line up in alphabetical order, then count off in numerical order, 1-2-3-4 and break up the teams accordingly. That randomized things out pretty well, nobody got picked last because they were a "Waldo," and of course the gym teacher as "GM" retained authority to order trades between teams to even things out if it looked like one team was wildly better than everybody else.

 

Whether it was true for you and your family is irrelevant. In society at large it is true. And you didn't use the word "flourish" in your original post. You said "compete".

Sports - and other competitive activities like the ones mentioned earlier - teach you how to succeed and how to fail. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I sucked at math when I was a kid and was teased about the fact I had to get extra help after school. I didn't get to skip math class because other kids hurt my feelings.

The author is a fucking idiot. If you eliminated everything that hurt a kid's feelings or "humiliated" them in school, we wouldn't have schools anymore.

 

Not sure where you went to high school but it's pretty common for kids who play on a high school team to be excused from PE when their sport is in season.