Should we keep sports in schools?

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#891104 6-Sep-2013 20:56

I think the Op has a political agenda rather than whats good for children at school.

"Socialists want to rescue the element of play in leisure. Capitalism creates a large class of people engaged in sedentary labour who need physical activity as a diversion. And it creates a specialisation of labour where even those engaged in physical labour develop only those physical attributes which are useful for production. Socialism will abolish this set-up and create the conditions for the free development of the human body. Under socialism there will be physical recreation but not sport."

sound familiar, link here

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#891113 6-Sep-2013 21:26

minimoke:
zaptor:
I mean - outside of private/boarding schools, how many students (as a proportion an entire school) really benefit from sports.

Without delving into your definition of “Benefit" I'd imagine most kids benefit. Or at least more do than don’t. And I’m not sure what it is with the Private boarding school issue – has this something to do with elitism – again something that I’m not sure has been defined. If I look at the past few weeks my kids, in public school, have beaten school teams from Private schools in Football, Chess, Water Polo, Current Events, robotics and some Biology Olympics thing and failed pretty miserably in the 48 Film Making challenge. Which also begs the question “what is sport”?

My understanding of sport is that it's a formalized game involving physical activity (?)

So, from that perspective it's of benefit to kids who participate in it. Therefore, I suppose ideally you'd want as many kids participating in sport as possible to take advantage of the health benefits.

I think with private/boarding schools the ethos/mantra is to achieve - to do your very best. So, whether it's scholastically or on the sporting field, I think it's about being committed to whatever it is that your doing. I could be wrong - trig42 might be better to comment.

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#891114 6-Sep-2013 21:31

What is the difference between a school's physical education program and organised sport (a sport generally being defined as physical activity governed by a set of rules and often engaged in competitively)?

Is it just the element of competition (and thus elitism and eventual exclusion for those who do not make the grade) you want to eliminate?

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#891116 6-Sep-2013 21:38

mattwnz: School is the only place many people will ever come in contact with playing sport, so no I don't think it should be removed. It is also a tool for physical activity as it is a motivator. Physical activity without sport is not easy to get kids to do. Sport also teach people about how to win and lose, and to communicate under pressure etc.

Curious. You got me thinking.

To be honest, I don't know if that's necessarily true so much nowadays - at least from my experience.

Teachers in the local primary schools take their classes out for some PE, which often involves running type games.

From recollection, netball and hockey (both voluntary/optional only), were the only school run sports. Rugby, football, swimming, cricket, athletics, etc were all run by local clubs.

Certainly, things change at college.

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#891138 6-Sep-2013 22:29

1080p: What is the difference between a school's physical education program and organised sport (a sport generally being defined as physical activity governed by a set of rules and often engaged in competitively)?

I'd say every sport is engaged competitively.

As where a PE programme can have competitive elements (games), but, there aren't rules which exclude others from participating. I guess one way of looking at it from a coaching perspective, is that PE is like a training run (everyone is involved - which can be great fun), and sport is like the actual game.

1080p:
Is it just the element of competition (and thus elitism and eventual exclusion for those who do not make the grade) you want to eliminate?

I don't believe that competition or sport are inherently elitist. More the current/accepted implementation of organized sport - at school level.

Just to re-iterate, I don't have an issue with top-level/post-college/pro-sport.

However, as you alluded to. It's the exclusion which is really the issue - I think.

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#891153 6-Sep-2013 23:35

jeffnz: I think the Op has a political agenda rather than whats good for children at school.

What's good for the children is for as many as possible to be involved in sport - not just the elite minority.

I'm not trying to socialize sport. If that's the impression, it's certainly not the intention.

jeffnz:
"Socialists want to rescue the element of play in leisure. Capitalism creates a large class of people engaged in sedentary labour who need physical activity as a diversion. And it creates a specialisation of labour where even those engaged in physical labour develop only those physical attributes which are useful for production. Socialism will abolish this set-up and create the conditions for the free development of the human body. Under socialism there will be physical recreation but not sport."

sound familiar, link here

Thanks for the article. Interesting read.

If anything, I'd argue that clubs know how to run sports just as well if not better than schools.
There have been calls for college rugby to return to the clubs. Not entirely sure why, but, I imagine it's got more to do with what's best for the game.
So, if you're saying we should persevere with sport because it makes a positive difference in kid's lives, then I'd agree. However, as someone with a capitalist/free-market bent (correct me if I'm wrong on that), wouldn't you rather see sport put in the hands of those who can actually grow it? (i.e. not the schools)

If there's evidence that sports participation is actually increasing at college, I certainly haven't seen it.

One thing that could be corrected in the article is this:-
"For some it can become the means of clambering out of poverty"

I think if we replaced "some" with "very few", that would be a more accurate assessment.

Perhaps an even better way to write it could be:
"For many it can become the means of clambering out of obesity"

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#891160 7-Sep-2013 00:04

Sport teaches discipline, something many kids don't get taught at home in front of the TV.

What I do see as a problem is that not all sports are given the recognition they deserve. For example good BMX riders to me are just as skillful as some hotshot rugby player, but they will never get the same attention.

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#891201 7-Sep-2013 09:06

zaptor:

From my own personal experience, what builds character most in sport is losing, and how one deals with it.

ABSOLUTELY AGREE- thanks for adding that!

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#891268 7-Sep-2013 12:34

Personally, I like sport when it's low key with a low barrier to entry and without a rigid us vs. them division. Growing up in a rural area, I had great fun playing soccer as my interschool 'serious' sport when it was still barefoot, with only sashes or slightly different colour under the mud T-shirts to tell teams apart. If a side was down you'd play for the other team to get everyone on the field. We had a coach who still took the game seriously but we didn't have all the extraneous equipment/clothing sideshow. On the community participation front, there used to be twilight softball or volleyball for all comers. In just having the equipment available for cricket, basketball, tennis, etc. at school we'd self-organise games - with the occasional bout of organised coaching in season. I felt this environment really normalised spontaneous play. Whereas I've often seen this drummed out of people through heavily structured sport (the same goes for most structured school subjects, spontaneous enquiry seems to fizzle out).

Once things got more serious the sense of the game actually being for the players seemed lost to me, it felt like you were just being slotted in to to a gang in service of one of many little petty fiefdoms, with an inordinate regard for pomp, pageantry and talismans.

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#891277 7-Sep-2013 13:11

I guess I have a slightly different perspective to this. To give some background, my father is a secondary school teacher and will be 60 this year, I am 32 and went to the same largish state school he still teaches at.
Every year since he left teachers college (late seventies I believe), he has coached the 1st XI cricket, 2nd XV rugby which he gave up 3 years ago, now he takes the 1st XI hockey which plays on a Wednesday night during winter.
Every year, for over 30 years. That's practice twice a week, and each Saturday. I spoke to him the other day and he was commenting how he wanted to move on from the cricket but will wait until he retires as there are too few teachers to take up coaching. He said that teachers coming in now will start at the school (circa 900 boys) and will laugh when they're asked if they can coach/manage a 6th XI.

So from my perspective I certainly enjoyed playing sport at school (though suffering the ignominy of not being selected for the first eleven until 7th form as Dad took me aside and said it would not be a good look) however I think it's a waste of a resource to insist that teachers (at state schools anyway) should have to take sports teams. To be honest, with my father, I think it's the main motivation for him to still teach!

I think the emphasis should be on teaching the basics as well as possible, retain a PE component to vent some steam, and move sport to the clubs. It works for primary schools.

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#891281 7-Sep-2013 13:36

sleemanj: Sport in schools is fine, provided it's optional or at least there are "non-conventional" ones which do not require athletic prowess.

I get the impression non-conventional sports tend to pick up a lot of people who don't enjoy popularist sports. One could argue the lack of enjoyment correlates with the lack of game (or "ball") time.

sleemanj:
Not everybody has the innate desire or ability to run fast, jump high, throw things a long way...

Yeah, I've come across that position before. It tends to be one held by kids (and/or their parents) who are the least athletic. It's not that they can't run, or jump (although, I agree - fundamental catching and throwing can be an issue - from experience). They can do those things. It's just they do it "worse" than any of their peers.

From a coaching perspective, I make it a priority to develop the kids in the team who struggle a bit. However, I do it in a way that doesn't disadvantage the better players in the team (since that would just be another form of elitism).
I prefer teams that are streamed (weak or strong - it doesn't matter) simply because it's easier to develop a genuine team culture when the mean gap between best and least capable is relatively small. Teams with a high mean gap tend to have the greatest internal issues I find.

sleemanj:
Team work and having a good time is the more important thing to focus on.

Yes. It should be. The emphasis being on the word Team.

sleemanj:
People like myself had no chance of putting in a remotely interesting performance in any conventional sports, the compulsory participation in the annual "sports day" at high school consisted of sitting in the stands of QE2 stadium lob a shot-put a couple of meters, and walk back to the stands.

If there had been a lawn bowls tournament, well I could have had a reasonable chance at that, and at least would have enjoyed it.

Sadly, I'd say your experience is more reflective of the majority then the sporting minority.

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#891283 7-Sep-2013 13:42

I'm saddened that people want to once again have the state take control of things and limit access to sports in this case, have we not dumbed down our children enough over the years to a point where a lot can't function in the real world without having to rely on the tax payer to support and make decisions for them. All because we want to include those that can't compete or don't like sports.

Myself and others have intimated that boys need sports so the know where they fit into life, we can't all be winners, top sports people etc but we can see that in sports, especially team sports, we all have a place and can contribute which sets children up for when they have to go into the real world. I look at some of the kids coming out of school and applying for work with absolutely no idea of how they fit in and really only face a place in the dole queue or statistic, mind you if I was a cynic! then maybe I would think that some political parties would be happy with that as its their voter base.

To the Op, I don't think you are looking for arguments to keep sports in schools just tell everybody your thoughts, not that its wrong to do that at all.

I think we need to look what is instinctive in us and understand that instead of trying to change it to suit a minority.

Op I still think this is more political on your part but if I'm wrong I apologise but it certainly looks like a socialist way of thinking. As far as what I am politically, you could say I'm a capitalist without capital and that I believe we need to teach our young to be responsible and able to support themselves and their decisions in life and helping those that need a hand up or can't do things for themselves. If we keep taking away choices because some think its beneficial then we will never get people standing on their on 2 feet just a lot dependent on others.

Leave the sports alone, if you don't like them then opt out just don't force others to do without because you think its wrong.

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#891285 7-Sep-2013 13:45

After a little consideration I find myself agreeing with zaptor's logic. External clubs would be much better suited to organising and maintaining competitive sporting leagues. I do have an intuitive disagreement, however, which I'll try to elucidate upon below.

1) Lack of exposure. Especially to smaller or less commonly engaged in sport. School is the perfect platform to expose students to a wide range of sport. Though a number of students will simply never play or enjoy sport competitively there is an even larger number who remain on or near the fence. If we move sport to an external club(s) system then a much larger number of that middle group may never experience or have an opportunity to experience a range of sport. This, I feel, would directly translate into a smaller number of students competing and may have follow on effects for potential future athletes in New Zealand. Imagine if one of the current All Blacks had never been exposed to rugby through school? I'm not sure how physical education classes work today but I don't think they have rugby as part of the curriculum. This is an example of our 'national' sport so is probably fairly unlikely but the problem would be magnified, for example, in many smaller sporting codes. The problem would be magnified even further for families who have financial constraints on them because external clubs would be forced to impose higher costs on members which leads to my next point...

2) Lack of resources. I'm not sure how high school is today with regard to sporting teams but when I attended there was a large amount of volunteering from staff at the school. If I remember correctly our school had ~30 rugby teams, 20-30 football teams as well as dozens of teams in many other codes of sport (hockey, basketball, netball, etc...). These are just the 'mainstream' codes, we had a huge range of smaller codes as well. Just the staff time resource alone would be an astronomical cost to any club that would likely have to pay coaches and support staff. This would most likely be passed on to the club members and, unfortunately, make sport an activity that would preclude many students with families that did not have the required financial resources. The solution, of course, would be to take any subsidy schools receive and give it to the clubs instead but considering (at least in my time) that much of the cost was offset through volunteering and fundraising there would likely not be much money to pass on and it would negate on of the points of this exercise in the OP.

Sport has been played in schools for some time now and due to that most have sports facilities on their premises. These could be easily rented to private clubs but you could not reasonably expect schools to rent them to clubs for below market rates as the schools wold need to maintain them so that would also increase the cost passed to families. In addition, in many towns around New Zealand, the only sporting ground/pool is at the school which would mean there would be no other option for private clubs.

3) 'intuition'. In addition to my (sort of) logical reasoning I have a gut feeling that removing competition in sport from school would be a bad thing. It is a hard thing to put into words but I feel like there were many cascading advantages to enjoying sport in school. For one I was able to enjoy them with people who were already my friends and that I was able to see outside of a sport club regularly too. I don't think the social aspect of competitive sport can be overestimated.

I was able to experience a wider range of sport than I imagined even existed. I had never even heard of water polo before high school but when my physical education teacher mentioned it to us thanks to volunteer teachers we were able to put together a school team and went to the national championships (we were thoroughly smashed but it was a hell of a lot of fun). That would be entirely possible through a club too but I know that I, for one, would have been unlikely to join an external swimming club to try out water polo.

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#891307 7-Sep-2013 14:49

insane: Sport teaches discipline, something many kids don't get taught at home in front of the TV.

The issue I have with that notion is that it contrasts significantly with reality. Sport doesn't usually foster good character - not from my experience. It would be too simplistic to blame any one individual. Elite sports kids are often bombarded with people telling them how good they are - based purely on their sporting prowess. How kids are perceived amongst their peers is a massive issue.
There's a point where developing self-confidence can transition into arrogance. I would say that point is often reached by the time many elite players start college.
The unsavory behaviour we see from a number of top sporting professionals (if you think the NRL is a bad soap opera, you should see what goes on in US college sport - let alone US pro sport) is simply a culmination of that type of thing.

insane:
What I do see as a problem is that not all sports are given the recognition they deserve. For example good BMX riders to me are just as skillful as some hotshot rugby player, but they will never get the same attention.

It's possible that could just be a numbers game?

However, touch (rugby) is meant to be one of our highest participation sports and I suspect BMX possibly gets better coverage. Then again, touch isn't an Olympic sport, plus BMX is a genuine global sport (?)

Reminds me of a player I used to coach in rugby. He was a fine player. Hard as nails. But, his number 1 sport was BMX.

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#891311 7-Sep-2013 15:08

I agree with those who see sports as a microcosm of the social setting.

I needed as much physical exercise as I could get at school. It disappoints me that I'm still physically more able than all my kids probably because they have had a lot less sport and physical exercise during their childhood.

If I replaced sports with anything it would be interpretive dance.

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