As someone who is actually beginning to really like activity I started thinking about what it was that I disliked so intently only 3-4 months ago. I've gotten to the stage where activity leaves me energised and feeling like I can take on the world. Where I can feel particular muscle groups working and growing and in general feeling fitter and stronger. Now I even like the ache. This is all very strange for me. Previously I would do anything to NOT feel the ache, but now I see it as hard work, well done. The callouses developing on my palms are indicative of hard work and I feel proud looking at them and feeling them. I sleep better and I get restless if I go more than a day without doing SOMETHING. Do I wish I knew why my body is covered in mysterious bruises? Yes. But I look at them and assume I did that in the process of getting better and I like them. I even signed up for a half-marathon...All so very alien to my previous self.
 |
| Oh look. What are those? Hard work dudes, that's what they are. |
Schools do very little to encourage the enjoyment of activity for enjoyment's sake.
What's that I hear you say? 'That's absurd, I was on my school's netball team and I love being active' or 'That's a bit of a generalisation, I've always liked to take part in some activity or other' but bear with me here.
When you exercise at school level, none of the activity can be counted as solely for yourself. You're a part of a team or a house or you participate for your school. You're always being pushed to compete for something. For some people, competition ensures that they thrive. Hell, I love music/drama competitions because I know I'm good at it. If it's something I'm not good at (the 100 metre at sports day...grumble grumble) I want to hide my head in a hole just like the rest of us. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those who thinks that children's sports should be 'competition free'-if a child wants to record the score of his/her football game, one would hope that he/she is intelligent enough to keep count, even if the parents don't want them to- but there certainly should be more of an impetus on enjoying activity just for enjoyment's sake.
I never learnt to enjoy activity, just to enjoy it.We're not even talking about being 'good' at something. Just participating because it's fun. I am only now picking up the pieces and pushing myself to enjoy what I'm doing. Certainly it's getting easier every day but it's not coming naturally for me. And I truly believe it could have. Now, I might be wrong here but had the enjoyment of activity been impressed upon me when I was young, and where did I spend most of my time when I was young...school, then it wouldn't be so hard now. It would have been a part of my day to day life.
Let me now go a bit into the psychology of this:
As someone who was never very good at sport, I hated being pushed to compete because I knew I wasn't good. I knew I wasn't good so I never pushed myself to be better and as such I hated to compete. The cycle continued on and on.
In another scenario (props to Sarah for this one) I enjoy my activity (trampolining incidentally) but find myself being pushed to join a team or get to another level simply because it's the next stage. I can't just continue to enjoy my activity. I stop my activity and am wary about starting another for fear that this cycle will continue.
As children we hear things like; 'do YOUR best', 'compete with YOURSELF and no one else', 'the only person you need to be better than is you-this is what progress is' and yet, as children (I'm not denying that teens or adults are fully capable of competing against their own personal best, this is what I am doing now) we are most aware of our competition with others. Either you have to beat your peers in team sports or you're constantly trying to be faster than someone else. And, for many, this atmosphere directly goes against the enjoyment of activity.
What's more, I certainly experienced this, if you aren't good enough for the team/don't want to do something competitively, you're often passed over for other students who ARE on the netball/gymnastics/track team. I wanted desperately to learn to play tennis as a child but at some point people realised I wasn't going to be good and I was never given the support or help I needed to learn. I don't know about you, but if I'm not good at something I don't want to continue the ritual humiliation in P.E. lessons. No thank you, I'll just go and pretend to hit stuff in the corner now thankyouverymuch.
The trouble here is that we develop, as children, the habits we continue in adulthood. If I'm taught to dislike sport at a young age, will I continue it as an adult. Chances are that's going to be a no. The media tell us that the 'obesity epidemic' is emerging in our younger generation and I have to believe that this must be a part of it. Educate the parents in nutrition and cooking certainly but if you can encourage activity that a child will want to continue, that will pay out dividends. If a child dislikes activity during school, why would a child want to participate outside of school? Healthy competition is an important part of life, and I would never seek to take away team sports or competition. After all, competition pushes us to succeed. But, when someone goes into a situation without ever getting the chance to WANT to compete, it removes the choice and ensures that those who just want to run around like idiots kicking a ball cannot. If society is so worried about our children being overweight, surely it's in our best interests to actively encourage the enjoyment of an activity, just because it's fun. If nothing else, I hope that I can instill in my children a love of being active, I simply worry that this current framework won't support that initiative.
**Edit** In my first edition of this post I didn't put quotation marks around the words 'obesity epidemic'. This was as a result of me not paying close attention in my editing. My reasoning for putting quotation marks is simple. Without them, it's as if I'm claiming something is a statement of fact. Personally, I HATE the phrase, obesity epidemic. It's as if I'm being told that fat people are a disease on society that can be caught in a similar way to influenza or something even less pleasant. In short, the phrase simply continues to perpetuate the image that overweight people are bad and those who have a normal weight are good. The purpose of this post was that we ALL need to eat responsibly and get activity, regardless of our size or numbers on a scale and that overall health should be the ultimate goal, not being 'skinny'.
I'm interested to hear how you would propose increasing more children's enjoyment of activity without damaging the enjoyment and potential of students that are good at sport, personally i disliked playing rugby with people who were not good at it (not saying i'm good but i mean people of arround my level). Similarly i was a good shot putter and a good javalinest at school but as these were not main sports there was no teachers to push me to train compete and enjoy it b getting better. i know i am seeing this from a very different place but i cant imagine a way that activities can be enjoyed by everyone regardless of ability without impacting on some students badly.
ReplyDeleteThis is something that will take a good deal of thought and consideration because, as you've rightly said, at no point do you want to restrict someone's enjoyment of an activity by removing the competition element. If that's what pushes particular children, no one (And I mean NO ONE) should seek to limit that. What I would suggest is that there is a push to discover different KINDS of activity to run along side the tiered system we currently have. You will always have high performance athletes who should be given the tuition and competition needed to progress to an ever higher level and there will always be those children for whom sport simply isn't there thing. But, and to be honest I'm not currently sure how, IF there was something in place that helped a child discover their niche then it would mean that less (though maybe not all, like I said-there will always be children that sport really isn't their thing)children get left behind.
ReplyDeleteAndy - how about adding non-competitive sports like yoga, dance or aerobics into the mix earlier on? Personally I find step classes etc really naff but I know a lot of people take to them and it's harder in a setting like that for teachers to favour the talented kids to the detriment of the others.
ReplyDeleteSports like yoga and pilates can also increase the performance of competitive athlete if thats a concern but really, if as a student you're really into sports then you'll be going to after school clubs or teams anyway, where he standard is higher.
I know PE is very difficult to differentiate but many teachers seem to give up on the whole idea. If you were teaching English and spent the entire lesson going into complex discussions about different novels with the talented ones whilst sitting the rest down and telling them to"just write something", it would not go well. Why should it be different for sports?