I have a number of friends who are doing their degrees in child education. We were talking about gym curriculum, and I was shocked to hear that teachers are being told not to teach kids dodgeball. I thought this was a joke because dodgeball is one of the more enjoyable aspects of gym class for me while growing up (gymnastics... shudder). The reason why they don't teach dodgeball is because it teaches kids that other kids are merely targets that you hit with balls. They also argue that it creates aggressive children.
I tend to disagree with this because there are plenty of other sports where other kids are so-called targets. When you pass a ball to a team mate in soccer, that team mate becomes a target. When you pass a frisbee in ultimate frisbee, you are passing to a target. Does that make you a psycho killer? You tell me.
Anyway, I thought that this ideology might be restricted to the liberal west coast where I live, but after some digging, it doesn't appear to be the case. I found this article in the New York Times entitled, "
Increasingly, Schools Move To Restrict Dodgeball."
If students in Peter Heuberger's grade school gym class had their way, the weekly dodgeball game would be a daily event.
''We use dodgeball as an end-of-class activity,'' Mr. Heuberger, a physical education teacher at the Charlestown Elementary School in Cecil County, Md., said recently. ''The kids love it. They would play it every day if they could.''
But what was once shrugged off as a harmless game is now considered aggressive, unwholesome and a cause of injuries by some school administrators. So in school districts like Mr. Heuberger's, in the northeast corner of Maryland, officials have discouraged, limited or even banned the game.
Dodgeball pits teams of opposing players throwing balls at one another in a contest of elimination. The last player to avoid being hit is the winner. Sometimes the game is called bombardment, killer ball or even murder ball. And that bothers the critics.
''This is something that should not be used in today's classroom, especially in today's society,'' Diane Farr, a curriculum specialist in Austin, Tex., said. The Austin Independent School District, where Ms. Farr works, banned dodgeball more than two years ago.
''With Columbine and all the violence that we are having, we have to be very careful with how we teach our children,'' Ms. Farr said, referring to recent school shootings, including the one in April 1999 near Littleton, Colo., in which two teenagers killed 12 students and a teacher and then killed themselves.
Austin's school system may have been the first in the nation to ban dodgeball.
School districts in Fairfax County, Va.; Oslo, Fla.; and on Long Island, as well as a number of districts in Maine and Massachusetts, have formally or informally limited the kinds of games that students may play. In Mr. Heuberger's district in Maryland, officials have discouraged ''human target'' sports, including football, but not banned them.
As early as 1986, the journal Physical Education, Recreation and Dance published an article titled ''Premeditated Murder: Let's Bump Off Killer Ball,'' which denounced sports of elimination. And in 1992, Neil F. Williams, now a physical education professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, placed dodgeball in the Physical Education Hall of Shame, a list of gym activities that he suggested could damage children emotionally. The list included duck-duck-goose and musical chairs.
Duck duck goose can emotionally damage children? Musical chairs is an atrocity? What has the world come to? How fragile are kids these days? If you can't deal with musical chairs, you're going to have serious issues competing in the real world when you're grown up!
The second they mentioned Columbine, it makes me think that these measures are a knee-jerk reaction that doesn't address the root of the problem. It's a bandage solution. I wonder what came first? Dodgeball or Columbine? Football or Columbine? Musical chairs or Columbine?
Banning football? The article fails to list the positives of these games. Football has been described as a tacticians game, a thinking man's game. The game employers tactics, strategy, team work, communication, etc.
I recently saw the movie Grid Iron Gang (very good), which was a real-life story about a corrections officer who organized a football team in a juvenile offender's jail. This jail was full of young gang members and thugs. They said that over 70% of kids that went through that jail would be back for more jail later in life. For the kids that joined the football team, only 30% of them would be back in jail later. Does this sound like football, or games with 'targets' causes aggression and violence? Does it sound like it is a negative influence to kids?
Let us also consider my case. I play paintball where people are literally targets. The object of the game is to eliminate the other team by firing paintballs at them. Someone could argue that this hurts people's feelings, and what not, but paintball has been a real confidence booster for me. As a computer geek, sports isn't exactly my forte. Lets just say I didn't get into university with an athletic scholarship. However, paintball is one of those games where it doesn't matter if you're a biggest guy, smallest guy, strongest guy, etc. Tactics, communications, and strategy are just as important. This is the great equalizer, and it allows small guys like me to triumph over physically bigger and stronger competitors.
So, banning competitive sports like dodgeball, football, and yes... even musical chairs is absurd in my opinion.
Comments?
