Wednesday, January 03, 2007

School Sports - bad for you?

Sandra Gidley, the Liberal Democrat MP for Romsey, has spoken in Parliament about her opposition to competitive sport in school. Apparently her preference is for activities which focused on "personal improvement" like skipping, dance and games.

Now I can speak with some considerable experience of this issue. You see, I was always one of the tubby kids who was last to be picked for the teams on either side.

Only once did I ever succeed in playing well at something, in the final of the inter house cricket competition and, in a Hollywood style 9th wicket stand, I managed to somehow scrape the winning runs for my house that won us the house cup. (This I have to admit was an additionally impressive feat as I have always hated cricket with a passion).

I therefore consider myself to have been one of those disadvantaged and traumatised children Ms Gidley is talking about. Did competitive sports in school do me any harm? Of course they didn’t.

They taught me two lessons, sometimes hardly learnt, but well learnt none the less:

You can’t be good at everything, but there are always opportunities to play to your strengths and that life is essentially competitive and therefore you’d better get used to losing as well as winning.

We should be encouraging more competitive sport amongst our children in my opinion. For these very reasons, let alone the need to encourage exercise in our young people who are lured to sit in front of the TV far more than my generation ever was.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

this country is a nanny state.Healty eating,smoking bans,etc,etc.When can we lead our lives the way we want too.What is great about Britain? Answer.Nothing

Anonymous said...

My young children go to Kings Park School and through some iniative which is ongoing in Boscombe called Healthy Living Project are subject to Healthy food.They say the food is horrible and come home not feeling they have been fed.I do believe that the other comments about being a nanny state is absolutley correct.Leave us to bring up our children in the way they eat,play and grow up.Scott and Alison