On Sports and Schools

2004-02-05 at 11:07 p.m.

Well, I did cut again. Probably I shouldn't have done but I thought...better do it now, when I can control how far I go with it, than do so blindly, not knowing or caring what I'm doing. So what I did do, I made light. Little light scratches basically, not deep, not half as deep as I wanted to go, but I made myself not do it.

I do feel better. Lighter, in the head. Though I still couldn't sleep last night. And I'm still getting too many words. Though not as bad, I had some times of peace today, it wasn't constant, as it has been. Maybe I need to do something more creative, to get the words out? Its not something pleasant, having all these words tumbling about the place, having a constant monologue going on, where everything in my head turns into perfect blank verse and yet disintegrates when I get it onto paper.

Ah well, enough about me.

There was a thing on the news tonight about childhood obesity and how they're trying to get kids to play more sports in order to stop them getting fat. Well intentioned, but stupid. Not playing sports as such, but the way schools teach sports. I remember when I was at school. I'm crap at sports, ungainly, clumsy, no sense of balance. I can't run fast, have no stamina and my aim is peculiar. Yet I actually enjoyed sport. Though that was not because of my teachers by a long shot. I remember being made to participate in gymnastics till I was 14 - in bright blue knickers which became rather obscene when you were over about 10. I hated gym, it was the one thing at school I hated and dreaded and would have done anything to get out of. But I was forced to do it week in, week out. I couldn't climb up the wall bars without getting stuck, hadn't a hope in hell of doing high jump or vaulting over a horse! Every time I did high jump I would hurt myself by landing in between the mats with the bar on my spine. I could do a forward roll. Couldn't do a backwards one. I hated it. I haven't the body or the balance for it. It was ok if you were one of those little lithe people - but I was stocky, my whole family are like that, even those of us who are incredibly thin are still stocky! So that convinced me I didn't like sports at the start. Then, we started playing netball, tennis, swimming and lacrosse. I really liked netball, though I was not good at it. I actually enjoyed playing it, always wanted to be Goal Attack because it was the most interesting position. Yet, because I was not good at it, I was always Goal Keeper (the most boring position) and never got to pick the team - you had to be good to do that. I wanted so much to get netball colours, but couldn't because you had to be good. I wanted to play against other teams, but you had to be good. You see where I'm going here? If you're not good at sports at school, the message is you might as well give up. There's no place for you unless you are good. If you are good, everything is great - colours, matches, picking teams, prizes - medals and cups and money. My school had about 30 sports prizes to 2 academic ones. There was never a prize for trying. Trying, or just enjoying sports was never rewarded. And we expect fat kids - who are not going to be the best in school at sports - to enjoy sports and keep on doing them after they finish? Hardly! If we continue to tell people that if they're no good they should give up, thats never going to happen.

What we should do is make sports teachers find a sport that someone is good at. If you're appalling at, say, gymnastics, why the hell should you have to do it? I would have been quite happy to go and play badminton with my friend who was also crap at gym - and I would have got good exercise and enjoyed myself. There were sports I was good at. I won a badge for throwing the discus a long way once, but you didn't get tuition or any chance to practise with a discus so even if I'd been a budding olympian I wouldn't have been able to do it. Why couldn't they have had a league of sports teams who weren't the best? So that all the bad players in different schools could play against each other? Why didn't they teach us sports involving one or two players that were something a bit different to tennis? Like squash? Why make swimming, the best exercise there is, so embarassing? Swimming is great - everyone can do it, you are most unlikely to get injured doing it, its fun, you get healthy doing it. Yet...school made us change in communal changing rooms (mortifying, particularly when you're going through puberty) subjected us to tests that had nonsensical elements (like, you have to be able to get out of the pool unaided. Why?) and then rounded it all off by making us parade in swimsuits in mixed company for the swimming gala. I used to deliberately swim slowly so they never found out I was decent at swimming, actually.

If you want people to be interested in sports and to continue doing them later in life then you need to stop being so competitive. Stop making it so those few people who are good at all sports get everything - colours, prizes, the chance to pick the teams. Would it kill you to give sports colours for effort? Or to give the victrix ludorum for effort and not just being brilliant?

Look at me. I loved sport, enjoyed playing it. But do I do any sport now? No. Because you have to be good. And that I'll never be, I simply haven't the body for it, and never will have. Yet I did enjoy it.

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