The latest wheeze to come out of the sports lobby is compulsory PE tests. They liken games lessons as being as significant in the learning agenda as mathematics and English.
Sports medicine specialists say governments across the UK have squandered the chance to create an Olympic legacy of fitness.
Their conference in London is calling for mandatory “physical literacy” tests in schools, alongside reading and maths.
They say this could help children with health problems and identify future sports stars.
Forget the legacy of Olympics nonsense, that’s just playing to the stands. Physical fitness is a good thing, of course. As a child and into my teens I was incredibly fit. This was a consequence of cycling everywhere – to school and for leisure. It was not unusual to go out for the day with friends and disappear for hours at a time, cycling through the lanes in the countryside outside Maidstone, just to see where they led. A thirty mile trip being perfectly normal. Otherwise, twice a week, I attended judo classes and later on, archery. All of this contributed to my high levels of fitness. None of which had anything to do with the school or PE lessons, where I was regarded as something of a failure because I had no interest in kicking a ball between two white posts. PE lessons in the winter months concentrated on football and rugby and in the summer months athletics and cricket. None of which interested me.
There was a brief point where I wondered about taking up cycling as a sport, but never bothered to follow it through. And that is the point here; future sports stars are driven by their sport of choice. Nothing will get in their way and it is that driver that makes the difference. Simply identifying someone who is good at something or has the relevant levels of fitness isn’t sufficient. If they haven’t identified it for themselves and possess the necessary motivation, they will never be sports stars.
So, all in all, I agree with the unions and the youth sports trust when they say that this idea is counter productive.
“If you introduced very rigorous testing in the way that’s being described, I think that could have quite a negative impact on some children”
Baroness Sue Campbell
Youth Sport Trust
Indeed. Looking back, it would have been just as counter productive for me as forcing me onto the playing field and insisting that I play football. I simply refused to take part, avoiding the ball if it came in my direction.
Dr Franklyn-Miller argues that there should be compulsory tests for these skills at each of the key stages as children progress through school.
“Let it be competitive and let us test our children against each other and identify those who need support from the network of physicians trained in sport and exercise medicine as an existing Olympic legacy.”
What Franklyn-Miller misses here is that some of us just don’t care about competitiveness, so insisting that I compete against my fellows, for example means that I just don’t bother trying. Indeed, as a child, I was sufficiently rebellious that I would have consistently failed the tests in order to subvert the process, despite being fitter than many of my fellows. What would they have done then? And don’t for one minute think that there are not children around now who will react in exactly the same way as I would have at that age.
Dr Franklyn-Miller insists that without mandatory testing, and clearly defined steps to help children who fall short, nothing will change.
This assumes that change is needed. It isn’t. Some people are not and never will be very physical. Those who fall short may well not be bothered anyway, so leave them to it.
By all means provide the facilities and the lessons, but leave it at that.
I often detect a strong streak of “strength through joy” fascism in many of the pronouncements of the sports lobby.
It does tend to have that undertone, yes.
Little excellence in any field comes from mainstream education.
My rural area National standard Gymnastic, football, judo and dance groups, Brass and Jazz bands, capable artists, surfers and much, much more. No youth (with the support of their parents!) need be bored. All of this achieved by ‘the people’ despite continuing State attempts to regulate and dumb down their activity.
Referencing the Olympics as a reason is just a smokescreen. Nobody ever asks for compulsary snooker and darts to be taught in schools, even though these are national sports that the british tend to do well at.
This will add yet more fuel to the ‘all must have prizes’ ideology rife in the school my childen attended – pupils who succeed in sport are lauded to the heavens while exam success is largely ignored.
The thinking behind it appears to have been that the less academically able should be given an equal chance to shine; however, with the advent of a new sports-obsessed Head, the balance has swung too far.
At the risk of a sweeping generalisation, PE teaching tends to be in the hands of precisely those who, as pupils, were not the highest academic achievers in the class and, in some cases, resented the fact; should they really be given carte blanche to settle old scores?
Curmudgeon & LR
NO
“Kreft durch Freude” is the whole thing, it IS the ethos.
Coe delieberately choise to associate himself with J. A. Samaranch, for instance ……
And what delightful punishments will be meted out to the library-centred refuseniks, I wonder?
The last Lympics tended to show Brit athletes did well at the sitting down sports of yachting, horse riding, canoeing and cycling.
Less so at ones where people had to use their legs.
I was completely rubbish at games and PE when I was at school and have been left with a lifelong loathing of field sports. We once played football in horizontal sleet and I can remember thinking ‘how stupid is this?’
While in my twenties and thirties I was extremely fit having got into karate, cycling and swimming. Now I’m in my fifties I have slowed down a bit and get my exercise from gardening but I can’t say that compulsory sport and PE at school helped me in the slightest and surely must have turned many people off sport permanently.
I think Stonyground has hit the nail right on the head there, I also loath field sports for the same reasons, but I was fit because I cycled absolutely everywhere, and when I left school, I did quite a physical job for some years.
These sports medicine specialists are no different to the righteous bastards who babble on about smoking/drinking/fatty foods/salt blah blah. As far as I am concerned, they can crawl up their own arses and pull the hole in after them!
They also clearly forget the cost to the NHS of all the sport related injuries, as we all know, the shining white edifice doesn’t actually like doing what it’s paid to do… i.e. fix broken people.