Gym Teachers: Let Your Kids Play Dodgeball

On the sluggish Thursday evening before spring break, I found myself locked in the couch potato position, watching television in the living room of my East Campus townhouse.

It was still too early for CBS’s evening telecast of NCAA tournament basketball games, so I channel-surfed through the various programming until a particular news feature about a recent movement to ban dodgeball in elementary schools sparked my interest. In fact, the news program devoted an entire segment to investigating a new breed of compassionate physical education that is current en vogue in many of America’s schools.

According to the proponents of this new P.E. philosophy, many Americans suffer some form of insecurity complex due to the overly aggressive and competitive nature of their elementary school gym classes. These people argue that some games like dodgeball are both physically dangerous and emotionally harmful to children who are less athletic than their peers. The basic premise is that gym classes should foster a child’s self-esteem by avoiding competitive games, since athletic competition creates winners and losers.

Simply put, the philosophy relies on the notion that everyone should be a winner in school.

When I was growing up I used to enjoy gym class primarily because competitive games like dodgeball, blob tag, spud, and four square were a lot of fun. I was good at some of the games and bad at others. I was a dodgeball superstar, but a four square patsy. Regardless of my success, I enjoyed almost all of the games, and it is my contention that the overwhelming majority of kids both then and now enjoyed the games as well.

Not only did I have fun playing competitive games, I developed many important skills, such as teamwork and sportsmanship. In addition to these broad talents that are useful in many facets of life, I also learned more specific skills, like how to shoot and dribble a basketball and serve a tennis ball. These more specialized skills helped me make varsity teams later in high school.

Yet while I always looked forward to the games, I dreaded the days when the gym teacher would have us learn yoga, jump rope, stretch, or play scoreless badminton. While I may enjoy many of these activities today, if I remember correctly, most of my peers and I found these types of activities to be boring then. We shunned these classes more than any other, for if anything made me loathe P.E. at the age of thirteen, it was hearing the gym teacher lecture about the proper way to breathe when feeling tired.

The proponents of this new method of teaching physical education believe the competitive nature of gym class has caused many youngsters to develop an antipathy for exercise. They attribute some Americans’ problems with obesity to a fear of exercise that can be traced back to the trauma suffered while losing dodgeball games as a child.

If anything, my current habit of exercise and love of sports was fostered by my early exposure to competitive games. By ridding elementary gym classes of such games, the likely result will be that fewer young people will develop a passion for sports and exercise.

Furthermore, competition is a very real component in life, and exposing kids to it early can be highly beneficial rather than deleterious. Young people encounter competition everywhere, from athletics to academics. Developing the desire to win in sports can be quite similar to developing the drive to succeed in other areas. In fact, academic or intellectual competition is now being promoted more than ever in high schools with the growth of debate teams, Model U.N. teams, and mock trial teams, all to the benefit of students’ intellectual growth.

The important thing is not for gym classes to shelter children from losing, but to teach kids how to deal with competition by being good winners and losers.

A good winner plays by the rules, is proud of his achievement, desires to succeed again, and does not humiliate his opponent with excessive celebration or gloating. A good winner says “good game” to everyone involved and offers the adversary advice to help improve. At the very least, a good winner is willing to participate in a rematch.

A good loser does not cry, does not get angry, and does not get frustrated. A good loser congratulates the winner, shakes off the loss for the time being, and seeks ways to improve for next time.

The problem is not the nature of competitive games, but the lack of understanding on how to deal with competition. Someone who loses in sports or life and does not care or learns nothing from it has a very real problem. A person who will cheat or hurt someone to win has an equally big problem. School is one of the best environments to teach young people how to avoid these problems by educating them about and exposing them to competition. Who can better foster a positive attitude and method of dealing with either winning or losing than a gym teacher? Actually, that is exactly what they are supposed to be doing for a living.

In the end, I think that the proponents of this new form of physical education fail to understand the resiliency of youth by assuming that kids are so incredibly emotionally soft and fragile that they cannot handle an occasional loss. Now, who is up for a game of dodgeball?