When I was in school, my favorite sport in physical education (i.e., gym class) was dodgeball, because of how it simulated combat; I could pretend that I was a fearless warrior fighting in battle against an enemy army, but without the risk of actually being killed or severely injured.
However, one year during high school (which, for me, was from 2001 to 2005; wow, I now feel old ), dodgeball was banned from schools, and we were no longer allowed to play it in our gym class. Every student was very disappointed by this news, and the reason that we were given was that dodgeball was "too violent" for an academic atmosphere.
On one hand, I can understand that idea, since dodgeball is a form of combat, albeit a nonlethal one, and it can be serve as an extension of bullying that already occurs in schools.
However, I disagree with that idea, because such sports as hockey and football are still played in schools, and are not perceived as being "too violent." In my time as a student, participation in physical education was optional, so, if a student did not wish to play dodgeball (or any other sport), they would be allowed to not play the game. The same is true with football, hockey, or other sports in which physical contact occurs.
Also, all the students in my class understood that dodgeball was merely a game, and not true warfare, so we were seeking merely to enjoy ourselves when we played, not to actually injure the players of the opposing team. During my years playing the game, I do not recall any student suffering any form of physical injury or psychological trauma; of course, we used foam rubber balls with plastic skin, rather than actual dodgeballs, which are made of rubber and filled with air, like smaller basketballs (I asked our gym teacher numerous times if we could use what I considered to be "real" dodgeballs, but he refused, saying that such ball were too likely to cause injuries); I suppose that I can understand that attitude, but I believe that real dodgeballs are not dangerous if they are not thrown with too much physical force.
What does everyone else say about this? Do you believe that dodgeball is too violent to be played in schools? Why or why not?
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“Those who would trade their freedoms for security will have neither.”-Benjamin Franklin
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”-Thomas Jefferson
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of its user.”-Theodore Roosevelt
“Patriotism means to stand by one's country; it does not mean to stand by one's president.”-Theodore Roosevelt
While I loved playing dodgeball as a kid it can open the door for bullying.
Putting kids into social situations can open the door for bullying. Bullying isn't going to suddenly manifest while playing dodgeball. Bullying in dodgeball is going to simply be an extension of the bullying that is already happening. If a kid is bullied on the dodgeball court chances are that kid is also being bullied in other situations.
I loved dodgeball. Besides, there were many more violent things that my school did, like a game that involve people running around and playing tag with pool noodles, which devolved into people hitting each other as hard as they could with them.
Gym class costs money that isn't being used to educate children for real jobs. Dodge ball doesn't make a "man out of someone" nor do I find the "advantages of sports" to be so overwhelmingly super awesome that I need my taxes to be syphoned away from fixing roads, bridges, giving people with real problems a real chance in life. Gym class is a luxury we can no longer afford.
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Life is a beautiful engineer, yet a brutal scientist.
Can we afford rising insurance premiums from complications of obesity? Because gym class can help with that.
Based on that argument, then the better investment would be increased accessibility to public gymnasiums for all age ranges and exercise facilities. The frequency and intensity of that activity in childhood only has limited effect for long term health, it is sustained physical activity. And considering that we have had sports programs for the youth for so long that is coterminous with the obesity epidemic, perhaps shifting the focus on "public education" with sports to "public health" investments.
Hypothetically, more sandlot and job teams like there was before a half century ago, offers up different communal gathering spots for communities and the public than just the local high school football game.
Facilities that are used by all age ranges that encourage lifelong activity are more important than gym classes that have thus far not proven themselves to do what they're sold to do. Neither are high school sports providing a "life long passion for activity in sports." What school sports has encouraged is community bonding, which while important, can be achieved through other means that can advance other points of interest for society.
I'm against public facilities, as I consider that obesity to be a personal problem. If people want more public facilities and public sports programs, than placing a sales tax on fattening foods and then using that to build said infrastructure is one thing. Yet, the fat tax provision failed in Sweden and was heavily unpopular.
Yet, we have several private youth and more advanced age programs that are entirely private merely using public facilities found at the local school and parks.
Like I said, delete gym class and you open up money for other systems. If you want to "solve the obesity epidemic," then you need to worry about the people in the bleachers than those in the field. Even then, gym class is not distributed in totality evenly across the board to offer up a full exercise program before even talking about student weaseling out of a full work out.
You can't make someone exercise, you have to get them to want to exercise by making activities popular in public as a social activity. No different than the popularity of hiking in South Korea is done as an individual or family affair and extremely and widely used as a good form of exercise. The biggest driver for physical activity and eating habits comes out of the parents, not the school, either way. Which would then exhibit more emphasis on family based education than that within the school, no?
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():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Life is a beautiful engineer, yet a brutal scientist.
Gym class costs money that isn't being used to educate children for real jobs. Dodge ball doesn't make a "man out of someone" nor do I find the "advantages of sports" to be so overwhelmingly super awesome that I need my taxes to be syphoned away from fixing roads, bridges, giving people with real problems a real chance in life. Gym class is a luxury we can no longer afford.
A lot of classes in schools do not educate the majority of children towards real jobs. I could argue that Gym class does provide education for people that want to be gym teachers or personal fitness trainers, or even just teaches team work, but that's not the point. School is not, and should not be 100% about getting kids ready for either college or a real job. We can teach life skills to people too.
If we want gym class to help with obesity, we probably shouldn't play a game where the fat kid gets pegged 30 seconds in and then has to go sit down.
What better incentive to lose weight?
Seriously, though, as I'm sure you're aware, the idea is to cultivate an overall, lifelong appreciation for physical recreation. Not just to give the kids a forty-minute workout.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I'm against public facilities, as I consider that obesity to be a personal problem.
I would say that it's a personal problem, until the point that most of your country has it, then it is a national problem.
You can't make someone exercise, you have to get them to want to exercise by making activities popular in public as a social activity. No different than the popularity of hiking in South Korea is done as an individual or family affair and extremely and widely used as a good form of exercise. The biggest driver for physical activity and eating habits comes out of the parents, not the school
And if the parents are unwilling and/or unable? Educating kids (including instilling good physical activity habits) is at least partly about raising up the next generation of good parents. Once people are out of the public education system you're much more limited in what you can do to influence their opinions and habits. But if you can instill good habits while they're kids, then they are more likely to keep them as they grow older and pass them on to their own kids later in life.
Seriously, though, as I'm sure you're aware, the idea is to cultivate an overall, lifelong appreciation for physical recreation. Not just to give the kids a forty-minute workout.
"Appreciation" for watching Friday Night Football, not so much, though. Application for a lifelong pursuit of a sport is different than playing fantasy football and watching it with your homeboys.
Gym class costs money that isn't being used to educate children for real jobs. Dodge ball doesn't make a "man out of someone" nor do I find the "advantages of sports" to be so overwhelmingly super awesome that I need my taxes to be syphoned away from fixing roads, bridges, giving people with real problems a real chance in life. Gym class is a luxury we can no longer afford.
A lot of classes in schools do not educate the majority of children towards real jobs. I could argue that Gym class does provide education for people that want to be gym teachers or personal fitness trainers, or even just teaches team work, but that's not the point. School is not, and should not be 100% about getting kids ready for either college or a real job. We can teach life skills to people too.
I'm against public facilities, as I consider that obesity to be a personal problem.
I would say that it's a personal problem, until the point that most of your country has it, then it is a national problem.
You can't make someone exercise, you have to get them to want to exercise by making activities popular in public as a social activity. No different than the popularity of hiking in South Korea is done as an individual or family affair and extremely and widely used as a good form of exercise. The biggest driver for physical activity and eating habits comes out of the parents, not the school
And if the parents are unwilling and/or unable? Educating kids (including instilling good physical activity habits) is at least partly about raising up the next generation of good parents. Once people are out of the public education system you're much more limited in what you can do to influence their opinions and habits. But if you can instill good habits while they're kids, then they are more likely to keep them as they grow older and pass them on to their own kids later in life.
That's also the point in creating a culture of physical activity, look on twitter the most evidence towards a passive society is what is being talked about right now. Which ranges depending on what the most popular programs are on television. Typically what is also a problem is when you look at football, where children are taught to "beef up" and then gain weight to be chump blockers on the field and maintain that large weight through college and end up with health problems. There are also issues of head trauma and so forth. Then there is another darker side to the health effects of school sports which is that people who maintain a high activity level maintain a high level of choleric intake, then after they decrease their activity level but do not decrease the frequency and intensity of food intake thereby become fat in later and middle age as they move into a more sedentary direction in life.
And seriously, no offense to some people I know who are excellent nice people who are soccer mom's.... but they're overweight themselves which has me concerned as a person whenever I go to one of those games and see older people with heart disease and a part of Team Dunlap. It breaks my heart really to see that kind of hypocrisy and what will befall them in the future with pain and suffering that can affect a whole family with triple bypasses and so forth.
Again, most of the influence for a person's physical activity begins with the parents rather than the school's influence, hence the stereotype of the "soccer mom" who drives their kids around to soccer practice. Yet, whenever we have a system that requires two person household incomes, and now working even more jobs we're also encouraging the "snack food" system. Equally, whenever the fat epidemic hit kids the government went about to educate parents through a system, and so far has been able to mitigate the issue of childhood obesity through reaching parents who reinforce and control child behaviors such as eating. Schools only influence a mild influence, it is through constant practice in the way that habits are actually formed and reinforced through consistent consecutive reinforcement.
This is the same thing that goes for a lot of other childhood "problems" you reach the parents and then magically the problem starts to go away, when you actually work with the parent.
I've heard of a misguided attempts also about dealing with "fat kids" such as seeing a gym teacher that used to pull children out of class to exercise... during math class in a grade school. That's another factor to turn parents off to gym class whenever a gym teacher interrupts an education that leads to a good job.
The problem is dealing with the whole family rather than trying to control the children through the government activity has failed. Football? Traumatic brain injury and culture encourages a life long sedentary love for the game watching 20-40 year old men play with a pigskin. Baseball? So few pick up leagues and so forth. This is more of an issue with the strange hours people have to work to support a family, as well as the two income household, in conjunction with our addiction to the glass teat, and most certainly the death of civic and public groups (this seems to be reversing itself at least in the political realm but not the other areas like bowling leagues and so forth).
I'll appreciate sports whenever there's a buy in to look at lifelong activity than just "golly gee whiz how's the local teaming this year?"
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Life is a beautiful engineer, yet a brutal scientist.
However, one year during high school (which, for me, was from 2001 to 2005; wow, I now feel old ), dodgeball was banned from schools, and we were no longer allowed to play it in our gym class. Every student was very disappointed by this news, and the reason that we were given was that dodgeball was "too violent" for an academic atmosphere.
On one hand, I can understand that idea, since dodgeball is a form of combat, albeit a nonlethal one, and it can be serve as an extension of bullying that already occurs in schools.
However, I disagree with that idea, because such sports as hockey and football are still played in schools, and are not perceived as being "too violent." In my time as a student, participation in physical education was optional, so, if a student did not wish to play dodgeball (or any other sport), they would be allowed to not play the game. The same is true with football, hockey, or other sports in which physical contact occurs.
Also, all the students in my class understood that dodgeball was merely a game, and not true warfare, so we were seeking merely to enjoy ourselves when we played, not to actually injure the players of the opposing team. During my years playing the game, I do not recall any student suffering any form of physical injury or psychological trauma; of course, we used foam rubber balls with plastic skin, rather than actual dodgeballs, which are made of rubber and filled with air, like smaller basketballs (I asked our gym teacher numerous times if we could use what I considered to be "real" dodgeballs, but he refused, saying that such ball were too likely to cause injuries); I suppose that I can understand that attitude, but I believe that real dodgeballs are not dangerous if they are not thrown with too much physical force.
What does everyone else say about this? Do you believe that dodgeball is too violent to be played in schools? Why or why not?
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”-Thomas Jefferson
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of its user.”-Theodore Roosevelt
“Patriotism means to stand by one's country; it does not mean to stand by one's president.”-Theodore Roosevelt
So you have any evidence for that?
Without evidence, I'll have to assume that you're making that up.
Putting kids into social situations can open the door for bullying. Bullying isn't going to suddenly manifest while playing dodgeball. Bullying in dodgeball is going to simply be an extension of the bullying that is already happening. If a kid is bullied on the dodgeball court chances are that kid is also being bullied in other situations.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Modern
Commander
Cube
<a href="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/588020-unpowered-themed-enchantment-an-enchanted-evening">An Enchanted Evening Cube </a>
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Based on that argument, then the better investment would be increased accessibility to public gymnasiums for all age ranges and exercise facilities. The frequency and intensity of that activity in childhood only has limited effect for long term health, it is sustained physical activity. And considering that we have had sports programs for the youth for so long that is coterminous with the obesity epidemic, perhaps shifting the focus on "public education" with sports to "public health" investments.
Hypothetically, more sandlot and job teams like there was before a half century ago, offers up different communal gathering spots for communities and the public than just the local high school football game.
Facilities that are used by all age ranges that encourage lifelong activity are more important than gym classes that have thus far not proven themselves to do what they're sold to do. Neither are high school sports providing a "life long passion for activity in sports." What school sports has encouraged is community bonding, which while important, can be achieved through other means that can advance other points of interest for society.
I'm against public facilities, as I consider that obesity to be a personal problem. If people want more public facilities and public sports programs, than placing a sales tax on fattening foods and then using that to build said infrastructure is one thing. Yet, the fat tax provision failed in Sweden and was heavily unpopular.
Yet, we have several private youth and more advanced age programs that are entirely private merely using public facilities found at the local school and parks.
Like I said, delete gym class and you open up money for other systems. If you want to "solve the obesity epidemic," then you need to worry about the people in the bleachers than those in the field. Even then, gym class is not distributed in totality evenly across the board to offer up a full exercise program before even talking about student weaseling out of a full work out.
You can't make someone exercise, you have to get them to want to exercise by making activities popular in public as a social activity. No different than the popularity of hiking in South Korea is done as an individual or family affair and extremely and widely used as a good form of exercise. The biggest driver for physical activity and eating habits comes out of the parents, not the school, either way. Which would then exhibit more emphasis on family based education than that within the school, no?
Modern
Commander
Cube
<a href="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/588020-unpowered-themed-enchantment-an-enchanted-evening">An Enchanted Evening Cube </a>
A lot of classes in schools do not educate the majority of children towards real jobs. I could argue that Gym class does provide education for people that want to be gym teachers or personal fitness trainers, or even just teaches team work, but that's not the point. School is not, and should not be 100% about getting kids ready for either college or a real job. We can teach life skills to people too.
Seriously, though, as I'm sure you're aware, the idea is to cultivate an overall, lifelong appreciation for physical recreation. Not just to give the kids a forty-minute workout.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I would say that it's a personal problem, until the point that most of your country has it, then it is a national problem.
And if the parents are unwilling and/or unable? Educating kids (including instilling good physical activity habits) is at least partly about raising up the next generation of good parents. Once people are out of the public education system you're much more limited in what you can do to influence their opinions and habits. But if you can instill good habits while they're kids, then they are more likely to keep them as they grow older and pass them on to their own kids later in life.
"Appreciation" for watching Friday Night Football, not so much, though. Application for a lifelong pursuit of a sport is different than playing fantasy football and watching it with your homeboys.
That's also the point in creating a culture of physical activity, look on twitter the most evidence towards a passive society is what is being talked about right now. Which ranges depending on what the most popular programs are on television. Typically what is also a problem is when you look at football, where children are taught to "beef up" and then gain weight to be chump blockers on the field and maintain that large weight through college and end up with health problems. There are also issues of head trauma and so forth. Then there is another darker side to the health effects of school sports which is that people who maintain a high activity level maintain a high level of choleric intake, then after they decrease their activity level but do not decrease the frequency and intensity of food intake thereby become fat in later and middle age as they move into a more sedentary direction in life.
And seriously, no offense to some people I know who are excellent nice people who are soccer mom's.... but they're overweight themselves which has me concerned as a person whenever I go to one of those games and see older people with heart disease and a part of Team Dunlap. It breaks my heart really to see that kind of hypocrisy and what will befall them in the future with pain and suffering that can affect a whole family with triple bypasses and so forth.
Again, most of the influence for a person's physical activity begins with the parents rather than the school's influence, hence the stereotype of the "soccer mom" who drives their kids around to soccer practice. Yet, whenever we have a system that requires two person household incomes, and now working even more jobs we're also encouraging the "snack food" system. Equally, whenever the fat epidemic hit kids the government went about to educate parents through a system, and so far has been able to mitigate the issue of childhood obesity through reaching parents who reinforce and control child behaviors such as eating. Schools only influence a mild influence, it is through constant practice in the way that habits are actually formed and reinforced through consistent consecutive reinforcement.
This is the same thing that goes for a lot of other childhood "problems" you reach the parents and then magically the problem starts to go away, when you actually work with the parent.
I've heard of a misguided attempts also about dealing with "fat kids" such as seeing a gym teacher that used to pull children out of class to exercise... during math class in a grade school. That's another factor to turn parents off to gym class whenever a gym teacher interrupts an education that leads to a good job.
The problem is dealing with the whole family rather than trying to control the children through the government activity has failed. Football? Traumatic brain injury and culture encourages a life long sedentary love for the game watching 20-40 year old men play with a pigskin. Baseball? So few pick up leagues and so forth. This is more of an issue with the strange hours people have to work to support a family, as well as the two income household, in conjunction with our addiction to the glass teat, and most certainly the death of civic and public groups (this seems to be reversing itself at least in the political realm but not the other areas like bowling leagues and so forth).
I'll appreciate sports whenever there's a buy in to look at lifelong activity than just "golly gee whiz how's the local teaming this year?"
Modern
Commander
Cube
<a href="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/588020-unpowered-themed-enchantment-an-enchanted-evening">An Enchanted Evening Cube </a>