Hi from Academia, where We've Decided that Dodgeball is 'An Unethical Tool Of Oppression' and it teaches athletic privilege

agreed

Look, I do think we have created a problem with over-protecting kids, trying to shield them from any and all uncomfortable situations. Lack of resilience is absolutely on the rise. But, I don't think mandatory dodge ball can be defended. In most playground games, unathletic kids mostly just run around irrelevantly.--every once in a while they may be embarrassed by a dropped pass or something, but they get to play. In dodgeball the rules almost require that they immediately get pelted in the head and then can't play anymore. There are a lot better ways to teach resilience through sports.

You made another good post. I am an older guy and when I played different sports as a kid certainly there was opportunity for embarrassment, but it was mostly between us kids. Many of our games were kid organized and played.

Today's parents are so intensely involved, put so much money and time in the their kids sports, make it such a big deal with paid officials and travel games, year round training and sports camps that they add so much pressure to the kids. And believe me it doesn't matter what parents might say, when adults are screaming on the sidelines, and when kids see what parents put into their sport, the pressure is there.

Adults take away the joy that we used to have when a group of kids got together and just played ball for fun.

Sad.

Dodgeball is one of the reasons for mass school killings.

It causes hopelessness, bullying, and then the anger that fosters into revenge actions.

Randolph Scott wrote:

Look, I do think we have created a problem with over-protecting kids, trying to shield them from any and all uncomfortable situations. Lack of resilience is absolutely on the rise. But, I don't think mandatory dodge ball can be defended. In most playground games, unathletic kids mostly just run around irrelevantly.--every once in a while they may be embarrassed by a dropped pass or something, but they get to play. In dodgeball the rules almost require that they immediately get pelted in the head and then can't play anymore. There are a lot better ways to teach resilience through sports.

I agree that lack of resilience is on the rise and it is a problem. There was a"study" done where they locked a dorm building in college to see what college kids would do with the locked door. Guess what was the first thing most college kids did? They took out their cell phones and called mom and dad.

To raise resilient kids, parents need to back off, let them have some autonomy and responsibility, let them fail from their own decisions and learn from them, and not keep scaring kids about bad things in the world.

My opinion.

The Riot wrote:

Another sign of the apocalypse and the pussification of subsequent generations. I just can’t imagine these kids landing on Normandy or Iwo Jima like my dad did.

Are you 70+?

Did your dad really fight in both the pacific and European theaters.

Did he really fight in the 2 most iconic battles of WWII?

Thank you for your service to letsrun old timer.

Wonder what those guys would think about the world view that "might makes right." I believe that is a fact of life.

A teacher friend of mine was on playground duty at a middle school while they were kicking balls around on the playground.

One of the kids kicked an out of bounds ball from behind her that hit her in the back of the head, and destroyed her retina.

She is now blind in that eye.

Could you use "politically correct" one more time?

Flossiheated wrote:

A response to several points:

That dodgeball teaches agility. No, it measures agility. And those who lack it sit on a bench and develop nothing for long periods of time.

^^This

This kind of "research" is nothing new. Unfortunately, this has forced it's way across academia for decades and has pushed out of the academy - see the reactionary political polarizatoin for the past two decades for one example. For an example that hits closer to home for this message board, look up the "research" on transgender athletes done by gender studies "scholars" that have zero biological training. Yes, those are sarcasm quotes.

Good explanation on the faulty research and areas of the academy that perpetuate it here:

https://youtu.be/kVk9a5Jcd1k

Joe Rogan podcast on it here:

https://youtu.be/AZZNvT1vaJg

The YouTube collection from the film maker, Mike Nayna is fascinating, in the same way train wreck is fascinating - horrible, but you have to keep watching. The three part series on Evergreen State College is something to behold.

Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have covered much of the topics touched on in this thread in their 2018 book, The Coddling of the American Mind.

Stupid activities wrote:

A teacher friend of mine was on playground duty at a middle school while they were kicking balls around on the playground.

One of the kids kicked an out of bounds ball from behind her that hit her in the back of the head, and destroyed her retina.

She is now blind in that eye.

That's a stupid point. Everything one can possibly do has probably resulted in an accident somewhere. That's just the price of being alive.

Consider the difference between being a male born in the 1890s versus 1990s. If you were European, then you got the "pleasure" of charging fortifications with withering machine gun fire and battle fields were 40 to 60 million artillery shells bombarded for months on end.

The current generation, well, I think we can agree the current generation wouldn't hold up so well.

The only difference is where on the timeline your life fits.

FDR:

"To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is asked. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny."

Empathy Piece wrote:

Exactly. What about the kid that gets embarrassed in math class but is awesome at Dodgeball? Won't he have issues for life? This is inequitable and highly traumatizing! I think we need to do way with grades and answering teachers' questions and tests and debate club and basketball and all live in sealed air bags with feeding tubes. Better yet, why don't we all plug into our Interlace viewers and commit to the samizdat.

This^ I used to knock fools out in gym class, break the mile record etc. Sucked at math - got tutored, got decent grades and got a college degree eventually but I knew I was never going to be an engineer.

As academics they surely understand that the first and most important aspect of any claim is the possibility of falsifiability. Can their ideas be tested? No? Then get them out of education. What nonsense.

The Riot wrote:

Another sign of the apocalypse and the pussification of subsequent generations. I just can’t imagine these kids landing on Normandy or Iwo Jima like my dad did.

Those days are over - we can just vaporize people with drone's now. No one is storming beaches these days my friends. Hell; you can blow up a hospital in Yemen from your parents basement if the government tells you to.

Fair enough. I think my post was more a response to the catastrophizing of the article than the actual decision of whether or not to play dodgeball. If the local school in my neighborhood simply said "dodgeball does not accomplish the educational and developmental goals that are intended, so we will not the game anymore," that would make complete sense to me and I would support the decision 100%.

But why the hyperbole? Can't we make a rational decision to not play dodgeball without throwing around claims of oppression and acting like being bad at a game is going to make a kid's life crumble?

On the first day of middle school gym, they told us we couldn't play dodgeball because it was like "targeting someone like 9/11"

Dodgeball (we called it "Battle Ball" in middle school) is awesome if you are athletic. We played this every Friday in gym class, and it was the highlight of my week back then. I definitely understand hating this game though if you can't throw or catch or get out of the way of a thrown ball. Not always geeky guys and girls who hated this game. Some bigger football-type guys weren't always good at that game either.

At a minimum anyone who continues with this game should split up the guys and the girls. Sorry, but girls just aren't as good at this game as guys are. I would be for getting rid of this game though, as fun as it was for me as a kid.

I'm not sure how to ever do this, but good athletes are definitely put up on a pedestal even at an early age, and that kind of adulation is not really good for younger people, especially boys. Gives them a sense of entitlement that they really don't deserve.

I would Not call it dodgeball with the average American at 300lbs