Ie. the set up when sadistic games teacher picks two favourites as team captains and then the team captains pick children for their team. The last three are the fat kid, the kid with smelly breath and the kid with hearing aids.
Surely its possible to have a hockey lesson in a primary school with without the painful experience of being last to be picked. I feel that a teacher could have games groups just like they have groups for maths and english. There could be two top groups, two middle groups and two bottom groups. Each group of children would be challenged competition wise and there would be no popularity contest.
My son's teacher has been using this approach and I have made a formal complaint to the head teacher. My son was the second last to be picked as he is very uncoorindated. (Ds has had child phyio in the past) He felt sorry for the kid with bad breathe that no one wanted on their team.
My son's school will not give out any prizes on sports days to the winners for fear of hurting the feelings of children who don't get prize. It is not logical that they don't chose to spare the feelings of the rejectee child who is put off sport for life.
AIBU?
To think allowing children to pick teams has no place in a modern school
ReallyTired · 21/09/2012 21:44
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Message withdrawn at poster's request.
Blimey do they still do that?
Ah PE at school - if ever there was a subject to put you off for life there it is. I guess many many people have an awful PE based story from their past.
But then compared to us all having to shower together after PE (girls and boys separated obviously 
) getting picked last is small fry
I had a period solidly for 5 years
I am
that you felt the need to make a "formal" complaint. Really- do you have nothing better to do? I really hope that the head teacher smiles, nods and then does nothing about it. Apart from anything else, I would be genuinely amazed if this is how it is ALWAYS done (and no, I won't be taking the word of your child for that- particularly not at this end of the academic year). I teach drama- another lesson where groups/teams are used most lessons. Today, I appointed 4 captains (not "favourites"- carefully thought about choices to ensure that the class mixed and communicated effectively) and asked them to pick teams. Yesterday, I let the same class chose their own groups. In their previous lesson, groups were based on target grades. Don't assume that the PE teacher is being lazy. You have no idea how much thought and preparation goes into groupings- and evidence needs to be presented if required. Maybe the teacher in question is doing the "pick your teams" thing NOW, but I would be very surprised if this is the way it is done every lesson.
Omg those 'showers'
. Not to get clean but for humiliation purposes only. And our showers were always full of crane-flies.
Dd doesn't have showers anymore thank god, but her pe teacher sounds as awful as mine was. Why do they have to be so unpleasant?
I didn't mind saying about periods if it got me out of the communal showers Softly.
But worse than pants and vests in PE, is just wearing your pants because you've not got your swimsuit and you've been told it doesn't matter because you haven't got anything 'up there' 
(that was my mum not school though)
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It's a crappy way to pick teams or groups if it humiliates the less able or popular in the group.
Nodding and smiling and doing nothing about a legitimate concern? Like stepping back in time to my school days when I hear that.
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