To want to ban primary school sports day?

[namechangingagainagain]

I HATE sports day. I REALLY REALLY hate it!
Don't get me wrong as a child I was sporty. I did well at sports day and loved it.

However now I'm a parent Ive had to drag DS6 to school this morning. I have 3 school age children. They are all competitive but only the eldest is good at sport. He liked sports day. The other 2 found it the most painful day of the year.

Don't get me wrong they can all play a board game and lose without too much bother. They are all active and fit. They just hate sports day..... the sitting around...... the cheering parents...... DS aged 9 said " I hate it when they clap you and you're last.... it's really humiliating....."

It seems once you get to high school it's more opt in... which is fine.
FWIW I'm not anti-competitive at all but it just seems to me when they are little they don't have the emotional intelligence to cope with it ( or maybe it's just my children...)

( and yes I probably just should have let him have the day off in hindsight )

I used to hate sports days but YABU. I hated them as I wasn't sporty, (though i was in good shape for some reason) but that's like saying we should ban spelling tests because some kids cannot spell, stupid. You have to remember that sports days are some kids time to shine and are really looking forward to it.

PizzaFlavoured, it isn't in the least comparable to spelling tests: spelling tests don't happen in public, and no-one knows who has come last. Sporty children can still shine without subjecting the unsporty ones to humiliation.

What about the children who aren't good acidemically, socially, in performance arts or physically? And what about those who are good at everything. It's NOT an either or. I hate that assumption. It's like when people say if you child is a late walker they must have talked early or vice versa, no- maybe they are average or late at doing BOTH.

Judy,

You would be surprised. In every class I have ever taught, however they are seated and whatever their working groups are, the children could all give you a pretty good 'pecking order' in terms of academic performance.

There is no element of humiliation in it - and tbh if your school sports day appears to be humiliation, then that is how it is managed, not a necessary part of the concept of sports day - but children do have a very strong sense of where they and others rank academically IME.

Burn,

he point i was making was that, IME, those who are not good at both, or good at both, just get on with sports day in exactly the same way as every other day in school.

The ones who complain - or whose parents complain - are ONLY the subset of academic children who happen to be poor at sport.

OVienna- children can and do discover their abilities and strengths in PE lessons. Which absolutely should continue.

And whilst children do know vaguely how they compare to their peers in academic subjects, schools try to avoid public ranking of children on academic ability.

Maybe schools should hold a "who's the brightest child in each class? day" where parents can attend and children publicly answer questions and their placings are published in the school newsletter. Or maybe just publish the children's book bands?

I am joking. That wouldn't be fair.

Burn so are you saying schools should have no competitive activities at all? Cause that is what is sounds like.

And of course there are academic prizes, all sorts of prizes, that abound in schools that some kids get and others don't.

Burn,

I appreciate that it may not be possible in really small schools, but we 'band' children for races based on PE lessons - and also have a wide range of different races in which different children can compete. So the fastest runners compete against each other in sprint races, while others compete against others of similar ability in e.g, egg and spoon, and some races (think silly obstacles in fancy dress) are deliberately designed to be fun and tricky for everyone, levelling the playing field. Those who need support or differentiation are supported or differentiated for as would happen in class. But all races have the same 'status', because coming 1st in the egg and spoon gets you just as many points as coming first in the sprint would do.

teacherwith2kids, well I must be a lone voice as two of my kids excelled academically and at sport. Two were useless at sport but again they excelled academically. They all hated sports day with a passion, they all thought it was boring and pointless.

The team score is such a good idea because if everyone knows you are going to be last yet again, you know like you were last year and the year before, then you get moaned at/moaned about. Yes I remember hearing my sporty ones moaning about the kid who always let their team down, they didn't get much support from me I can tell you.

So can you tell me how it helps my grandson who struggles academically and at sport? I was told by one mother than the ones who aren't sporty aren't humiliated as everyone gives them a clap and I asked her how she would feel if she came in last and could see everyone watching her smiling, maybe a little laugh, shouted words of encouragement that sounded like mocking to her.

I was crap at sports.
My DSs were terrible at sports at primary but there's no way I would want it banned.

teacherwith2kids, you might think it is all equal but my GSs school does sports day just like you describe and the kids in the fun races feel patronised. I think you seriously underestimate kids if you think they fall for that sort of social engineering of events.

One of my GC was telling us about the day his dog died, he said his teacher asked him to run an errand for her and he said of course she just wanted him out of the way so she could ask the other children to be kind and supportive. My daughter, who is a teacher, said to me how it just showed how teachers think they are managing these things with great subtlety, and the kids don't disillusion them, but the kids know perfectly well what is going on.

Teacher- that's brilliant and an example of how it should be done. Not like at my primary where all the children sprint against each other and they are grouped randomly, so the slowest in the year can be in a race with the 5 fastest.

Granny,

I do see what you mean, but all kids do at least 1 fun race, even the sportiest. There genuinely only is 1 sprint race that could be perceived to be 'not fun', but even for that the children are banded so there is a 'faster' and a 'slower' version.

Of course the children know what is going on - in the same way that they know that X is good at English and Y is less good at Maths. But I thought your point was about the 'public' humiliation of knowing that you are slow but racing against faster children in front of an audience? From the children's point of view, what they mind about is that their team / house / colour wins. If A gets 10 points for winning the egg and spoon, or B gets 10 points for winning the sprint (or eqally, Z gets 2 ponts for being last ion the sprint, and A gets 2 points for being last in the egg and spoon), it is the points they win for the team that matter.

It does depend on the school culture - where everything is celebrated and mentioned in the newsletter or through other rewards, from chess to a charity walk to football to being helpful, from public speaking to maths and from cakes to clarinet playing, then sports day is just one thing amongst many. Where sports day is the only event of its type, and the only time that success is publicly celebrated, that must be very different.

(I have also experienced schools where there are 2 awards of equal value at sports day - 1 for the most points, 1 for best sportsmanship. Both 'team awards', both were equally prized. It's echoed at e.g. district sports events. Anyone can be a good sportsman and work towards that trophy, even if the other is out of their reach)

Sports day put me off sport for life. I found it humiliating, I wasn't sporty as a child although did have an interest but I couldn't cope with the cheering and shouting from peers. As an adult I am a bit of an introvert and absolutely hate being centre of attention (to this day I will cry and leave the room if someone sings happy birthday on my birthday I know I know...) so it really was a complete nightmare of a day for me. I would of done anything not to take part!

Wow, I don't recognise these schools where everyone is mocking and jeering and children feel patronised by races like the egg and spoon and where being clapped by their classmates and the parents is an act of patronising humiliation - where do you people live? It sounds fucking horrible.

They start clapping and cheering for them in a patronising way that only emphasises how bad the child is at running compared to their peers.

I find this incredibly sad, really? Everyone is just patronising them and the children think this too? I just can't imagine that, or maybe I am living in blissful ignorance thinking that everyone clapping Ds is genuinely clapping a boy trying his very best.

Dds school is more traditionally competitive than ds's but sports day (actually sports week!) Is still more about fun than torture.

And will say it again - in terms of time, our sorts day is mainly a carousel of activities, with 'races' a short bit at the end. The only audience for the carousel of activities is the parents / supporters of the children actually doing that activity (usually about 16 children, possibly 10 or so adults max), as all the children are doing activities at the same time. Only for the races is there a wider audience, and they're done and dusted in 30 minutes maximum.

Hazey, I don't recognise it either, tbh.

I wonder whether it is one of those things where there is a gap between the what is intended and what is perceived? Where the audience may genuinely be thinking 'well done, they're really trying their hardest, wow', but the runner and their parents perceive it as patronising? It's really hard, because of course both the intenton an the perception are really important to take into consideration, but it would be really sad to cancel sports day because some children / parents perceived the applause and support of their peers and parents (who in fact genuinely meant it) to be patronising?

Some parents might be supportive at cheering on the slowest child but some are patronizing them. The point is how does the child feel? You might think you are being lovely but if it makes the child feel bad then your intentions are fairly irrelevant.

The points for the team bit was pure horror for my daughter as her team, well it was her house at her school, knew she would come last in everything and they didn't want her in the team. I think it was also done with glee, by children and parents, as she was very bright and it caused resentment, we even had one mother invite her round to play and then proceeded to get her to do one of those 11 plus practice papers to see how she did.

The carousel of activities was the bit all the kids hated, sporty or not.

Looking back at it why the hell did I let them put her through it. Age brings wisdom and now I would just give her the day off.

Do sports day on a Saturday and let the teachers/kids/parents who like it do it and let other kids opt out.

It's just sports day. Your kids seem to have self-esteem issues. As posted earlier you don't call for a ban on maths tests or spelling tests because your child doesn't do well. Learning to handle failure and the fact that, however hard they try, there are going to be quite a few things in life that they aren't very good at, is part of growing up.

granny,

It would be a shame to tar every school, and every child's experience, with the brush of your daughter's unpleasant class mates and their unpleasant parents, though, surely?

Our carousel of activities, genuinely, get very high ratings from both kids and parents - they are essentially modified versions of field events - jumping, throwing, games skills like balls through hoops etc. I would absolutely agree that school ethos is a big factor in how much children hate / enjoy it though. I attended quite a lot of different primary schools as a child, and always came last (when I wasn't too ill to take part at all - hayfever season). It was OK to come last in some schools, less OK in others.

Let's just be fair and also have dozens/hundreds of parents etc watching while the children all do a spelling competition, maths tests, music competition- including all those children with no idea how to play an instrument or read music. Then we'll throw in a general knowledge quiz just for fun!

Or we could just continue to single out all of the unsporty kids and imagine that's fair...

Schools in my area do have a school concert / music open evening, where everyone who learns music - either as a class, as a group, or as an individual - plays, whether they have had 10 whole class lessons or years of 1:1. All parents are invited to that, too. Every child in the school has taken part at some point, because of the whole class music element.

And a general knowledge quiz, though like the sports day, that is banded before the 'public' rounds. Ditto the inter-school Maths things. Tbh, only spelling isn't done in public....

But I can see that having a culture where lots of such things are done 'in public', across all spheres of school life, with everyone from the gifted to the wholly inept taking part, usually on the basis only of normal school music / PE / Maths lessons, makes sports day just 'one of many' occasions, and thus reduces its importance.

I think sports day turns some children off all sport for life
^^ This

Yes I grew to dislike watching most sports. I would rather read or draw, anything but outside sitting still, waiting. I could sprint okay but that's pretty much it. And we didn't even get an ice lolly in my day either. I found it just a bore but don't think we should do away with it.
Sports day doesn't suit all but for some it could be their one day to shine.

ample, I can absolutely see that if sports day is spent sitting around, waiting, then it's a bore and children won't like it.

However that isn't how it HAS to be - I haven't experienced a sports day like that as a parent or teacher, though I did as a child.

So yes, if that is how your sports day is set up, lobby for it to be changed, rather than abolished.