To believe sports day should be optional?

[SafeHeaven]

Dd is starting to worry about sports day, she hates it every year and always comes last.

She hates all the parents watching her whilst she struggles with the sack etc and always has tears when everyone has finished and she still has a way to go.

Ive asked the school if sports day can be optional as it’s not worth the anxiety leading up to it and the humiliation of it. I’ve been told they have never been asked this before and they will need to discuss it with SLT.

Listening to the radio the other day, many people have bad memories of it.

AIBU to request sports day is optional?

My DD hates sports day. She gets very anxious with what feels like 'all eyes' on her. She is in a right state for a good week before and after the event. I have made her go every year up until now... but if she doesn't want to go this year I wont be making her go to school that day as I can't watch her anxiety increase any more.

Phone her in sick and take her to do something she enjoys
Job done

Here is my take on it.

Would it be seen as reasonable to get the whole school and the parents together to watch ALL the children play a musical instrument, regardless of their of skills or musical ability? Let's make them stand there and make complete fools of themselves.

This is what it is like for non-sporty uncoordinated young people on sports day - it is hell.

If we want young people to be fit and to enjoy being active then pressure and ritual humiliation need to be eliminated from schools.

I am a teacher. My school do sports day quite humanely. I still think it's a terrible waste of a day for me and some of the kids. I was thoroughly put off all types of team sport by my own school days.

When challenged for my lack of enthusiasm I say innocently that I'm looking forward to the compulsory painting day, and the day when we all learn Handel's Messiah from scratch and sing it.

But but...I can't paint! I can't sing!

Yeah, you should practice.

*How is it inclusive? At my kids' secondary school, they play netball, basketball, rounders/softball, track and field. Oh and ping pong. Tennis, swimming, etc.

Exactly what I did at school. No yoga. No non competitive physical activity at all.*

I think this is one of the areas where class reps, the PTA and the governing Board - and parents generally, either by joining one of the above or pushing for them to consider - have a role to play in making the physical curriculum more diverse. I can’t believe, for example, that in a primary school with perhaps 30 core staff, most of them youngish and female, not one of them will practice yoga as a hobby and be prepared to lead on that for PE curriculum.

My autistic dd is dreading it too and I'm seriously thinking of keeping her off school for the day. Doesn't help that she has been put in a group with a boy from another class that she doesn't know and a girl from her class who she isn't really friendly with, meanwhile her 2 best friends are in a group together. Why can't school think things through properly she is quite sporty and I think she will do well but she's getting in a state.

I don't think being there should be optional. You can be a part of it in various ways even if not taking part in a race. Being the judge for an event if one requires it, saying 'ready steady go' to start a race, for example.

So dd teacher has approached me today and said the SLT and the head haven’t got back to him, however the head did say that if one person opts out then a lot of others will too.

He also said he hated sports day when he was a kid and so did most people he knew.

So we are putting this generation through what we went through, even though most of us have bad memories of it.

He didn’t know what to say to that!

He said he wanted me to know that if the answer is no it isn’t optional then it wasn’t his decision as he has no problem with dd opting out.

I did let him know that if it wasn’t optional, then dd would be in just before lunch after the sports event had ended on that day

My DS(5) just had sports day. At his school they spent the morning doing sporting activities like rugby, golf, dance and in the afternoon they had traditional races that parents/family could come and watch. The children got to choose if they wanted to participate and what races they wanted to do. I wasn't aware of any children fully opting out (I was only watching for DS) but I think it's a really good idea for it to be optional. The anxiety of lots of people watching can be rough. Plus there might just be reasons why a child is just not up to racing and they shouldn't be forced to when sports day is just meant to be "fun".

I honestly think sports day will evolve so it’s just those who are sporty/ want to run / compete so a much smaller event with a reduced spectator number. In the same way that you will generally only get talented musicians in music competitions and so on and so forth. I think this annual debacle of humiliation and anxiety will be a thing of the past soon . Fingers crossed 🤞

Girls are being conditioned by society to think that sports are less feminine and that they will be judged for taking part. Once they are out there they have a good time. It’s the weight of judgement and peer pressure that stops them.

I’m not about to reinforce the idea that sweating and doing sport is unfeminine or that they should be ashamed of their bodies.

There are plenty of things we, as adults, are able to opt out of in life if we don't enjoy them. Competitive sports and public humiliation are included.

They don’t have the whole school and parents watching though, do they? On,y the teacher knows if they did badly.

So making girls do something they hate helps change perceptions? You realise when they leave school they will never play sport again because the memory is so painful.

maybe you could listen to them, perhaps they’d prefer yoga or Pilates.

I never understand this viewpoint. Maybe maths should be optional for those who find it hard? Or English if you’re dyslexic?

The subjects shouldn't be optional. But having to take part in big public competitions in them should be. When I was 6 or 7, one of our teachers used to give us weekly arithmetic tests, and then divide us into the 'Very Goods', who had to go in front of the class and receive applause; the 'Fairly Goods', whose names were read out and were otherwise ignored; and the 'Very Bads' who were shouted at in front of the class. I doubt that this improved anyone's maths, and it would now be seen as very bad practice. So should similar practices with regard to sports.

I never understand why people don't realise how silly this argument is.

Maths and English are necessary, and a child who leaves school without a good grasp on both has a hurdle in their way. Neither of these things is true of sports day. It gets treated differently because it doesn't actually matter.

How is spending one day a year in competitive sports in any way comparable to teaching over 11 years in central subjects in the curriculum which are pretty essential to children's futures?

There are plenty of other things in school that are optional. For instance, attending clubs, taking part in school plays and concerts, attending religious worship. If a child curls up in horror at performing in public they don't have to audition for the school play. If they curl up in horror at publicly staggering in last in the Y5 100 metres, why should they have to do that?

I think a lot of these sports days are being done very badly. Sports day was my favourite day of the year. It was something I looked forward to and I had been through a lot at that age and needed something to look forward to. However, at my school, no one was forced to do an event they didn't want to do.
There was a range of events. Some kids did things like handing out the water, slices of oranges, handing out programmes. Some sat in the crowd. You chose what events you wanted to do. There was barely any inter school athletics so there wasn't really another chance to shine for kids who loved athletics - there was the district schools championships (which was held outside of school time so a lot of people couldn't go) and that was it, there were no competitions against other schools.

I think if it's done right it can be a great day but people have to be allowed to do what they want and if that's designing the programme or whatever that's fine too.

It is my best memory of school in a not very bright period. I would have hated to have lost that.

@SaltandPeppasHere

I never understand this viewpoint. Maybe maths should be optional for those who find it hard? Or English if you’re dyslexic?

As has been pointed out many times on this thread already this argument is a false equivalence.

No one is proposing that the weekly lessons of PE becomes optional, this should remain a weekly compulsory lesson, just like maths and English are.

However, what they are suggesting is that the sports day competition becomes optional just like the spelling bee competition or the maths Olympiad competitions are optional in schools. We don't force all children to compete in spelling bee competitions, so why do we force all children to compete in sports competitions?

Apart from tradition, I've not seen a decent justification yet.