AIBU to expect team sports to be explained in schools

[Shiningmediocrity]

I’m Gen X, so it was pretty standard for PE teachers to not explain the rules of team games. DC has started secondary school and played netball for the first time. I asked how it went and said how strange it was looking back that we were never told the rules of sports we played. She said they weren’t told any either! AIBU to think that this would have changed by now? Lighthearted thread btw.

Surely they must have been told something, otherwise how would they know how to play it.

YANBU - DD has had the same experience, games teachers just assumed they’d all played netball before and didn’t explain anything, also seemed annoyed (according to DD) when she and a few others said it was their first time.
She now hates netball and hockey as a result of being “made to feel stupid” 😬

It's kidsnot listening!

I never knew the rules of hockey or how to score in tennis. But I was in the netball team at primary school. In my experience most team sports (netball, football, rugby) at primary school are after school clubs and not really taught in PE, so if you didn't do the clubs at school then naturally you wouldn't know how play the game.

Agree. DD has left secondary school now but it was always assumed they knew the basic rules of eg hockey and netball in advance. DD had never played hockey before.

This is one of my most traumatic childhood experiences! I moved school when I was 12 and in my previous school we didn't play team sports. It was heavily geared towards gymnastics and cross-country skiing. We moved to a different country and my new school seemed to have been obsessed with ball games of various kind. I was constantly shouted at by my classmates when I joined in and broke some kind of a rule that nobody bothered to explain to me. A month later, my mum signed me off PE for the rest of my school "career".

I was told in the 90s and I went to a terrible school!

I've never actually thought about this before but it's so true!

Strange as I work in a Secondary School and PE is taken a lot more seriously now. Yes i
when I went to school it was loosely explained, however now it is very clear and they have lessons learning each sport absolutely correctly.

It was the same for me (Millennial).
I remember suddenly becoming quite good at Badminton after another girl taught me how to hold the racket properly. The PE teachers didn't seem to really bother teaching,.they just wanted to coach the few people who were already county level in the sport

I also told her about the shower ordeals - that doesn’t happen anymore! Interesting that some people were taught the rules back then. Maybe they presumed all children knew them. I thought PE was being taken more seriously now too and fingers crossed it’s less brutal. The number of people who hated PE at school, but then enjoyed all sorts of exercise is breathtaking and I hope that’s improved over time. I was just surprised that the rules still aren’t explained in 2026!

It also comes up in other subjects. Maths classes will assume a basic understanding of certain sports in word problems.

Not everyone pays attention to that sort of thing. We are supposed to be moving away from cultural bias in teaching, but some parts are hard to remove.

The primary school I went to wasn’t sporty at all. I never played netball, hockey or tennis until I went to secondary school, where it was assumed I’d know the rules. I didn’t. I still don’t. The ridicule, shouting and tutting I got when I tried to play put me off sport for life. I still don’t know the rules of netball and hockey or how tennis and cricket are scored. And before anyone tells me to go and google it, I really can’t be bothered.

When I was in 5th Year (year 11) way back in the early 90s the poor semi retired PE teacher got stuck with our PE group.
We fannied around half heartedly hitting tennis balls back at each other with no clue what we were doing.
He was shocked. He said "do none of you lot actually know how to play tennis?".
To be honest...we didn't.
So he started from scratch - different way to hit the ball, how the scoring actually worked etc.
By the end of the term we were actually playing tennis matches. First time in the 5 years we had been at the school 😂
He was a good PE teacher. Nice bloke. Died of cancer not many years later. RIP Mr B.
I have vague memories of it being assumed you knew the rules of netball when we started secondary.
And french cricket.
When we all got stuck in the sports hall because the weather was bad the PE teacher (not Mr B mentioned above 🙁) rummaged in the cupboard and announced we were playing french cricket.
Didn't tell us HOW to play it 😂

Mr B was a sweetheart.

He was.
Like all teenage girls we probably didn't appreciate him at the time 🙂

I remember we had a big rounders tournament between all the primary schools in town every year.
It always seemed like different schools had different rules of how to play 😂

We got taught using a blackboard for hockey, got taught netball aged 7 at primary

I ws put down for shot put in the district sports. Never seen one before in my life. Came last.

Along the same lines, I was never taught how to structure an essay or how to analyse a poem. So different today

Absolutely disagree. I've played netball for around 20 years as an adult. I loved taking part as a child but I didn't know the rules properly. They just weren't explained. It certainly wasn't a case of not listening, more than if you hadn't played "properly" in junior school you were left behind. It's such a shame. At least now there's the internet to look it all up.

I’ve got my doubts about whether the PE teachers know how to play

I'm not sure why people are so confused about the rules of hockey. There's 2 goals, a ball and some sticks.......

I think it's still the same. My kid has played girls' football for 4 years. She signed up for the Year 7 football team this week, which is open to anyone, regardless of ability. There were 8 from her team and 6 newbies who had never played before. The teacher just said to play a match and left it at that - god knows how the newbies got on!

Same with their Cross Country Run that they've had to do this week and last week - there's no intro of "let's build up to it" - (lets be honest, couch to 5k is a thing for a reason), and no actual teaching between this week and last week of "this is how you can improve your time, this is how you prevent a stitch, this is what you should do if you feel you're running out of stamina..."

DC’s school divides them on day 1 into “played at competitive/ club level”, “know how to play a bit but wouldn’t say I’m good at it” and “never played”. You self select and can move between the groups but for the first few sessions they give them those options. They have quite a few international kids who haven’t played those sports before so it means they get a chance to learn the basics while at the same time the teachers can look at all the A team contenders and get that sorted for the first week’s match.