Why are teachers failing the narrative for boys, is boy playing incompatible with school

[Leteer]

Does anyone feel like boy play is deeply unsupported and thoroughly discouraged in school up to the point where boys are questioning if play is actually good / encourages boys to question if their hard wired need for play is a bad thing. Isn't this a downward spiral for boys to not support what nature gave them which could in turn affect academic work.

My own view - from experience - is that it's a combination of not wanting the endless hassle from parents (similar to messy play) and an approach to risk that is focused on elimination/maximum minimisation rather than management.

They're active choices that feed into the wider ethos of a school - but not always recognised as such because it's often incremental rather than the conscious implementation of a particular approach.

I dodnt say there was no sexism. I said that they are more accepting of girls who can compete with them or at least not disrupt them. Has it occurred to you that you may not perceive it as disruptive? You just see the girl included with no complaints so assume everyone is enjoying it enough?

this is exactly what's happened to my girls. Good footballers, genuine interest, actively and aggressively excluded from games by the boys, all the more so because they ARE serious about it and CAN play

Exactly the scenario I am talking about. I see this play out in schools a lot. Not sure why some posters are hellbent on denying sexism in kids sports and in the playground exists considering it’s so prevalent in society.

I’ve spoken to countless parents who have said their girls have experienced the same thing.

I’ve even seen some fathers who were once quick to minimise sexism get quite annoyed about their girls facing it and finally realising that yes discrimination against women is a problem.

A lot of boys are currently being raised in extreme sexism and encouraging it in each other

Yep! We have a massive problem with sexism, it never went away of course but now we have this recent resurgence of red pill type stuff which kids are being exposed to at home/online etc.

This will of course affect how some kids behave towards girls in sports.

Not really. I see it every day(primary-across all key stages), though much trickier in winter months. It’s incredibly rare to have lone children or groups of them that do nothing at playtime and that stay that way forever. And even if that were the case, shoving them inside by an open window like a PP suggested, isn’t a good thing.

my daughters' primary had a fenced off football court in the playground. The boys physically prevented the girls getting in, daily. Would block the gate. One boy, about 8, was so distraught by my daughter insisting she had a right to enter that he had a full on-the-ground-crying tantrum. Perfectly nice, mixed-demographic state school.

If it means that we have to limit the physical activity of other students to accommodate people who want to peacefully sit down, then yes, the sitters being inside would be the better thing.

And we are telling you that girls who are playing decently and even better than some boys are being excluded.

Other posters are saying the same. This is due to sexism. Not Emily.

I am glad you acknowledge it does exist on the playground and therefore you should know that it can and will affect how boys treat girls playing football.

And this is why I said you can’t even cope with your kid sharing the playground with other children.

So @GlovedhandsCecilia teaches her sons that girls are silly, frilly, giggly spoilsports when playing football and also that these silly, frilly, giggly girls think all men are sex pests.

What could possibly go wrong with this pedagogical approach?

And why is this poster saying there are 100,025 giggly girls joining the lunchtime kicking? Because of unconscious or perhaps not so unconscious bias, of course. We all know how this works.

In reality, boys who are told they are victims of unfairness because of 'annoying' 'silly' girls end up not being very resilient when actual, real-life unfairness kicks in, which we all know cannot be avoided in this world.

They are the ones who get aggressive or remain mummy's boys. They are likely to do less well in the workplace working alongside successful women.

And nowadays, they tend to get into deserved trouble when they express sexist crap in school.

This sort of victimised worldview really doesn't help them grow and succeed.

You’re comparing sexual abuse with not giving a child a chance to learn how to play football because she doesn’t have a penis - this has to be a wind up.

Horrible but not surprising.

I had this in my school in the 90s, the girls in my class were very compliant shall we say, so none of them really challenged the boys “ no girls allowed” rule, but I could see the boys blocking gates if they had been challenged.

Sad to see not much has changed in some respects.

Of.couese sexism exists. Emily exists because of sexism. Emily's dad would never let his son behave that way in sporting match but she's a girl so being giggly and annoying like that is seen as feminine and cute.

No I am talking about schema in psychology. It's how humans work.

absolute wind up. Ridiculous. I think this might be the mother who told me I had upset her son by asking him to stop physically preventing my daughter from joining a football game...?! Boys being diminished or traumatised by girls' achievements and capabilities is a manosphere narrative that needs serious ignoring.

Common forms of unconscious bias

Affinity bias
The natural inclination to favour individuals whose backgrounds, interests, or appearance resemble our own.

Confirmation bias
The propensity to seek out and interpret information in a manner that reinforces our pre-established convictions, while disregarding any evidence that might contradict them.

Attribution bias
The tendency to evaluate others' actions based on assumptions, rather than objective facts. For instance, we may credit our own achievements to skill, while attributing the success of others to mere fortune.

last, not least

Gender bias
The practice of making judgments about a person’s abilities and competence based solely on their gender.

Yep, it’s absurd.

I also wanted to say about this line of
thinking - where does it end?

If a bunch of (insert race) kids decided (insert race) kids couldn’t play because they had previous bad experiences of (insert race) it would be correctly deemed as discrimination.

Same applies to boys and girls!

Ive found a pattern with men being abusive, so I am wary of men. Boys have found a pattern of girls disrupting their football games, so they are wary of girls joining them.

😏🤔💅👀

My sons are related to an ex Lioness. I really doubt they'd exclude a girl for her sex.

Yet if you've lived a life where your contact with any demographic has been traumatic or negative, then you will likely be wary of close interaction in the future. See every traveller thread on mumsnet.com
.

It's how humans work

As opposed to MRA agents of misogyny?

You mention humans, yet there is no humanity in what you say.

Just the silly giggling that ordinary girls do then. And all the fanged biting. 😅

Jamal heard his dad say women’s football is a waste of time and change the channel when the lionesses came on.

So the next day Jamal jeers at Priya when she joins the game despite her scoring the first goal of the lunchtime match.

Little boys who try and exclude Priya are that way, because of wider sexism. Do you acknowledge that?

The ex lioness must be mortified about @GlovedhandsCecilia 's views.

corrected

You will never justify boys excluding Priya from football on the assumption they are like Emily. It is sexism plain and simple.

Part of the problem is that playgrounds aren't big enough.

Of course it isn't fair if the boys play football in the middle and the girls get stuck round the edge. Read Caroline Criado Perez 'Invisible Women', this is a proven phenomenon.

It also isn't fair if the kids can't run around and let off steam. My son's school banned Bull Dog for everyone!

I don't know where I stand on Emily and/or Priya. Do we need to be absolutely inclusive at all times? Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

Do we need a football space set aside specifically for girls (because there are more and more girls playing now). Yes, actually this is what we need then Priya can help Emily improve and they can both go on to play for England.

Allowing kids to have the play they need requires:

• space - which costs money
• probably higher numbers of lunch time supervision staff- which costs money
• designating some spaces as 'quiet' areas and others as football or running areas.

But we won't ever get enough space because as they make each school, incrementally bigger, rather than build new ones, the playground space shrinks.

My old junior school, has half the space it used to. There were two play grounds, one was for girls and one for boys (this was the 1970s). Yes, it's not politically correct now but the girls had a WHOLE playground. We could actually take in a massive long rope and do group skipping in the middle of it. That's now being used part as a staff car park and part has been sold off.

My old secondary has put in swish Astro that the kids aren't allowed to use at break but which they can rent out after school and at the weekend to make money. It also has less space because of all the new classrooms that went up when the new estates were built.