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.

This.

Ive taught in KS1 for 25 years and am a big advocate of movement. So many parents complain about their children being hurt.

I wonder how many people complaining about teachers failing children in terms of play fighting have spent any time teaching young children recently.

The curriculum is also hugely jam packed. Schools have large classes, no staff, no money and no time.

We try our best.

Ritasueandbobtoo9
Bulldog was banned in my school in the 80’s. For good reason!!!!

I was in a girl school and they banned it with us too- I remember it being terrifying and the girls I remember being toughest went on to be key players in all the sports teams in secondary!!!

Were you in a single sex primary school?

Of course hurting cannot be allowed but what's the downward spiral of banning all physical contact? We end up with robotic children riddled with anxiety. Also the more you restrict contact the less knowledge kids have when they do get any kind of contact and may overreact in a negative way. All because the fun was taken out of innocent play.

How would you advocate movement in your school?

Are you an early years teacher @Leteer? How do you balance this idea in your classroom?

GlovedhandsCecilia

Were you in a single sex primary school?

yes, and in Ireland!

This is exactly the prevailing attitude. I totally agree with the fact it’s not okay to hurt other people - duh. But newsflash @Keepingthingsinteresting : this novel approach is not working.

Kids are NOT learning to regulate their behaviour - look at how many of them are falling out of formal education - they cannot cope. Children are going to get hurt sometimes; they are going to get into arguments. People learn by being pushed a little outside their comfort zone - that’s how you practise regulating your behaviour. They need firm boundaries and discipline and the space to play and try out different behaviours and learn which ones don’t work well, which ones are totally unacceptable - not gentle chats and bribery and “Incident Reports” to mummy. Why can’t we name it any more? He was naughty today. She was disobedient today. No, now we have to use “colours” to describe our mood, and “therapeutic” conversations instead of consequences .

It is entirely possible to help boys and girls to evacuate their energy safely without seriously endangering , disrupting, or bullying others AND help those kids to learn how to behave at the same time. They will learn by making mistakes within a safe framework.

Someone slips during a game of chase and breaks an arm? It happens. Heads bump when they are playing? It happens. I never knew anyone who had a truly grave injury on the playground in the 80s.

@Leteeryou do realise that girls outperform boys in most countries right? Regardless of the system, how lax or strict rules are, how sporty they are , starting age etc. It’s not a specifically UK problem or lack of “training” in UK teachers.

Spot on. School isn’t the right environment for everything for the reasons many have listed. Parents of boys or girls who feel their child needs more “boisterous play” need to take the lead in accommodating that.

I was that girl that played rugby and football with the boys in primary school and also did arm wrestling, riding around after school with boys and roller skating girls on weekends . If I didn’t have that maybe I would have been feral in school too. Yes I was very energetic in school but overall I did manage to keep it together and never injured anyone or anything.

I also loved learning and although I was very chatty and fidgety, I did manage to get good grades. It was hard for me to sit down for long periods too (later diagnosed as ND) but I just dealt with feeling bored sometimes and having to get on with it and do things I didn’t enjoy as much like craft activities or colouring in.

Also I’m a 90s kids but I have worked in education since and what I’ve seen is that there is a “boys will be boys” attitude in society that still exists in school and beyond. So if anything, boys are likely to get away with worse/more rougher behaviour than girls.

I know in my school some teachers came down harder on me. I recall one incident where we all played rugby which was banned that year. When someone snitched they said “it was all the boys and Robostea playing”, the teacher turned around and glared at me - ignoring the 15 boys who had been breaking the rules too!

I think there needs to be training on what's bad behaviour and what is literally just boys playing. I feel like teachers don't get taught this, many of them do not have boys in their family and won't know the dynamics of bringing them up.
Let bad behaviour be set apart.

No, this is ridiculous and patronising. You sounds as though you think teachers are idiots with no common sense or training.

Bad behaviour is behaviour which breaks rules (which are put in place for a reason) and/or has a detrimental effect on other students. In real life in the playground, the line between boisterous play and bad behaviour would be a very fine one. Pushing and hitting - 'rough and tumble' or bad behaviour? If pushing and hitting are bad behaviour, what is it that you consider just 'rough and tumble'?

Why is your thread titled about teacher failure?

Surely if you've read the research and understood what is happening in many schools, you'd know the failure is more systemic. There isn't enough supervision for rough play to be OK. There is too much curriculum pressure (even in EYFS) for outdoor unstructured play. There's also the number of parental complaints. None of these are teachers fault.

Once again, that’s parent driven.

Exactly!

We have brain breaks with programmes such as Supermovers, Imoves etc. We have a large field and playground and I insist on an afternoon break. I ensure my class move regularly in the classroom. Specific children have more brain breaks.

I do my best to support children when play gets out of hand. I deal with more boisterous children and how other parents complain. I support smaller and quieter children to also be active and deal with getting hurt. I watch my class closely.

I would like to do more but I have a crazy curriculum to get through. As I said before, teachers know the benefits of movement and try their best.

Nope. 'Boys will Be Boys' is the gateway drug to male entitlement over spaces and female bodies. It's the same continuum. I'm sorry if you find that upsetting, but that's the case. Sexual harassment is so common in primary schools as to be everyday business.

Everyone's Invited (a charity who work to tackle misogyny and rape culture in schools) work specifically with primary schools for this reason.

Come on, this is a wind-up isn't it. You don't really think that the barriers to women entering construction and the mechanic trade are as simple as "girls don't want to do those jobs" do you?

Ever thought about why girls might not want to do those jobs? Deep-rooted societal stereotypes on what is "suitable" for girls and boys, that start with play- here Johnny have these cars, you like a bit of rough and tumble, Jenny you can have this dolly? Workplace culture issues? Lack of female role models? Educational bias?

At my son's primary school, there were a few girls who played football appropriately with the boys. Most of them had no interest in properly participating in the game, though. There was a time where they made sure girls had equal access to ball games (they play basketball, too), but the girls would usually just want to mess around. Run away with the ball. Kick it the other way. Boot the ball down the playground. Or they just wouldnt focus enough to remember what team they are on or what way they are meant to score.

It wasn't about their lack of skill. The boys were very good at including disabked kids in their games. It was about the fact they wanted to disrupt the game for attention, frankly. They liked winding up the boys and then the boys chase them etc.

Soon rules were brought in around sports at playtimes and what is and isn't acceptable behaviour. When the boys would complain before, teachers would say they have to let the girls' play. After they were listened to and the culprits were reprimanded.

Agreed, parents are a big part of the problem in this case unfortunately.

Around here playtime is pretty free, apart from fighting or huring of course. However, if a parent particularly values rough and tumble, but feels they don't get those opportunities in school, surely it is up to them to organise their choice of activities outside of school time. In an environment where all children are keen to enjoy 'rough and tumble'.

Have you been in a playground lately? Or in a school PE lesson. Or just in a group of kids? There's not zero contact. Kids are in physical contact with each other all the time. I work in a girls' secondary school. They have physical contact all the time - in drama, dance, PE and also when hanging out at break times. Boys often play football at break. You seem to have invented a vision of kids all standing metres apart like anxious robots. This is not actually what happens when you don't allow them to fight and wrestle

My DS was starting to be considered a 'problem' up to year 2, he was a intelligent, boisterous boy. He was awarded a scholarship to a prep, PE was daily not once a week, games afternoons on Wednesday and Saturday. He did a cubs type group, karate and lots of unstructured outdoor play. Boys were allowed to climb the trees and build dens etc. The 'problems' disappeared. Admittedly, they reappeared when he was 15 and at senior school where it was back to books, exams and lack of exercise.

@Leteer it’s not an attack on teachers. Teachers follow policies and training and current ways of thinking. You can’t help the fact that the classrooms are full and the playgrounds are crowded.

When I was at school, we would run out of paper some terms. We had a very basic education with old books and happily no national curriculum and in 1985 I still had to skip chapters of some maths books because they were using imperial currency and weights. I didn’t learn science formally (we did study nature and draw a lot), or French, or about different religions. We had a huge amount of outdoor space and I remember being outdoors a lot - long lazy lunch hours on the fields in summer, damp autumn days collecting snails from the bushes or playing playground games.

And our teachers were so, so strict. We had one naughty boy (very serious family issues) who was uncontrollable, but the rest of us got in trouble and got told off and that was that. I’m a sane, competent adult without deep trauma from my schooling.

I would hate to be a teacher nowadays.

How would you advocate movement in your school?

This question reminded me of a teacher who retired in my children’s school. She was what I suppose you’d assume to be a typical pe teacher, a bit outspoken, very to the point, people loved or hated her. She did amazing science and history experiments with the kids, took them out for half an hour before the end of school and start of school and had pe twice a week, took them on nature walks. She was a hugely avid reader and got one of my sons into reading. The nature walks stopped when a number of kids (mine included), had bad hayfever flare ups, the end of day play stopped when other teachers said the kids in their classes were seeing children playing outside daily and they wanted to be too. When she retired I gave her a fifty euro book voucher and a card that told her that her year with my kids had absolutely shaped them and she was one of the best teachers I’d ever come across. Saying that some of the kids in that class didn’t click with her and one or two of the very quiet kids were wary of her so I know she wasn’t for everyone but the class were very well behaved, very socialised etc after her and it still seems amazing that a pe teacher prioritised getting them out but didn’t try to make them all football kids as school generally does

Maybe it is different in a single sex girls school but most of the secondary schools around my way have a total ban on any physical contact between students. ANY contact. I mean you cant help a friend up who jas slipped in the ice. "You may help them gather their belongings, but you must never touch them. If they need physical assistance as they are injured, call a teacher". This was communicated to us at a open day.

These are mixed schools.

I'm a primary school teacher. Supervising a minimum of 60 children in sometimes quite a small playground setting means there have to be boundaries. It's not like having a couple of boisterous kids playing in your back garden. Things that start as games can often end up with fighting and kids getting hurt, sometimes on purpose. Then the parents of the child that was hurt come in and complain.

Football is the worst. Constant arguments, dangerous tackling behaviour that would have you sent off in a proper match, dominated by a few kids who never give others a look-in. Booting balls across a small playground space with no thought for all the others trying to play. Sorting out the post-football issues in the classroom is the bane of my life. We now only have football when the weather is dry enough to use the field.

We have plenty of different types of equipment available - far more than in my schooldays. There is space to run and play tag but also, importantly, quiet spaces where thise who don't want to be knocked down or hit by balls can also enjoy their break times.