Newsletter Editorial
The Great Dodgeball Debate!
Adapted from Editorial in NCAAHPERD Newsletter, May 2001
Have you seen the May 14, 2001 issue of Sports
Illustrated? Rick Reilly has written his thoughts about the dodgeball debate on the last
page of the magazine. In the article, “The Weak Shall Inherit the Gym,” Reilly argues that
America is going softer than left-out butter. Exhibit 9,137: Schools have started banning
dodgeball. I kid you not. Dodgeball has been outlawed by some school districts in New York,
Texas, Utah and Virginia. Many more are thinking about it, like Cecil County, Md., where the
school board wants to ban any game with ‘human targets.’ Personally, I wish all these people
would go suck their Birkenstocks.
If you haven’t seen the article you can read it
online using this
link. You can even email him your comments about his thoughts by going to the bottom of the
column.
The SI article was preceded by the story "The
Painful Playground" in the May 8, 200 issue of The Washington Post. Marjorie Williams
makes a similar argument against banning the game, but uses less bucolic language to make her
point.
The only way this pocket social movement makes any sense is as a mirror of adult anxiety
over children's lives -- a sort of smiling cousin to the ‘zero-tolerance’ policies that
grown-ups have devised toward drugs and toy weapons and sexual harassment on the playground as
a way of coping with the teeming variability of children's personalities and problems and
backgrounds. It suggests that if only we can systematically eliminate all the transactions
through which children express their aggression, we can eliminate aggression itself. It might
seem pessimistic to think that children bombarded by images of violence (Mortal Kombat,
anyone?), and all too often by violence itself, can be plunged into depravity because their
gym teachers sanctioned a game in which they threw balls at each other. Of course there are
kids for whom gym class is purgatory -- just as there are those for whom math class is a bed
of nails. Of course we should teach children to treat each other well. Of course we should
take seriously the damage that even the best kids can do to each other in the state of nature
we call sixth grade. But we can't eliminate social pain from childhood, and we don't do
children any favors by suggesting that its every manifestation is unendurable.
You can read The Washington Post story is
also available online using this
link.
The dodgeball debate started with series of
articles written by Neil Williams, the chairman of the Health and Physical Education Department
at Eastern Connecticut State University for The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation,
and Dance. In the “Physical Education Hall of Shame” articles, dodgeball is cited as the
worst of games that provide little fitness conditioning and inappropriately use people as
targets. (You can read these articles online in Adobe Acrobat format using this
link.)
Judith C. Young, the executive director of the
National Association for Sport and Physical Education, is more ambivalent about the game. She
simply states that other activities are more appropriate for learning motor skills like throwing
and dodging. Young says, "We really don't think it is a good instructional activity, but that
doesn't mean we think it should never be played." Not having players sit down after they have
been hit, along with other variations on the rules, can make the game less exclusive, Ms. Young
added. "Usually," she said, "it is the kids who need the most practice who get eliminated first"
(Education Week on the Web, Retrieved May 12, 2001 from www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=23dodge.h20).
Where do I stand in the “Great Dodgeball
Debate?” For years I have been discussing dodgeball in my college physical education methods
classes. In general I agree with Judy Young of NASPE. I think there are many better ways to
improve skill. Nevertheless, my majors point out that children enjoy dodgeball because it is
informal, fun, and less structured many other games and sports. I point out that the classic
game and its variants are played so often at some schools that I think their third graders are
majoring in dodgeball, either that or kickball! I have also been warning my physical education
majors that games using children as targets are increasingly considered inappropriate activities
for physical education classes.
So, where do you stand in the “Great Dodgeball
Debate?” To learn more about the dodgeball issue and read more news items about physical
education go to
PE Central's Articles Directly Related PE page or vist the PE in the
News page of this web site. |
