Can’t we ditch enforced school sport?

A conversation with a group of friends got my feathers all ruffled this week.

Two of the group have children at a school where doing sport is compulsory - but it has to be a school sport (private lessons don’t “count”). Their two girls can find nothing on the list of sports offered that appeals, so they were recounting their conversations with the school about the inflexibility of the situation.

But, I said, why does sport have to be compulsory at all?

And there was the cat among the pigeons, for me at least...

My own passionate feeling for the plight of children who are terrible at sport was at the root of my question - fuelled by close-to-the-surface memories of years of humiliation and misery at the hands of “school sport”.

To be a child who has no ball skills, no clear sense of the difference between left and right, no sense of balance and pitiful gross motor co-ordination in the grips of the then Christian National Education system was hell on earth.

Picked last for teams, left out of informal playground games, laughed at in phys ed - you name it, it happened to me.

If I had been born in another time, early occupational therapy would undoubtedly have helped. Yet, even in the 21st century there are many, many children who have no access to such a thing.

Finally, when I was in then Standard Eight, the girls’ school I was at colluded with me in just letting it all slide: I stopped putting my name down for school sports and the teachers affected not to notice. And then when phys ed dropped off the curriculum in matric, I was finally free of days of dread.

To this day, I can bring myself only to do yoga or walking or woman’s only gym with NO inteference from a personal trainer - though I did do a pregnancy keep-fit class that wasn’t too bad (I was able to tell myself I was doing it for the baby).

So, I ask again, for children like the girl I was, why does school sport have to be compulsory?

Members of the group cited rising levels of child obesity, the need in poor areas to give children opportunities for exercise, the joy of being part of a team and the life lessons one learns from that team spirit.

I take the wider social arguments and no doubt one learns a lot about team work - but I have never in my life been in a team and am not yet displaying any serial killer tendencies.

Yes, children need exercise and social integration and the feeling of being part of a greater whole , but if compulsory sport is all that is on offer, how does one accommodate children who just don’t fit into those paradigms, who are unsporty, or solitary, or quiet - or just plain useless?

Something that happened in my matric year may provide a clue.

At the school sport day, the whole system was changed. No longer did the houses get points per first, second and third place in each event. Instead, anyone who took part in anything at all got a point for their house, no matter where they came. The top runners got more points, but people like me, doomed to be last, got recognition too. In twelve years, it was the only school athletics day that I actually enjoyed.

So mass participation events can be made rewarding for all, if you take the focus off winning at all costs.

And as for compulsory school sport, I think we need to ask ourselves what it is for? The moulding of rounded adults? The prevention of child obesity? The prestige of the school?

If you take the prestige of the school (and sheer force of habit) out of the equation, the suggestions I offer might not seem so ridiculous.

Perhaps just turning up for rugby practice and doing the warm ups could “count” as doing school sport.

And what if instead of saying sport was compulsory, we said physical activity was compulsory?

How about an under-13 walking group? An under-14 gardening team? An under-eight run around the field three times and then play in the sun afternoon? What about an anti-litter group that jogs round the school picking up junk? How about just playing in the pool for an hour?

Any schools out there willing to take up the challenge?