Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Dodgeball not suitable for Physical Education Classes???
Today in my Motor Development class, I learned about games that are highly recommended not to have your students play in Physical Education. The game that almost everyone loves to play in PE, is the most recommended not to play. This game, that I am talking about, is dodge ball. Why is this you ask? The reasons include liability issues and psychological torture. If you have your students playing dodge ball, and someone gets hurt, nine out of the ten times the Physical Education teacher is sued. This is because the Phys Ed teachers are seen as not providing a safe environment for their students to be a participating in. So where does psychological torture come into play? Well first it begins when you pick two captains, to pick their teams. Generally as it usually goes, the non-athletic ones are always picked last. This causes psychological torture because not only does it lower their self-esteem on being last but then they get picked on by others for being last. Once you get the game started, who generally is the first target? Once again, the non-athletic kids. This is horrifying, because they all come after you, yo get ride of the weakest link first. This causes psychological torture because the non-athletic kids become scared, and afraid to continue playing the game because they are always the ones to be targeted first. Unfortunately, in today's society no matter what type of game is being played, the kids who are not athletic always get targeted. Some other games that they say are not good to play because they single kids out, is duck, duck, goose and all forms of tag. So how can we have our students play anything and have fun? The key to this is to alter the games so the students do not become singled out and targeted.
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3 comments:
Thats funny because I worked at a camp this summer. All the kids wanted to play was Dodgeball. So i got the "gatorskin balls" and let them play. The first thing they did was target on the Non-Athletic Kids which is terrible! Also with the sueing statements that you wrote about, no matter what game you play and one of your students gets hurt, the parents are still going to sue. They are sueing Crazy!
As much as i like the game of dodgeball too, i think it should be kept as a afterschool sport for kids preferrably high school kids. This would keep it for people who want to play, and set rules would be inplace for "head-hunters" . I did work in a elementary school 2 years ago and a different version of dodgeball was used. Teams were set up the same way, on opposite sides of the gym and students had to bounce the ball atleast once before trying to hit the opposite wall. So instead of making the students the targets, it made the students target the walls, and if kids wanted to, they could try to deflect the balls with thier bodies. It would be based on a point total rather than singling students out, so everyone was playing all the time.
I agree with every argument you've mentioned.
I worked as a teacher's aide and assisted a handicapped girl that had cerebral palsy. Kelly used a walker to get from place to place.
The school district insisted that Kelly participate in PE with the regular kids. This included playing dodgeball even though Kelly wasn't mobile enough to move out of the way. Therefore, I made every effort to intercept the ball before it hit her. I remember when I failed to do so ... her cries were more than enough to send me straight to the principal to complain. I was outraged!
Can you imagine being handicapped and expected to play dodgeball? Can you imagine having to step into the ball's path and sacrafice your own body to protect an innocent child?
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