Dodge ball is dangerous, cops and robbers is violent, musical chairs is exclusive, and tag terrorizes.
Huck Finn must be spinning in his literary grave. Just recently a Colorado Springs, Colorado elementary school banned tag during recess, joining other schools that have prohibited this childhood pastime. Upon hearing this, I thought about the movement to ban cops and robbers, musical chairs, steal the bacon, and the kill-joys’ most frequent target and this writer’s favorite childhood school game, dodge ball. Then there’s the more inane still, such as the decision by the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association to prohibit keeping score in kids’ tournament play.
There are many ways to describe this trend. One might say it’s a result of the Left’s antipathy toward competition, the increasing litigiousness of the day, or the inordinate concern with self-esteem and hurt feelings. Then, if I am to speak only of my feelings, the word stupid comes to mind. Really, though, regardless of whether the motivations are good or ill or the reasoning sound or not, at the end of the day I find a conclusion inescapable. Slowly, incrementally, perversely, boyhood is being banned.
Make no mistake, the aforementioned examples are not isolated social accidents but part of a pattern. Recently I was talking to a friend who has two young sons, and he mentioned how he bought their toy machine-gun and revolver at a garage sale. He and his wife remarked about how it was the only way to find realistic-looking toy guns nowadays, the kind that were staples of Boydom when I was a lad. Oh, toy guns can still be seen – that is, when they aren’t prohibited by crime-ridden cities or crazy moms – but they don’t resemble anything John Wayne would have wielded. Often misshapen, more and more they come only in colors that, well, men aren’t known for being acquainted with, ones that some would describe as “girly.”
Getting back to the People’s Republic of Massachusetts’ soccer league, it was so concerned about the poor little eggs’ feelings that it also decided no one should get trophies. This isn’t unusual, as the practice of awarding trophies to all or none is now often adopted, lest a tear run down a cherubic face. Moreover, frowning upon competition – which boys thrive on – isn’t limited to frivolous pursuits, as schools increasingly dispense with merit-based academic models in favor of schemes such as “Outcome Based Education” (it’s nothing like what it sounds).
No doubt some will chide me for casting these preferences as being characteristically male. Sure, not every boy craves competition any more than every girl eschews it, but the sexes are different. Boys love games, sports and locking horns; they love hierarchies and high-fives; they love guns, soldiers and shoot-‘em-up games. Namely, they love things that are slowly being taken away from them or curtailed.
As I indicated earlier, there are many reasons why we’ve departed from sanity. The threat of litigation is real, and this article cites the case of seven-year-old Heather Lindaman, whose parents are suing their school because she broke her elbow while playing a variation of dodge ball. The opponents of such games use cases like Lindaman’s to buttress the assertion that they are too dangerous for children. I’ll only say that this is hogwash – as all activities entail risk – because it’s irrelevant to my main point. Regardless of why these prohibitions are instituted, the end result is the same: Boys’ passions are being exiled. Dangerous? You may as well just say that boyhood is dangerous.
Of course, we could do what one school that banned dodge ball did: Switch to yogic exercises. Wow! And liberals say that conservatives are no fun? Why is it that the most childish understand childhood the least?
While leftists may be childish, they conjure up pseudo-intellectual reasons for their social engineering like seasoned psycho-babblers. Tag leads to “conflict on the playground” and some students being chased “against their will,” said Cindy Fesgen, assistant principal of the Discovery Canyon Campus in Colorado Springs (my discovery is that the school is run by lunkheads). Dodge ball is emotionally damaging to less athletic children; it “hurts their self-esteem” is how it’s usually put. David Limbaugh wrote about this attitude at WorldNetDaily:
Diane Farr, a curriculum specialist in Austin, Texas, explained that her school district implemented the [dodge ball] ban to satisfy a panel of professors, students and parents who wanted to ‘preserve the rights and dignity’ of all students in the district. So dodge ball is a dignity thief? Of course, claims Farr. ‘What we have seen is that it does not make students feel good about themselves.’
There’s more. According to one anti-dodge ball crusader, ‘at its base, the game encourages the strong to victimize the weak. . . Schools preach the values of harmony, community and cooperation. But then those same schools let the big kids loose to see if they can hit the skinny nerd in the head with a hard, red rubber ball.’
Call me crazy, but the people who disgorge these notions just must have been skinny nerds. That is, the variety without the brains or ambition to be Bill Gates.
Limbaugh continues,
Educators also fear that dodge ball is not only violent, but that it and other games convey ‘a message of violence.’
‘With Columbine and all the violence that we are having, we have to be careful with how we teach our children,’ says Farr.
We certainly do, and that’s why we should keep them far from Farr and her ilk. These crackpots are just a few degraded brain cells away from saying (about football) that “violent ground acquisition games are a neo-fascist metaphor for war.”
Just as outrageous as these prohibitions is the persecution of hapless lads who run afoul of them. Limbaugh wrote of this as well:
The Washington Times recently detailed a litany of examples, including: a threatened suspension in California of a 9-year-old for playing cops and robbers, two New York 2nd-graders suspended and criminally charged with making terrorist threats for pointing paper guns and saying, ‘I'm going to kill you,’ and a 9-year-old New Jersey boy suspended and ordered to undergo psychological evaluation because he told another student that he planned to shoot a classmate with spitballs.
Could it be any clearer? They are diagnosing normal boyhood behavior as a psychological problem. After all, even if little boys don’t have toy guns, how many won’t point a stick or their finger at you and say “Bang, bang, you’re dead!”? It’s also interesting to note that the very same people who will lecture us for not subscribing to the notion that homosexual behavior is innate and healthy will swear that this normal boyish behavior is learned and destructive.
Then there is that which is truly destructive. It’s something dark, a motivation, lurking in the hearts of many who advocate this insanity. To wit: There is an increasingly common antipathy for all things male, especially in academia. This attitude was highlighted by Christina Hoff Sommers in her book The War Against Boys. Sommers cites feminists such as Carol Gilligan, who believes that we should, as Summers relates it, “. . . civilize boys by diminishing their masculinity,” and Gloria Steinem, who counsels us to “Raise boys like we raise girls.” And in this category I would also put certain “men” – and I use the term loosely – such as Harvard psychologist William Pollock, who wrote the book Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood. Really, our children do need to be rescued from myths, but they’re not of boyhood.
We should also realize that education has increasingly become a feminine domain. While in 1982 there were 1.4 female teachers for every male, now the figure is 2.1. This is not to imply that the fairer sex can’t have a sound teaching philosophy, but the fact is that far too many young women today are in the grip of feminist dogma. Moreover, the type of women who become teachers is also an issue; for instance, let us consider graduates with degrees in Women’s Studies. Such people are almost exclusively women, and since there aren’t many careers available to those with such illustrious qualifications, many of these ideologues decide to teach.
And the problem with such individuals is that – just as an Afro-centrist views matters through the prism of race and a Jihadist through that of believers versus infidels – they tend to see everything as a battle of the sexes. In their minds, the ever-present “patriarchy” will only be vanquished and women liberated (of course, they will never see this as having been achieved) once boys are sufficiently reprogrammed. Masculine traits that may enable boys to be dominant must be quashed, because otherwise they may dominate women. These are people like Swedish politician Gudrun Schyman, a feminazi who said that Swedish men (perhaps the most hen-pecked in the world) were like the Taliban. The truth is that the women in question are the Femiban.
Many will protest, of course, insisting that anti-male bias doesn’t rule their minds. And perhaps it doesn’t in some cases. But their hearts are a different matter, as these biases aren’t always so conscious; rather, it’s more a matter of visceral dislike, a feeling. The leftists in question see masculine symbols and behavior and feel an aversion, in much the same way a person with a fear of heights may get a queasy feeling upon seeing airplanes or tall buildings. So, unwilling to confront their prejudices, they manufacture excuses. Dodge ball is dangerous, cops and robbers is violent, musical chairs is exclusive, tag terrorizes. If only they would be intellectually honest and reveal their true feelings: Boys are bad.
Perhaps this is why these social engineers will see a bevy of boisterous boys and want to douse their masculinity with Ritalin. After all, it’s the closest they can get to their preferred solution, as it isn’t yet legal to turn them into eunuchs.
Jesus and Buddha two of histories greatest teachers were not fans of competition. Why? Because
it leads to arrogance, greed, selfishness, and a lack of empathy for others. Shouldnt we consider
the feelings of the “least of my bretheren” in the decisions that we make when it comes to games,
keeping score, etc. ? What is wrong with encouraging children to be gentle instead of fostering
the killer instinct that competition inevitably brings about?
When did Jesus ever condemn competition, may I ask? Chapter and verse please. And I don’t want to read verses about loving your neighbor or taking care of the poor, since they have nothing to do with competition, barring the use of logical gymnastics and distortions of context.
It’s been several years since I last played dodgeball, but I don’t remember any of my fellow lads’ “killer instincts” spewing out in an orgy of violence. Matter of fact, we were even brazen enough in our blasphemy to play the game at church! Worse still, I was first introduced to one of my favorite pastimes, paintball, at a church event. Paintball even! With airguns, and shooting, and everything. We even kept score! To my knowledge, none of the boys (or girls) that participated in those events ever went on to kill, maim, injure, attack, or otherwise harm anybody.
Here’s the harsh reality of the matter: Some kids are dumber than other kids. Some kids are worse at sports, or games, or don’t run as fast, or can’t jump as high. Pretending like everyone is equally talented at everything doesn’t do kids anymore good than the alternative. Especially when all of those equally talented kids graduate from college and realize that they really aren’t all equally talented. That they don’t really all get gold stars on their papers, and they actually keep score in the real world. Now instead of kids who realize their individual talents and skills early on in life, at the risk of having their feelings hurt, you have a workplace full of neanderthals who have no concept of their limitations and don’t understand why they can’t perform in real life. And then we have to have the government come in and give these people their gold stickers to bolster their self-esteem.
Encouraging children to be gentle would be nice if we lived in a gentle world, but the fact of the matter is this world is an extremely violent place and those who would advocate peace need also the means of defending themselves. Fostering a spirit of competition (the ‘killer instinct,’ which I see more as a survivalist instinct) would help to ensure that the next generation has the Iron fist beneath the velvet glove they should be taught to wear once they reach an age of understanding and have the ability to grasp the concept of moderation. Let the boys be boys, it worked well for our grand-dads, 1776 on up. Unchecked competition leads to the vices; teachers and parents that do their jobs right will instill in children the qualities that allow for competition while nixing the vices (the problem isn’t the competition, the problem is the parenting/teaching)
As for Jesus, I remember having read a passage in which He says He did not come to bring peace to the earth, but a sword (I believe it was in Matthew 10:34).
Patrick, allow me to try to offer “chapter and verse” about Jesus views on competition without, hopefully, “distorting the context”.
Mark 9:33-36 and Luke 22:24-26 I believe offer insight into Jesus thoughts on competition. In these chapters we see the disciples disputing among themselves about who was the “greatest”. I dont believe that I am useing ‘logical gymnastics ” in saying that they were in competition with one another. For isnt that what we are doing when we compete, seeing who is the greatest?Jesus response to them was that to be great in His kingdom one must become a servant of all and the least of all. Radical ideas. I believe that John 13:12-15 also reinforces this point
Jekken, Jesus words in Matt 10:34 are telling his disciples that when they follow Him they can expect rejection, betrayal, and violence, just as He expierienced all these things
As I said, competiton erodes our sense of empathy and or sympathy to the point where we may refer to some of our brothers as “dumber”.
We cannot change the often cruel way we treat one another by saying it has always been that way. We can change things if we follow the “gentle” and “humble” example of Jesus
Exactly as I suspected, those verses have absolutely nothing to do with competitive games in any way, shape, or form. Were the disciples even competing in those verses? No, they weren’t. They were arguing over which of them was the greatest disciple – which of them was the most spiritually superior. They were comparing their spiritual credentials. And Jesus told them not to be haughty and arrogant – to approach God as a child.That has absolutely no analogue to children playing dodgeball on a playground, or keeping score at soccer games, except by the use of the logical gymnastics and contextual distortions that I brought up originally.
Apparently you had some very bad experiences with competition when you were a child, but the concept of sportsmanship in competition is entirely based upon being a gracious winner and a gracious loser. It’s very possible to compete without killer blood lust, vicious anger, rage, jealousy, hatred, and greed (I guess you just threw that one in there for good measure, huh?). Many Christians participate in competitive events and still live the meek, peaceful, self-punishing, impoverished lifestyle that you feel a good Christian should. My former pastor plays basketball in a local league with all of his under-pastors (yes, as despicable as it is, we had a self-esteem shattering hierarchical leadership structure in our church), runs in a local annual marathon race and even enjoys an occasional game of chess. And in 26 years of pastoring, he’s still managed to keep a lid on his seething hatred of humanity, lust for blood, lack of empathy, and abhorrent greed. I guess maybe he and his entire staff are just oddballs.
By the way, pointing out that people are not all the same, and that one of the differences among them is intelligence, is not lacking in empathy or sympathy. It is an objective observation that is verifiable and measurable. If the ability to objectively perceive reality in our physical world is caused by competition, as you seem to assert, then label me an “arrogant”, “greedy”, “selfish”, “un-sympathetic”, “un-empathetic”, “violent” and “cruel” competitor – I’ll sport it proudly. I don’t think that suspension of one’s senses is a prerequisite to humbleness and gentleness. In fact, it occurs to me that Jesus himself was rather blunt with his perceptions of the Jewish religious leaders of his day. I’ll bet you he probably even hurt their feelings. I suspect that might have played some role in their motivation to kill him by crucifixion.
God Bless you Patrick, I hope that you are
not as angry a your last post seemed. If you couldnt see competition in the verses that I mentioned,
so be it. I suspect that you really didnt want to see it. Sorry that I couldnt find a verse that said
“Thou shalt not play dodgeball” for you. I guess I am used to people who can discern the
underlying principle of a text and then are able to apply it to life situations. Pointing out that
different people have different gifts is fine. My point was how you refered to some people as dumb.
I guess I should have thanked you for using the term “dumber” since you helped me to make my
point. I am sure your former Pastor is a wonderful Godly man and I am sure that you are too, we
were talking about children though and I respectfully submit that maybe less competition might mean a little less pressure and angst for kids growing up. I think that you are right about my expieriences with
competition as a kid not being very good. I was very competative in athletics and our coaches encouraged this there wasnt alot of talk about sportsmanship from our coaches we were a pretty
arrogant bunch. Maybe my expierience was the exception not the rule
but I dont think it is [been to any little league baseball games lately]? Well maybe you will tell me you have and that parents and children conducted themselves with the most genteel comportment. I sincerly hope
that this is so.
My last post was not laden with anger. Sarcasm perhaps, but not anger. I am not angry with you just because I believe you are wrong, anymore than any of the characteristics you described, that I repeated in my last post, apply to a person just because they engage in competition.
In regards to the verses you cited: I still fail to see how those verses have a discernible “underlying principle” that correlates to competition as a generality, competitive games in particular, and competitive children’s sports even more particularly. They do have a very clear underlying principle about arrogance and spiritual haughtiness. Since I don’t make an automatic connection between arrogance and spiritual haughtiness and competition as you do, I suppose that’s where our different understandings of that underlying principle come from. In any case, those scriptures would hardly be considered definitive on the subject from a theological standpoint.
As to your second point: I fail to see how the choice of language changes the meaning. “Slower” or “not as well able to gain momentum through rapid motion of the extremities” means the same thing. “Dumber” or “having a lesser measure of intelligence” means the same thing. If you take issue with the short version, substitute the long version. It doesn’t change the meaning. And again, since I was not using the word during the course of a competition, to describe competition, to describe anyone competing in a competition, or in any relation at all to competition, so it had nothing to do with your point, and “proved” nothing. You feel that using the word “dumber” to describe a person who is less intellectually gifted than another person is lacking in empathy and/or sympathy, as a result of competition. Your exact words were: “competiton erodes our sense of empathy and or sympathy to the point where we may refer to some of our brothers as “dumber””. Competition having nothing to do with my analysis that “Some kids are dumber than other kids. Some kids are worse at sports, or games, or don’t run as fast, or can’t jump as high.”, your point was not exemplified or magnified by my comment.
As for me, my experience with competition as a lad wasn’t all that great. I played gradeschool baseball, junior high basketball, which I quit because of a few obnoxious parents who ruined things for everyone else, and I’ve played paintball throughout my youth and into adulthood. I’ve seen rude and obnoxious parents, arrogant, spoiled sport kids, and elitist coaches. On the other hand, not everybody I came across was like that, and I had some good times and positive and fun experiences. But my personal experience with competitive environments is irrelevant; it was based on my individual perception. It doesn’t change anything about your experience with competitive sports, or anyone else’s. I would like to point out, however, that my participation in all of those competitive games was voluntary. Meaning that if my self esteem were being ruined by the fact that we kept score in 3rd grade baseball, I could quit and find something else to do with my time that was a little nicer on my ego. School sports are the same way: participation is not mandatory, except in the case of any competitive games during physical education courses. Keeping score provides incentive, and competition is not by default an uncontrolled display of raw violence, intimidation, anger, angst, greed, or arrogance. Skill differentiation, even when it hurts kids’ feelings, is not necessarily such a bad thing, for the reasons I mentioned in my first post. There will be scores kept, and you will not get a gold star on your worksheet just for showing up during your adult life.
Competition in itself is not the problem here; it is the intent behind that competition that must be questioned. Competing out of a natural desire to succeed and elevate oneself, either in sports, business, or other pursuits, is healthy and should be encouraged. However, competition in which the sole purpose is to outdo or harm someone else – i.e. the game of dodgeball in which a bully hurls the ball at the skinny kid’s head in order to break his glasses and embarass him – is negative and unhealthy. It is this malicious intent that sometimes works its way into competition that should be discouraged, not competition itself. In trying to rid children of the desire to compete, we are setting ourselves up for an egalitarian society in which nothing of note will ever be achieved.
On a side note, C.S. Lewis explores similar themes in a short essay entitled “Democratic Education”. I have not been able to find it in full online, but it can be found in Present Concerns, a excellent compilation of Lewis’s shorter essays.
If boys weren’t bad, there wouldn’t be any little girls running around.
Simple as that.
What’s funny to me is that elroi and Patrick are “competing” with each other to be “right”… and isn’t that the whole point of having supposedly “dangerous” sports and the like?
We compete, even as Christians… Matthew 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.
The Old Testament is not exactly bristling with “fairness” and “gentleness”… read 1st and 2nd Samuel.