Cameron: "Let's Keep The Olympic Flame Alive By Dissing Primary Teachers. Again"

[non sociopath skin]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/keep-the-flame-alive/9471401/Rid-schools-of-anti-risk-culture-says-David-Cameron.html

As so often when reading the "thoughts" of Bullingdon Dave, words fail me.

Does this man not realise that competitive sports have always been played in primary schools?

Does he not realise that you don't make people good at something by forcing them to do it?

Does he not realise that there are those who see life in more sophisticated terms than "Winners and Losers"? (By the way, have a look at the last general election results - which are you, Dave?)

Does he not realise that "the risk culture" owes more to the impossible demands of greedy insurance companies than to wimpy teachers?

And does he take NO ownership of the ridiculous teaching-to-the-test culture which has caused ALL THREE parties to condone the systematic marginalisation of art, sport and real learning in State Schools.

Nasty Little Bullingdonses. We HATES it, my precioussss!

The Skin

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Talk about a U turn - less than 2 years ago:

The Government plans to slash £162m of funding for sport in state schools. There's two sides to the story, a teacher tells Channel 4 News, but the move could mean young people get even less fit.

Education Secretary Michael Gove has decided to end all ring-fenced funding for sport in the state sector, prompting a rift in the Coalition and outrage from teachers.

Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Health Secretary Andrew Lansley are both understood to have voiced major concerns about the policy, which would threaten after school clubs and could reduce the number of trained PE teachers and sports coaches.
...
But sources close to Mr Gove suggested freeing schools from the requirement to meet targets, and allowing them to manage their own policies, could lead to more competitive sport in schools rather than less. He is also proposing a £10m schools Olympics initiative instead.
...
A spokesman for the Youth Sport Trust said the move would affect "the health and wellbeing of young people and greatly reduce the sporting opportunities available to them. IT will be a massive backward step on all that has been achieved in PE and sport over the past 10 years."

http://www.channel4.com/news/school-sport-funding-cut-row

It's doublethink - they claim that LEA schools have to be told by central government exactly what to do, and their budget for it is at the whim of the government. But their little darlings, the free schools and academies, aren't forced to follow a curriculum - and yet the Tories swear the results in both cases will be more competitive sports, which is the sound bite they want for the Telegraph.

Does anyone know of any sizeable country with as large a gap in effective power underneath the central government as England? The past 30 years seems to have been a steady move of decision making away from borough or county council (and thus subject to local voting), and to either Westminster/Whitehall or unelected boards/individuals for each 'site' (school, hospital, etc.).

[LeftishBrit]

2. Indeed - though this lot never need an excuse for dissing teachers.

Sport has declined in primary schools because of shortage of money - many schools and LAs have had to sell off playing fields; time (as you say, all the bureaucracy does not leave much time, especially for non-'Sats' subjects) and staff. Not because of some ideological anti-competition attitude.

Moreover, if you focus just on competitive sports, there will always be lots of children who stand around feeling bored, cold and left out, and decide to avoid all physical activities when they're old enough to choose. It's indeed my impression that the playing fields of competition-obsessed independent schools have produced some games-fanatics but considerably larger numbers of games-HATERS. Why should state primary schools be expected to do the same?

And of course Cameron et al are very fond of preaching about the virtues of academic excellence (when few of them do much thinking), sporting excellence (when few of them engage in much sport or other physical activity), the importance of winning (when they rose to power despite losing nearly two-thirds of the vote), and the general importance of effort (when Cameron has honestly got to be the LAZIEST prime minister that I can remember in a long time!)

[non sociopath skin]

3. Nicely put, LB ...

... and one could also mention Cameron and Co's lauding of "Fair Play" and "Team Spirit" while their buddies in the Business and Banking Fraternities are tanking the economy (again) with their shifty, devious and sometimes downright illegal policies and their personal greed.

100% with you on the compulsory competitive sports thing. I loathed team games at school and PE consisted of little else. Furthermore, it was assumed that you absorbed the skills of cricket and football by osmosis - can't remember anyone, ever teaching us how to bowl or dribble a ball.

No-one ever told me that I could keep fit by dance (including Indian), weight-training, non-competitive running, fell-walking or just by eating a sensible diet and walking instead of driving occasionally. I was left to find that out for myself later in life.

Don't the Bullingdon Boys realise that keeping fit and kicking the shit out of the other 11 aren't the same thing?

The Skin

[fedsron2us]

4. Strangely, I loved team sports as a kid because it was a collective activity

I hated individual competition.

Success was much more enjoyable and defeat more bearable when shared with others. It also taught me that a well disciplined group that had learned how to cooperate and played to the strengths of each member could do things that the individual could not. In fact at its best team sport is an expression of how socialism can work.

[non sociopath skin]

5. That's fine, Feds, and not strange to me at all. But what about those of us who didn't?

I've no problem whatsoever with anyone wanting to play team games.

I just don't want them to be forced on people who don't.

The Skin

[T_i_B]

6. No teaching how to bowl in cricket?

That's odd. Bowling properly at cricket is not the most natural thing in the world and a bit of coaching so you can do it properly doesn't go amiss with that.

The only 2 sports I was any good at when I was at school were cross-country running and rugby. one very much an individual pursuit, the other a sport where the chances are you'll get hurt if you don't knuckle down and play as a team.

[non sociopath skin]

7. According to my dad, who played a fair bit of rugby in his time ...

... there was a fair chance of getting hurt, even if you did.

The Skin

[dipsydoodle]

8. A certain William Ellis was first to pick up the ball and run with it

The game became known as Rugby whereas the offense became known as theft.

The only sport I couldn't abide at school was cross country running which I considered to be an advance cruel punishment for whatever had yet to be established.

I have no recollection of anybody getting hurt in "games" even when the boys were allowed to use the girls hockey sticks, on a tarmaced playground laid out for netball , for hockey using pucks churned out by the woodwork shop. I do however recall that on one such occasion the only boy excused games on account of being extremely fat and who'd elected to take extra physics classes instead, actually managed to pull the Magdeburg hemi's apart. Sadly there was an upright water tap next to him which broke his arm clean when he hit it. Games might've been safer for him.

The school was almost new when I joined and had a full size basket ball court in the gym. That year the school team beat both the RAF to take the UK basket ball championship. Not bad for a perfectly ordinary grammar school.

[T_i_B]

9. Whereas I used to love cross country running

Other kids used to take a short cut across a farmers field but I still used to finish ahead of them taking the long route!

For the most part though, I was pretty dreadful at sport. The worst sports for me were basketball and tennis, both of which I really do suck at.

Despite that, I don't dislike either of those sports in the same way I dislike American Football or Baseball.