From Jezebel: http://jezebel.com/5979805/honestly-being-the-last-one-picked-in-gym-class-messes-you-up
Katie J.M. Baker
Feb 19, 2013
I was deemed hopelessly unathletic by a jury of elementary schoolers when I was six years old — before I ever had a chance to learn how to kick or dribble or catch — because I was the tiniest girl in my class. I’ll never forget how it felt to be picked last by my peers during P.E., day after day, year after year, the heat rising off the asphalt and my cheeks as I waited in line until I was inevitably left standing alone, again, staring wistfully at my classroom and wishing I was inside reading a book.
As a result of such perennial rejection, I never tried out for any sports teams or learned to do anything but grimly endure most forms of exercise, and, nearly two decades later, I still make up excuses when my friends invite me to join in even the most low-key and “fun” athletic activities. There were deeper psychological repercussions, too: I grew into a rather bratty tween once it dawned on me that I could make people feel small with my words. (Just imagine if Napoleon grew up playing dodge ball.)
There are no statistics on how many P.E. teachers allow kids to pick their own teams, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a non-jock who doesn’t recall anxiously hoping he or she wouldn’t the last person standing. Emily Bazelon describes the dread of finding oneself partnerless in gym class on the very first page of her new book Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying. Lee Radziwill — yes, Jackie O’s sister — recently told the New York Times that she’d never forget how she “was always the last to be chosen for a team, which was so embarrassing, and made me feel pathetic.” Comedian Alan Carr has likened the experience to ethnic cleansing. Less notable folk often discuss the perils of picking teams on parenting blogs; “I’m trying to pin down what was so particularly horrible about it, besides the obvious – and I think I’ve got it,” one mother wrote on BabyCenter. “It’s the fact that everyone is witness to your shame.”
Is there a point to all this systemic misery, or will the practice of letting kids pick their own teams fade away as more educational experts champion ways to focus on character-building in schools instead of just academic achievement? (Check out This American Life’s “Back to School” episode for more on that theory). Perhaps it depends on what you think the goal of physical education should be in the first place; the National Association for Sports and Physical Education believes it is “to develop physically educated individuals who have the knowledge, skills and confidence to enjoy a lifetime of healthful physical activity.” Does allowing kids to perform their own form of natural selection fit that bill?
Continue reading at: http://jezebel.com/5979805/honestly-being-the-last-one-picked-in-gym-class-messes-you-up
