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Point Of View! with Barb Sumner Burstyn
The Morality of Dodge Ball -
June 4 2002
Click here to see: www.find-a-keeper.com
a new way to separate the cast-offs from the keeper
They’re at it again, those stalwart protectors of the safety and
well being of our children. In a recent Time magazine article: Scourge
of the Playground, the magazine reported that more schools across
America are joining the ban on Dodge Ball, saying it's too violent.
The article went on to warn that dodge ball could be an incubator
for later aggressive, even violent behavior. "It makes children
targets, it can ridicule poor performers or unskilled players, and
there’s a coeducational inequity and a chance for injury,” says
Bill Volusia county schools' specialist for physical education.
In his defence of the game Mr Poniatowski also says it's an opportunity
to teach concepts to children like throwing mechanics, catching
skills, agility, hand-eye coordination, lateral and forward movement.
But Mr Poniatowski and the increasing number of educationists fighting
to have the game banned have missed a few salient points about Dodge
Ball.
It’s a perfect game for the game of life. The Greeks knew it, they
played a form of Dodge Ball known as Trigon and the game has existed
in some form ever since. But the enduring nature of Dodge Ball is
not because it develops good hand-eye coordination. Dodge Ball has
persisted because it’s a game that transcends itself. It’s about
far more than one kid aiming and throwing a ball at another. It’s
a game of morals. And in the playing; in the choosing and aiming
and throwing and hitting and being hit the big truths about life
are imparted. Dodge ball is not about playing fair. It’s about getting
picked on, about being the underdog and being bullied. But it’s
about the sudden opportunity to go from underdog to conqueror (and
perhaps without the bully the weak have no opportunity to rise up)
to sense the power of the often inevitable turning of tables that
characterizes real life in the adult world. And always it’s about
making moral choices.
And that’s the real beauty of Dodge Ball. Because once you have
that ball in your hand you must make a moral decision. Even the
smallest child must confront it – however subconsciously. Do you
aim for the weakest child and score a hit or take the risk of going
for the bully and his retaliation?
But it’s banning is also about the feminization of childhood activity.
As Mr Poniatowski says, Dodge Ball creates a coeducational inequity.
In other words; if the girls can’t or won’t play the game then neither
should the boys. The very actions of aiming and throwing are male
actions and they have their roots in deep male mythology. But it’s
as though all male type activities are bad. Most parents figured
out early that the simplistic idea of giving boys dolls and girls
trucks would reprogram inherent behaviours was no more than feminist
propaganda. Of course it didn’t work. Little girls still nurture
dolls until they were old enough to realize that nurturing is no
longer politically correct just as little boys will still point
and fire anything from a chicken leg to a chop stick until they’re
old enough to know they’ll incur the wrath of every feminist parent
and school board in the country.
But contrary to the accepted wisdom it’s not the now prohibited
games such as cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians or the pointing
of finger guns or even the drawing pictures of weapons or soldiers
that has contributed to the increase of violent and often murderous
behaviour among teenage boys. It is among other things, the naiveté
and insulation of the world they grow up in that inclines youths
to violence. And it is the decrease of genuine physical outlets
and the violence without consequence they consume as part of their
daily media diet.
In fact we’re over-protecting and infantilising our children, shielding
them from all the wrong things, defending them from the scraps and
failures and physical pain of ordinary life, extending their childhood
and their no-responsibility zones well past the age that previous
generations were expected to face and survive.
But this is not the rough and tumble childhood of Norman Rockwell
and our parents and grandparents, instead it is a morally undeveloped
childhood, cocooned in so many protective layers that when the tides
of testosterone rise through a boy he has no moral foundation upon
which to base his actions. We’re wrapping them in so much safety
were inadvertently creating a generation of bullies with no ability
to empathize with the pain of others because they have never experienced
their own, except as an angst inside their heads, as a growing malignant
fire as they sit at their keyboards or in front of their video screens,
the testosterone surging with no legitimate outlet.
And despite the contemporary belief that life, like modern warfare,
should be free of collateral damage, the potential for damage exists
in all that we do, in every decision we make. But by shielding a
child, male or female from the violence inherent in us all, from
the opportunity to confront the bully in us all through the relative
safety of Dodge Ball, we’re not making the world safer or less violent,
we’re simply forcing violence further underground and removing the
opportunity for kids to grow moral muscles. Mr Poniatowski and all
his educational expert chums should forget about building strong
arms and concentrate instead on building strong minds. Let the kids
play Dodge Ball. Let them learn about the reality of life, the only
way, and the hard way.
© Barbara Sumner Burstyn, June 2002
Click here to see: www.find-a-keeper.com
a new way to separate the cast-offs from the keeper
Have your say on this column:
Barb Sumner Burstyn.
© Barbara Sumner Burstyn
April 2002.
P.O.V. with
Barbara Sumner Burstyn @
http://www.spectator.co.nz/POV
and now @ http://www.mensnewsdaily.com
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