Much discussion about school sports again: not enough/too much. Inculcates the habit of life-long exercise/just puts people off for life. Competition good/bad for children
Although I am definitely not a sporty person & going to the gym is my idea of hell, I look back to school sports & PE with a fair degree of affection
We had 2 sessions (30 or 40 minutes) in the gym plus one afternoon of outdoor sport each week. One of the gym sessions was given over to dancing – either ballroom, Scottish or English country.
I loathed the winter games of hockey with a passion. But summer term – athletics or tennis – were enjoyable enough
We still had a house system at school. This seems to me like a pretty good way of letting children mix with those outside their own year group, valuable even in what was by today’s standards an unfeasibly small school, & still more reassuring for children in today’s monster institutions
We had all sorts of house competitions – music, drama etc. But the way it operated for Sports Day seems to me to be a good model even for today
We had a system called standards – a bit like Olympic qualifying but less onerous. They were not so easy that even the worst duffer could pass the standard in everything, but those who could not run might have a chance at the long jump or throwing the discus.
The top 2 in each discipline represented the house on Sports Day, but if you passed the standard you earned a point for your house, & so everybody could make some contribution to the overall result
