It’s not news to anyone that the majority of the school-going kids today are not moving enough. Although there has been a lot of hue and cry around childhood obesity and lack of physical movement, a solution that we generally see is to make them play a sport.
If all kids start playing a sport, the problem can pretty much be solved, but how do we remove the “if”? Broadly, there are two problems-
- Is the child interested in playing structured sports?
- Are the Sports Coaches and Physical Education teachers aligned with the thought of making all kids play a sport?
Many kids don’t enjoy structured sports due to reasons such as lack of interest in the sport available to them or sometimes it is the pressure to perform. A general tendency of Coaches and Physical Education teachers is to get attracted toward talent identification and athlete development. In this process, a huge chunk of kids who don’t perform so well are demotivated by their parents, teachers and the whole society in general.
We have all either been judged or heard someone receive guidance such as ‘You are not good at this sport, let’s try some other sport’ or ‘You are not so good at sports, you should focus more on arts/studies’.
‘You are not good at this sport, let’s try some other sport’
or
‘You are not so good at sports, you should focus more on arts/studies‘
The concept of Physical Literacy is gaining popularity, where creating a positive experience in physical activity is being promoted to motivate kids remain active for life than to chase excellence in sports (refer https://www.physical-literacy.org.uk/).
All kids love to play and there needs to be a general shift in the mindset of the whole ecosystem where we promote play for the fun of it, rather than play for performance. And playing does not necessarily be a sport with fixed conditions and rules!