What's the Purpose of Elementary School Sports?
What’s the Purpose of Elementary School Sports?
I’m bothered about the discussion of girls supposedly being harmed by kids born male who identify as female. I’m particularly troubled when the girls spoken of are in elementary school. My recollection of elementary school was that we did lots of activities together – boys and girls. In the neighborhood, boys and girls often played together. When my kids took swimming lessons and tennis classes, boys and girls played together. I see no need to interject documentation of “biological sex” into sports played at elementary school. There’s an argument that boys may be stronger or rougher, so the competition is not fair. When we are talking about sports at school, we should be talking about physical education, not training for competition.
What’s the purpose of elementary physical education? The primary purposes ought to be:
(1) Health: staying active, learning skills that students may enjoy later in life, using up some energy so that they can concentrate better in the classroom.
(2) Skills: learning how to play a variety of games and improving their own skills by practice.
(3) Socialization & leadership: learning to cooperate and work together with teammates, developing strategies, learning sportsmanship.
These goals don’t require separating kids according to sex designations at birth.
On the other hand, serious problems are presented by demanding documentation and separation according to sex stated on birth certificates. Such scrutiny draws unnecessary attention to private health issues. It shifts the focus of the games to be development of star players, rather than education for health, skill-building, and socialization. Children born with abnormalities will be disadvantaged or embarrassed for being different, forcing their parents to take extraordinary efforts to make them happy to be at school. Even if a child is not born with an abnormality, there may be reasons why the child wants to present themselves as a different gender than found on their birth certificate. That hurts no one and gives the child a chance to explore activities and friendships that appeal to them, while getting to know their own interests and abilities.
Once children go through puberty, there may be other factors to consider, but those matters should be addressed in an age-appropriate way and not imposed on elementary school children.