What is in Kelvin's Head?

Isn’t it time to stop teaching sport to children?

11/11/2015

Isn’t it time to stop teaching children sport?

It is drug-addled, corrupt, nationalistic, sectarian, sexist, homophobic and brings out the very worst in people. Why on earth do we presume it is something suitable for children to participate in?

From time to time I am asked to comment on calls from one secularist group or another who want to get rid of religion in schools or who want access to Thought For The Day. Often religion is dismissed as something that children should be protected from. But why don’t the secularists turn their attention to sport if they really want to protect children? Surely 3 minutes of Thought for the Day is considerably less harmful than the privileged access that sport gets to every news broadcast in the world. Sport seems to have become a religion anyway but where is the organised opposition?

There have still been more Anglican bishops in the world who have come out than premier level footballers. The fear that sport can induce in young LGBT people can last a lifetime. For their sake shouldn’t we just say “No” to activities that can cause so much harm?

I want boys and girls to learn that they are equal but I look at men and women’s sporting rewards and despair. What hope is there for girls’ self esteem whilst they are constantly exposed to sport?

The city I live in is blighted by sport centred sectarianism and still the violence is encouraged by co-opting children at a very young age in school. Why do they make football compulsory for boys? Why? How are decent parents supposed to keep their children from such negative and corrupting activities? You have a right to remove your children from religious instruction but not from sport. Oh no, not from sport.

I can see the point in teaching kids about heath and fitness. I can see the point of putting gyms in secondary schools and I can see the point of teaching all young people how to swim. But the competitive, money dominated, cess-pit of professional sport is surely the last thing we need to encourage them to believe is a proper activity for adults.

6 responses to “On the election tomorrow”

Tim

04/05/2011

Ooh, Compass looks fun.

For amusement, it says I’m: Green; LD; SNP; Labour; Tory.

It’s got one of those right but I’d probably rejig the others a bit 😉

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Neil Oliver

04/05/2011

I got a very similar result to Tim and to be honest it reflects my vote quite closely.

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Tim

04/05/2011

The Compass attributes equal weight to all its questions, hence getting completely the wrong answer for me.
There is precisely no chance I would ever vote Green while they persist in being in favour of “alternative medicine” and so unthinkingly anti-motorist with no positive transport suggestions to make.

The only one it got sorta right is to put Tory last – and even that’s neglecting the fact that, if I were the penultimate humanoid on the planet and blue the only box to mark, I’d rather spoil the paper than vote for them. 😉

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chris

05/05/2011

Thanks for link – got me just about right, which is good as I voted a fortnight ago!

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ryan

05/05/2011

Lib Dems have an Orange Book?! That might of interest to stereotypical fans of the Glorious Glasgow Rangers who can’t support the SNP (non Unionist), Labour (obvious reasons), Tories (too posh) and find themselves unsure of who to vote for with only hours left to decide 😉

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Gianmaria Framarin

03/07/2011

Please, lad, quit this continuous and totally wrong identification of Rangers fans as being anti-Labour or even right-winged… you’re talking about that hell of a minority we have at Ibrox who still go on chanting stupid stuff…
Ibrox is FULL of leftists, Labour Party voters, even SNP, which seems to be the common trend. I hardly ever spoken to a Tory Rangers fan…
Glasgow’s a red city, always has been for decades, Rangers are a majority in the city, how come they all be “stereotypical tories”???

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