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I was in junior high, a classmate of mine would light up gym class
by dangling upside-down from the
basketball
rim. Our phys-ed teacher — we'll call him "Mr. D." — despised
this childhood orangutan. Mr. D. would always say, "One day
you're going to fall on your back and you won't look so funny."
And one day it happened. The kid plunked 10 feet to the floor. Mr.
D., a truly wicked man, hunkered over the poor child and laughed,
"You're an idiot," he said. "What do you think you're
going to be when you grow up, a circus freak?" To which the
class clown replied, earnestly, "No, I want to be a gym teacher,
like you."
Ever since
then, I've regarded gym teachers — maybe a bit unfairly — as the
intellectual equivalent of Ovaltine. Now, I'm sure there are plenty
of bright, sensitive, and dedicated gym teachers all across America.
Still, I wasn't the least bit surprised when I stumbled across an
academic symposium of bone-chilling imbecility in the current issue
of the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance
entitled, "Is there a place for dodgeball in physical education?"
"I can
find few redeeming qualities in dodgeball," writes David Kahan,
assistant professor in the Department of Exercise and Nutritional
Sciences at San Diego State University. His evidence? "In elementary
school, my wife dreaded dodgeball days in physical education class
because she couldn't throw and was almost always the victim of a
hard-thrown ball that stung on contact … Furthermore, there
is the social stigma of being 'beaned' because one is nerdy, unliked,
or an easy target." Unliked? I can see how this guy could relate.
Dennis Docheff,
of the Department of Health and Human Performance at Concordia University
in Mequon, Wis., agrees. "A person trying to record the positive
attributes of dodgeball would end up with a very short list …
In today's world, with so many things breeding violent behavior
in children, there is no room for dodgeball anymore."
I'm not making
this stuff up. Of 20 leading physical-education academics (a couple
are graduate students) across the nation, just four come out in
defense of traditional dodgeball — a.k.a. bombardment, burning ball,
killer ball, prison ball, and ball chaser. Robert Kraft of the University
of Delaware says gym teachers across the land must unite: "There
shall be no human targets in a physical education class … How
does elimination from games affect [children's] self-concept and
feelings of membership within a group?" he worries. Scott Crawford
of Eastern Illinois University says dodgeball is "an activity
that masquerades as a playful game when it is much more akin to
a carnival arcade shooting extravaganza." (Carnival arcades!
Scary stuff!)
The war on
dodgeball is gathering steam. "I believe it should be stopped,"
Art Jones, the director of Dodgeball — a "docu-remedy"
— told Fox News earlier this week. Jones aims "to expose the
overlooked menace that scarred the Lost-and-Found-ers for life."
In New York University's department of anthropology, Jones's Dodge
Ball is required viewing for a seminar on "The City &
its Culture." "Through fierce investigation and shocking
confessions, through flashbacks to gym floor action from the 1970's,
Dodge Ball grabs the problem by the roots — in the hope that
the hurting will stop, and the healing can begin," Jones says
on his website.
Several school
districts — including Fairfax County, Va., and Austin, Tex. — have
banned the game. In Buxton, Maine, dance and physical-education
instructor MaryEllen Schaper insists on a no-dodgeball rule. At
the Fiske Elementary School in Lexington, Mass., kids still get
to play, but anyone who is eliminated from a round just sits out
for only a brief time — to eliminate hurt feelings. At other schools,
students play using a large beach ball.
In Miami-Dade,
dodgeball hasn't been banned, but gym teachers are being taught
to modify the game to make it less competitive. Kids stand in a
circle with a deflated ball in the middle. All the children then
throw their balls at the target in the center, trying to nudge it.
The side of the circle that gets the ball beyond a certain point
wins … Somehow, it just doesn't compare to the real thing.
The weirdest
part of all this anti-dodgeball hysteria is that it's taking off
at the same time as the sport is gaining its first real following
among adults. You can now find local adult dodgeball leagues in
several major cities. Vanity Fair just listed dodgeball as
the "in" sport among adults. The first-ever world dodgeball
indoor championship was held in Schaumburg, Ill., on January 6th.
Dodgeball
Day 2001 is July 28, also in Illinois. Last year, more than
30 teams from across the country competed.
"People
like it because everybody's already played it," says Bill DePue,
codirector of the National Dodgeball Association. "They all
have memories from childhood and it kind of brings them back when
they play again."
And yet, the
National Association for Sport and Physical Education, which represents
more than 18,000 teachers and professors, has condemned dodgeball.
The group's journal — the same one that hosted this month's symposium
— has consigned the game to its "physical education hall of
shame" — where it joins Musical Chairs, Red Rover, and Duck,
Duck, Goose. All these games fell into disrepute some time ago because
they require children to chase each other; they also engender self-esteem
problems.
"Any time
you throw an object at somebody it creates an environment of retaliation
and resentment," Thomas Murphy, a physical-education teacher
at Tobin Elementary School in Cambridge, Mass., told the Boston
Globe. "There is nothing positive that can happen except
a bully gets to beat up on little kids."
Anybody who
includes it as part of gym class "should be fired immediately,"
says Paul Zientarski of Central High School in Naperville, Ill.
Phys-ed teachers
don't like dodgeball because it's an "elimination game."
Writing in the aforementioned journal, Leaann Tyson-Martin says
educators should move away from elimination games and toward "recycling."
"With recycling, players who are tagged or hit are not eliminated,
but are recycled back into the game, resulting in no loss of practice
time and reducing the potential for students to feel humiliated
or inadequate."
Professor Neil
F. Williams of Eastern Connecticut State University, dodgeball's
fiercest critic in academe, has written: "Elimination games
like Tag or Simon Says are essentially self-defeating, because the
students who are least skilled and fit are usually the first to
be caught."
So there you
have it. Today's gym teachers want to eliminate Tag, Simon Says,
and dodgeball. Next thing you know, hopscotch will be out; say goodbye
to birthday parties. Don't they know you just can't be an American
kid without playing dodgeball? Sure, it sucks to be pegged off.
But that's what makes the next round so thrilling: It's payback
time. Don't you miss it?
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