Party Games or Sport?

In the 'Sunday Herald' this week there is an excellent article by Claire Fox and I'll quote a wee bit of her article. "In true bean counting fashion whenever government agencies are involved in sport they conflate quantity and quality. Check out SportScotland's website and weep at the graphs and statistics for every geographic area, breaking down every sport by hours, social class, gender, etc. The focus is on 'increasing participation.' But participating in what exactly? The flagship mass participation projects during National School Sports Week included: 55,000 school pupils in Staffordshire attempting to break the world skipping record (skipping continuously for three minutes each); Lancashire's schools staged a basic 'Wake up and Shake Up' aerobics routine, suitable they said for children of all ages and abilities. That's right, remove the barriers to participation - even if those include lack of ability - and rebrand sport as any activity that sets the bar so low that anyone can join in. Indeed the NSSW website encourages schools to choreograph opening and closing ceremonies using dance, music and drama as a helpful way of including more 'non sporty pupils' and even those that wouldn't normally get involved in physical activity. Enjoyable as these glorified party games may be, please don't pretend that skipping, aerobocs or dance have nothing to do with sport."

And there's a lot more. The whole article is well worth a thought provoking look. It is almost certainly on the Sunday Herald website for 5 July 2009 in the Opinion Section. And a wee look at the other websites mentioned - SportScotland and NSSW - might also be illuminating!