For some, school sport is the highlight of the entire school week, for others it is the worst humiliation. Here you can find out why school sport is becoming a stressful experience for many students.
Trigger Warning: This article covers bullying, sexual harassment, and physical abuse in several sections. If you have concerns that the topic could burden you, consider in advance whether you want to read the article.
According to the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK), school sport is an elementary part of a holistic education. Sport should not only promote exercise and the physical development of children, but also contribute to emotional, linguistic and social development. Especially in games, students can also train aspects such as solidarity, teamwork and empathy.
In addition, teachers can introduce children to sporting activities in a playful way in school sports. This seems to be of particular importance in view of the lack of exercise in society. According to the WHO, four out of five young people were not getting enough exercise in 2020.
The WHO recommends that children and young people engage in moderate to vigorous physical activity for at least 60 minutes a day. On at least three days they should increase the intensity and really work up a sweat.
Sedentary activities should be compensated in this way. After all, children and young people spend a lot of time sitting down every day – be it at school or at home in front of the laptop or Playstation. However, frequent sitting promotes numerous diseases, such as back pain, diabetes and high blood pressure. It is all the more important that teachers encourage children to exercise in school sports. In some cases, however, the opposite is the case.
Humiliation in school sports: not uncommon
The Krautreporter platform conducted a survey on school sport in February 2022. About 5600 people took part. The sad result: More than 80 percent of them said they still had little desire to exercise due to negative experiences in physical education class. The experiences of the participants mainly tell of humiliation and bullying.
One person reports that the sports teacher always pushed the children into the water during swimming lessons and kept them away from the edge of the pool with a pole. In another case, the physical education teacher asked all students between the ages of 16 and 18 to change their clothes outside on the sports field. Others tell how their teachers embarrassed them in front of the entire class for poor performance or were always chosen as the last person on the team.
Such experiences leave a deep mark on our consciousness. The sports educator Günter Stibbe confirms this to the magazine Spektrum. It is only in school sports that you are so physically exposed to your classmates and teachers. As a result, physical education is “intimate and existential”. Unfortunately, this also makes it such a frequently used starting point for bullying. Because, according to Spektrum, children and young people with less developed motor skills still experience humiliation in school sports – for example when performing gymnastics in front of the entire class or when they feel how undesirable they are in their team.
How exactly negative experiences in physical education have a psychological effect has not yet been scientifically researched. But there are studies that show that adolescents who have been affected by bullying are more prone to depression and even suicide attempts later on.
Sport and performance: That’s what school sport is all about
(Photo: CC0 / Pixabay / Vladvictoria)
According to Spektrum, repeated humiliation and bad grades cause some children to lose their ability to enjoy sports. Because in school sports they learn that they are unsportsmanlike and therefore not suitable for sports. A study from NRW from 2018 also points to this danger. In this, many of the 16-year-old participants stated that they liked to do sports, but perceived themselves as unsportsmanlike.
According to the sports educator Stibbe, this indicates that the young people have internalized that only those who are already in top form can do sports. Stibbe speaks of a “disaster”. After all, sport should be there for people and not the other way around.
But it is partly the school sport itself that solidifies the idea of performance in the minds of the children and young people. In 2006, researchers asked about 9,000 schoolchildren and their teachers about the goals of physical education. The teachers saw the most important goal in promoting fair dealings with each other. This was followed by the goal of inspiring the students to do sports. Third place went to “promoting health and fitness”.
This goal ended up in first place in the evaluation of the students’ answers. Immediately afterwards, the children and young people reported “improving their performance in individual sports”. This shows how strongly the performance aspect for the children is linked to school sport. No wonder: After all, the teachers continuously evaluate the athletic performance of their students with grades.
Grades in physical education: is it necessary?
Whether grades in school sports actually make sense is a controversial topic. According to Stibbe, sport requires a certain amount of feedback and a form of evaluation. However, teachers do not necessarily have to give a fixed grade for absolute performance at the end, but could also reward progress with grades. The progress assessment is then more tailored to the individual child. After all, it is about how the child has improved within the framework of his own physical requirements and not how he performs in the class average.
In view of the different body sizes and the fluctuating growth phases during puberty, it actually seems questionable to use a general assessment standard for all students.
The Schiller-Gymnasium in Cologne also shows that school sports do not necessarily need grades. Up to the eighth grade, children and young people do not receive grades in physical education classes, but rather an individual feedback sheet with tips for improvement. Above all, the focus here is on enjoying movement and taking your own small development steps.
Conclusion: The school sport of the future
(Photo: CC0 / Pixabay / Galina9237941221)
Spectrum and Krautreporter show that intimidating and demotivating experiences in school sports are not just manifestations of the past. Not much or not enough has changed in the general concept of physical education. Strict grade tables and preliminary gymnastics still take place today and primarily reward high-performing and competitive children. Pupils with less pronounced athletic abilities, on the other hand, are the clear losers of this principle and get almost nothing out of it.
It would therefore be desirable for school sport to move away from a strict performance orientation and actually focus on enjoying movement. Individual feedback, the inclusion of non-competitive sports (such as yoga, gymnastics and dance) and other methods of creating teams for the next game are all good ways to do this.
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