I HATE SPORTS!
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Sports crazed parents

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Sports crazed parents Empty Sports crazed parents

Post by Earl Fri Oct 11, 2013 8:49 am

Some parents force their children to participate in one or more sports at their schools.  Just another way that the culture of school sports can be a source of misery for kids who either are not athletically inclined or are simply not interested in sports.  Who speaks up for these kids?

I've copied and pasted two messages in this OP from different websites to give examples of this misery.

The first one is the latest entry in the "Letters 2013" column at Ray's website.

http://www.sportssuck.org/letter13.htm
1 Oct 13

Subject: my volleyball rant Smile


I'm a freshman and I have surprisingly made the jv volleyball team. I had played softball since I was four and I stopped at 10 because it was getting in the way of my schoolwork. I didn't mind sport back then. Even in jr high I didn't care about school sports, I was just hanging with my friends and having fun, until last year. My parents forced me into club volleyball without telling me. it was alright at first, I was pretty good, I play middle blocker and opposite hitter. So I made a pretty advanced team for my level; everyone was better than me, and they made it obvious. Whenever I would mess up, my coach would yell at me and cuss at me in front of everyone. I am naturally a quiet person, so playing a sport with people I didn't know and I wasn't a big fan of the sport at first, I wasn't all that sociable. The ball would come over and I would dig it up pretty well, but my team and my coach would get pissed at me for not 'calling' the ball. I didn't get it, I did what I needed to, I wasn't an all-star player and I kept to myself because of how judgemental the players were. I ended up quitting that club team because the bullying got really bad.

Come this summer, my friend and I agreed to try out for my school volleyball team to get out of PE. The thing is she made the freshman team and I made junior varsity. My coach is a total dick. He would yell at me for being weaker than the other girls because I couldn't lift as much as them. He humiliates me because he says I 'wear too much makeup at practice' (im kinda pass off as a goth girl with a lot of eyeliner) when in reality I have lesser time than everybody else because of where my fifth period class is so I have to walk across campus and have less time to get ready. As for my teammates, I hate them. The thing is they're not directly mean, they just don't acknowledge me. I can be having a really great day and I might get awesome kills at practice or games, but my coach and my team always find one thing to critique me on and bug me about it, never telling me "great job" or "nice try". My setter refuses to set me anymore because she thinks I suck, she will force herself to only set the other two front row hitters. Another thing, over the summer I hurt my knees really bad while I was running, so sometimes I have unbearable pain in my legs so I feel like sitting down, and he makes me play on it. Im in physical and mental pain while playing sports now. I walk into the gym everyday almost feel like crying, and I am one sensitive girl. I have been bullied a lot in the past and I have anxiety problems, so sports is not raising my self esteem at all, it's actually making it worse. Not to mention today my coach was hitting balls to us and I wasn't paying attention and the ball went straight down on my boob, knocking the wind out of me and i could barely breathe. He just walked by and said that's what you get for not paying attention. He also picks favorites (I am the least) so he makes some people run more than others and makes some people play more than others. This is why I hate sports: the stress and the pressure. If you are not 100% passionate about it, it's living hell. I get called out, get called bad names, physically and emotionally abused by my peers, and the sport of it is making my depression worse. I used to bulimia, and im happily recovered now, but now I have blood sugar problems. I need a bottle of water with me 24/7 and i snack on things all day just so I won't pass out. Multiple times over the summer during conditioning I puked and fainted and my coach couldn't care less. I told him it's a medical problem then he said then I shouldn't be on the team and that I am useless. I begged and begged my family for me to quit but I happened to be raised in a pro-sports family: all my uncles made varsity football/baseball/volleyball freshman year, it was even SUPRISING to them that I didn't make varsity. All my aunts and my mom played basketball and even they don't understand my situation. All my cousins, track and field, soccer, and water polo. Me, i suck ass at all sports. So they force me into sports just so they can say that I am involved in volleyball and not even care how I am performing or how mentally tough I am. I hate it, I've cried after practice, games, scrimmages, tourneys. I have ranted for two hours straight about the subject to my boyfriend. My parents have yelled at me, called me a cry baby and useless since I was in kindergarten whenever I would mess up or have a not so good game. I remember once I cried at a softball game because I was afraid my dad was gonna yell at me afterwards and the coach and manager took me aside and asked if he physically abused me. As you can see, I really hate sports, and I just need to let this all out.

Thank you Smile
MaryRose
The second message was posted in response to a recent article featured at the Good Men Project website. It's entitled "Five Reasons Your Child Won’t Be a Scientist (and What You Can Do About It)."

http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/hesaid-five-reasons-your-child-wont-be-a-scientist-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/
KatyD says:
October 3, 2013 at 9:04 pm

Don’t forget that in most schools, jocks and cheerleaders (who generally are not into, nor good at science) are at the top of the social food chain, while those at actually like science are at the bottom, or close to it. They are regarded as “geeks,” “dweebs,” “nerds,” “losers” and worse, and are frequently targets of bullying and harassment by the jock/cheerleader crowd. Consequently there are parents who don’t want, and even actively discourage, their kids from liking science and becoming a “nerd,” lest they have a miserable high school social life.

In elementary school, I loved science, especially learning about rocks and minerals. And to a degree my parents encouraged it, though they were limited because neither had gone to college, and my mother didn’t even finish high school. But once I got to junior high and high school, she began pushing me to be a cheerleader so I would be “popular,” and my father wondered how he would ever get me “married off” if I spent all my time in my room studying instead of going on dates. Never mind that I was woefully uncoordinated physically, and that I had already discovered (painfully) that behind their pretty faces and perky smiles, the cheerleaders were the meanest, nastiest girls in my school. After trying out once and failing miserably, I told my mother I had no interest in cheerleading and would never try out again. But she still didn’t understand why, and I also found myself internalizing messages that boys didn’t like smart girls, so I drifted away from science. Many years and many career upheavals later, I regret bitterly that I did not pursue a scientific career. I would likely be much better off, emotionally, spiritually and financially. But it’s too late now.

On a similar note, my husband attended a high school ruled by football; they won multiple state championships and regularly sent players into major college programs and the NFL. Football players could do anything–even physically abuse other students and openly cheat on their work–and teachers would look the other way. His junior year, when a new school board president suggested cutting money to the football program and spending more on academics (especially science), she received death threats. My husband played football, not because he liked it (in fact, he hated it with a passion) but because his father expected him to, believing it would make a man out of his shy, slight son who preferred reading sci-fi novels to tossing balls around. He rarely left the bench and still regrets wasting time doing something he hated, just because his father didn’t want him to be a “pencilneck.”

I’m not sure schools have much of a chance at encouraging more students to pursue STEM fields, as long as we live in a culture that holds up grown men who play little boys’ games as heroes and pays them obscene amounts of money, while virtually ignoring scientists and ridiculing them as “geeks.” Or when we measuring our daughter’ success by how good they look jumping around in a skimpy uniform, instead of encouraging them to conduct their own science experiments in the basement. Our culture is deeply anti-science and anti-intelligence in general. And I don’t see it changing anytime soon.
For the record, if I had a teenage son who wanted to play football or some other popular sport in high school, I would respect his preference and support him.  I've been far more generous to the sports crowd than they've ever been to the nonathletic boys of this country.
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Sports crazed parents Empty Re: Sports crazed parents

Post by Big Fat Heretic Fri Oct 11, 2013 5:32 pm

Earl wrote:The second message was posted in response to a recent article featured at the Good Men Project website. It's entitled "Five Reasons Your Child Won’t Be a Scientist (and What You Can Do About It)."
Good morning Earl:

I have read the entire article.

This is very discouraging.

Of course, our Republican party is very happy about this, because they don't believe in science and math education, and they are in fact, against teaching critical thinking or Higher Order Thinking Skills, what they call HOTS.

In fact, in some schools, kids are being punished for doing science experiments!

Example: in Florida, a black teenage girl was facing a possible 2 year felony charge of "domestic terrorism" because of a science experiment that went wrong. She had done the experiment outdoors before school had started, placing some ordinary household chemicals into a small 8 ounce plastic bottle. The cap ejected with a loud pop, but no damage was done. I use to do stuff like that at home when I was a kid.

Anyway, I read about this incident in an article from AlterNet a couple of months ago, and I have signed petitions on line to have the felony charges against her dropped.

Yeah! She was expelled from school, and facing a possible 2 years in prison just because a cork went POP!

Well, thanks to my signing an on line petition, and over 100,000 other people signing said petition, all the charges against her were dropped.

Her science teacher came to her defense, saying that she is one of his best and brightest students.

But, the last I've heard, she is still out of school. The school principal won't let her back in.  

So, more on line petitions circulated around. I still don't know if anything happened on that yet, but at least the student in not facing any legal charges.

This is ridiculous!

I remember when I was 9 years old, living up in Minnesota. I had gotten three different REMCO Science Kits for Christmas. One kit had a red plastic rocket with a black rubber tip. I would put baking soda and distilled vinegar into the rocket, clip it to the 8 sided launch pad, shake it up real good, set in down on the ground and walk away. After about a few seconds, there was a popping sound, and my little red rocket rose upward into the sky on a foamy stream of distilled vinegar and baking soda. Yeah, it was really cool.

I use to take it to school with me, and during recess, I would go out into the field and play with my rocket.

One day, my poor little red rocket exploded on the octagonal launching pad with a really loud crack, louder than any firecracker! Pieces of red plastic scattered like shrapnel. Well, I didn't have my rocket anymore. But, I still had my other two REMCO Science Kits.  

Of course, I didn't get into any trouble because of it.

Oh! But now . . . here in the 21st century, a kid could get charged with domestic terrorism because his little rocket exploded, and be facing a possible 2 years in prison for it, especially if the kid is black!

I also had a little steam engine. I would put distilled water into the boiler, and it burned these little white rectangular fuel pallets. When the water was boiling, a red flywheel started spinning really fast, driven by a single piston.

I was in the 2ed grade when I got my little steam engine for Christmas. So, every year, when I was in the 2rd, 3rd, and 4th grade, I would take my little steam engine to school, and the teacher would let me set it up on her desk, and I was allowed to strike the match to light the white fuel pallets. My steam engine even had a really loud whistle.

After my demonstration, my teachers would allow me to take my steam engine over to the three story high school building where I demonstrated it to the science class.

All was well until I entered the 5th grade.

That was when I had my first male teacher. Yeah, the sports obsessed tyrant who I had mentioned about so many times before in these forums and over at the old (now defunct) Sports Sucks forums.

He would not allow me to take my steam engine to school to demonstrate to the class, as I had done many times before I entered the 5th grade.  

I got punched in the stomach with a basketball in the gymnasium, and one day, in the classroom got dragged out into the hallway, and got my head bashed against the corner of a concrete block wall in an argument we had over an Astronomy book that he would not allow me to check out from the school library.

That was when I heard the big loud flush, the sound of American education swirling down the crapper!

It all went down hill after that. It all went south!

And now . . . . .

A kid in school could face domestic terrorism charges, and face a possible 2 years in prison if something goes wrong during a science experiment, or if a kid accidentally drops a can of soda and it fizzes all over on the floor. Now-a-days, if a kid coughs or sneezes in classroom, the cops are called, and a kid gets Tazered and hauled off to jail.

Back in the 1960s, if I coughed or sneezed in the classroom, my teacher would tell me to come to her desk and get a Kleenex tissue. But, now . . . in the 21st century, a kid goes to jail for "disrupting the class" just for coughing or sneezing!

Yeah! America sure has advanced since we stopped sending men to the moon! Eh?

Oh! I'm sure that our Republican party is quite pleased with this arrangement!

We Democrats won the 2012 re-election of President Obama. But, the Republicans are still in power, and they swing the spiked club of brutality, waving it over our heads.

That's because, they believe that they have God on their side! Right???
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