11.14.2005
Of Fun and Fitness
Even fat people will eventually get fit - if it’s fun enough. Everybody knows that.
So, let’s say one day we decide to make fun the single and only purpose of each and every sport we play.
Let’s even say that from then that being good enough to join a sports team is based not on performance, but on how much fun everyone has.
What would be different? How would sports for fun differ from sports for whatever else sports are supposed to be for?
Most likely, you’d get a lot more people playing, even the people who not so skilled or able.
And, for the most part, the fun they’d be having would be in doing physical things, because people, for the most part, like being physical. People are known to have fun all by themselves, without the benefit of supervision.
And for an equally large part, it would be educational, because fun includes learning things about what we can make our bodies do, and what we can do with them together.
And people would play together, cross-boundaries, cross-abilities, cross-generations.
Or maybe we would be making up new sports, entirely, from equipment we never thought of using in a sport, like, oh, push brooms and panty hose and trash cans.
Sports to play for the fun of it. Sports without officials or trophies or stadiums. But real sports. Challenging, rewarding greater agility and deeper strength and more real teamwork sports.
OK I confess. I’m talking about Junkyard Sports, which happens to be the name of a book I wrote, just published by Human Kinetics. And it’s about sports that you pretty much make up as you go along and play simply and totally for the fun of it. Sports that have nothing at all to do with being fat or fit.
And not knowing that much about the politics and purposes of even professional sports, I find myself really, honestly wanting to know: what would be different if sports were all about fun? And why would it be different?
If sports were fun, fun and pretty much nothing but fun, what goals and objectives would not be met? Especially for the people who aren’t athletes, or competitive, or interested in traditional sports at all? And the people who are physically challenged? And fat.
OK, there’d probably be a lot of goals and objectives not met. And no, I couldn’t justify even the ones that a program based on fun does meet. But how could we not want to have that even fat people would want to be part of?
Which leads us to why, as in “Why isn’t it this way already?” Why isn’t Physical Education fun? Why isn’t Physical Education all about fun? At least for kids who are not athletes? For kids who need even more desperately to discover the joy that is in their bodies. A joy deeper than Jell-o.
And for the athletic kids, too. What made Physical Education have to be anything other than fun? And what keeps it that way?
Could it have anything to do with how most Physical Education programs have to fight for their very existence, and have been, actually, ever since they were first instituted in public education? Could that be why they stopped being fun? Out of defensiveness?
Unfortunately, even with all our research and reasons, it just keeps getting worse. Today, gym classes are getting shorter and shorter, and in many curricula, vanishing all together. And playgrounds are actually filled over with portable classrooms. There’s no room to play, and there’s no time for recess.
Just at the time when childhood obesity is becoming a worldwide concern.
So instead of offering the kinds of programs that will attract and serve “the rest of the kids” – the overweight kids who aren’t athletes, and don’t want to be, but who like having fun, even when it means running around a lot – PE teachers are spending their increasingly limited means fighting for the very survival of any programs.
And it’s been that way now for how many years?
For far too many PE teachers, the only thing that has changed is that it has gotten worse. Less time. Less appreciation. Less fun.
So I’m thinking maybe we should start working on a backup plan, just in case. And as long as we’re planning, we might as well plan to do something fun.
After all, isn’t that really what brought most of us into Physical Education in the first place? The fun we had found using our bodies. The fun we wanted to share.
How about this? How about, if there’s no room for play and no time for class, we get PE teachers paid to go out into neighborhood and organize pick-up games? In parking lots, if they have to. And the courtyard in the senior center. And after-hours at the hospital cafeteria. With anybody that happens to want to play.
Or paying PE teachers to be neighborhood personal coaches, so they can help families find things they to do that are fun and physical together, and in the mean time coach whole families back into health.
And maybe someday they’ll even pay PE teachers to do that very thing in the schools, during school, after school - for kids, teachers, parents – that very fun thing we are all about and all here for.
So, let’s say one day we decide to make fun the single and only purpose of each and every sport we play.
Let’s even say that from then that being good enough to join a sports team is based not on performance, but on how much fun everyone has.
What would be different? How would sports for fun differ from sports for whatever else sports are supposed to be for?
Most likely, you’d get a lot more people playing, even the people who not so skilled or able.
And, for the most part, the fun they’d be having would be in doing physical things, because people, for the most part, like being physical. People are known to have fun all by themselves, without the benefit of supervision.
And for an equally large part, it would be educational, because fun includes learning things about what we can make our bodies do, and what we can do with them together.
And people would play together, cross-boundaries, cross-abilities, cross-generations.
Or maybe we would be making up new sports, entirely, from equipment we never thought of using in a sport, like, oh, push brooms and panty hose and trash cans.
Sports to play for the fun of it. Sports without officials or trophies or stadiums. But real sports. Challenging, rewarding greater agility and deeper strength and more real teamwork sports.
OK I confess. I’m talking about Junkyard Sports, which happens to be the name of a book I wrote, just published by Human Kinetics. And it’s about sports that you pretty much make up as you go along and play simply and totally for the fun of it. Sports that have nothing at all to do with being fat or fit.
And not knowing that much about the politics and purposes of even professional sports, I find myself really, honestly wanting to know: what would be different if sports were all about fun? And why would it be different?
If sports were fun, fun and pretty much nothing but fun, what goals and objectives would not be met? Especially for the people who aren’t athletes, or competitive, or interested in traditional sports at all? And the people who are physically challenged? And fat.
OK, there’d probably be a lot of goals and objectives not met. And no, I couldn’t justify even the ones that a program based on fun does meet. But how could we not want to have that even fat people would want to be part of?
Which leads us to why, as in “Why isn’t it this way already?” Why isn’t Physical Education fun? Why isn’t Physical Education all about fun? At least for kids who are not athletes? For kids who need even more desperately to discover the joy that is in their bodies. A joy deeper than Jell-o.
And for the athletic kids, too. What made Physical Education have to be anything other than fun? And what keeps it that way?
Could it have anything to do with how most Physical Education programs have to fight for their very existence, and have been, actually, ever since they were first instituted in public education? Could that be why they stopped being fun? Out of defensiveness?
Unfortunately, even with all our research and reasons, it just keeps getting worse. Today, gym classes are getting shorter and shorter, and in many curricula, vanishing all together. And playgrounds are actually filled over with portable classrooms. There’s no room to play, and there’s no time for recess.
Just at the time when childhood obesity is becoming a worldwide concern.
So instead of offering the kinds of programs that will attract and serve “the rest of the kids” – the overweight kids who aren’t athletes, and don’t want to be, but who like having fun, even when it means running around a lot – PE teachers are spending their increasingly limited means fighting for the very survival of any programs.
And it’s been that way now for how many years?
For far too many PE teachers, the only thing that has changed is that it has gotten worse. Less time. Less appreciation. Less fun.
So I’m thinking maybe we should start working on a backup plan, just in case. And as long as we’re planning, we might as well plan to do something fun.
After all, isn’t that really what brought most of us into Physical Education in the first place? The fun we had found using our bodies. The fun we wanted to share.
How about this? How about, if there’s no room for play and no time for class, we get PE teachers paid to go out into neighborhood and organize pick-up games? In parking lots, if they have to. And the courtyard in the senior center. And after-hours at the hospital cafeteria. With anybody that happens to want to play.
Or paying PE teachers to be neighborhood personal coaches, so they can help families find things they to do that are fun and physical together, and in the mean time coach whole families back into health.
And maybe someday they’ll even pay PE teachers to do that very thing in the schools, during school, after school - for kids, teachers, parents – that very fun thing we are all about and all here for.
The World Games Fun Day
