I read this article today on the CNN website and I had a hard time understanding just how the hell we've gotten to this point.
Read it Here
I was at work and asked a few people if they thought that Australia was going in this direction and some thought that it may to a certain degree, while others thought that there was just no way.
Kids here play footy from a really young age and one of the games the boys at my school play on the oval (used for footy and cricket) is British Bulldogs. This is essentially every kid running from one end of the oval to the other, trying not to get tackled by the one kid picked to start. Those who do get tackled are then in the middle as well, trying to tackle those left. It is the perfect game for boys as it is essentially a loosly organised excuse to thump the shit out of each other with no sense of animosity or malice. It's just boys learning to be physical, venting any aggressions, without taking it personally. How is a parent protecting their child if they never allow him to learn how to come back from a setback, physical or otherwise.
We don't have the sport issue at my school, but what we do have are parents who are so determined that their child does well academically that they will do the work for them, or demand a ridiculous degree of mollycoddling, and effectively never allow the kid to fall on his ass academically.
It's a shame when kids aren't allowed to go out and learn how to define and follow rules for themselves, to blow off school and pay the price they deserve, to get physical for the sheer joy of being able to do it, and get bruised, battered, and beaten. What kind of adults are these kids going to be is they never learn how to negotiate a hard knock.
Aren't most of the proud moments in our lives those where we persevered through the greatest challenges to find what we were made of?
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