Non competitive school sports days

Thanks for the definitions, I'm new to debating and just working out how all of this works! "People participate to have fun and to exercise." This is wrong, it is made compulsory by the school. Also you say that "not every kid enjoys competitive sports" I'd just like to say that not every kid enjoys maths or science yet they spend a lot longer than one afternoon a year doing that! Also everyone has different levels of academic abilities. I agree that "You cannot compare what a school does to promote exercise to what professional athletes do at one of the most important sporting events." however the "professional athletes" have to start somewhere. They need to start as early as possible to get their 10,000 hours practice in their sport before they can get to the top of it. (4) Some children wont get any chance to experience competitiveness in sport before its too late. So what I am really saying is that if there are no competitive sports days then the children who don't get taken off after school for other competitive activities wont experience it and are potentially losing out on a huge opportunity. This means that only children with pushy parents will get the chance to go to things like major sporting events in their field, bar the odd anomaly. The problem with people with the push from their parents rather then themselves is that they do feel anxiety because if they fail they will be failing their parents. If they are motivated by their own competitiveness then they will have self belief and are less likely to fail. "Many noncompetitive sports do not require lots of dedication and skills can be improved without anyone else." If you are dedicated and then improve your skills and you are denied the opportunity to show them off are you going to bother to train again? What is wrong with people training after school to improve themselves but then being being told it does not matter to win, the thing that is wrong here is that next time they just wont bother to do the exercise to improve their skills, which is totally against what you said. You said that they should teach "healthy life style habits" and training is one of these. If they aren't allowed/given the opportunity to show how their training has paid off they will become demotivated and stop, therefore living a less healthy life than before. Also all sorts of people can enjoy sports such as rounders, netball, squash.(the list goes on and on) People can enjoy these sports whatever physical level they are at. They can have fair and fun competitive games against people who have a similar amount of skill. I ask you, how many times do you come across competitive situations in a day? An example of how sports days are setting a child up to fail is if "there are no winners or losers" then when they get to the job market which is highly competitive (1) and see that there are clear winners and losers here what will they think? They will have to deal with anxiety here. Anxiety can be managed and its best to start learning how to do this at a young age. (2) An example is any of the Olympic athletes or even most other good athletes. An example was a good golfer who suddenly improved and was winning his tournament by a long way and nobody thought that he could lose, he did. However before the next tournament he worked hard on controlling his anxiety and he won it. The only reason he worked on it is because he is competitive, if you teach children not to be competitive then it will affect them in all walks of life for example in their job. So you say "children of all abilities can exercise" Please let me bring your attention to the Paralympics. I see people with all abilities competing there. Well they do have wiis and not any other videogames so you do agree that that is not teaching them how to have a healthy lifestyle as you said earlier. I really do have to question that if schools are treating this as sport then pupils will see it as sport and play on a wii and think that they are doing a good thing. If this is what non competitive sports days bring then are they really good? What better opportunity can you ask for to teach children about competitiveness? If they have competitiveness in other lessons where some children are less able than others why shouldn't they have it in sports? "By schools having noncompetitive sports days they can offer a larger variety of activities and can teach kids healthy life style habits." Could this not be taught to students in PE lessons? Also if "there are no winners or losers" then it is shown that children try less hard and don't do as well. (3) This leads to them being less healthy as there is no motivation for them to say run the 800m if they walk it it would be easier and if there are no winners or losers then they are just as good as the person who ran it. That is a very bad value to be teaching children! Competitive sports days provide a better environment for exercise as people will work harder and push further, therefore improving their fitness more quickly than in a non competitive sports day. (please see the 800m example) This contradicts your main argument. Sorry about the sloppy structure! (1)http://www.bbc.co.uk... (2)http://www.anxietyguru.net... (3)http://gigaom.com... (4)http://en.wikipedia.org...(book)