Non competitive school sports days

"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. " Yes, but science and math are used to teach us about the world. Science and math are very important to critical thinking(2). While sports days are used to promote healthy lifestyles (1). Science and math need to be taught more as they are more complicated and require lots of time to teach. "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. " There are plenty of opportunities for children to experience competition outside of school. If a parent wants their child to experience competition and competitiveness, they are allowed to do that outside of school. But many children dislike competitiveness in sports days (4). "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. "Pushy parents" were one of the biggest problems at sports days. "Of the 25 schools surveyed for the Good Schools Guide, the research found that 17 had stopped the mothers and fathers' race because the parents were "over zealous" "Nowadays, some parents have a highly competitive attitude to life and are neurotic about their children succeeding at everything they attempt. It is spoiling the whole thing. "(3) Parents got so competitive about their children that they had to be banned from sports days. "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. " Competition is not required for motivation. "From a review of 17 separate studies, David and Roger Johnson conclude: "cooperative learning situations, compared to competitive and individualistic situations, promote higher levels of self-esteem and healthier processes for deriving conclusions about one's self-worth. "(5) These results have been replicated in other studies comparing competitive vs. noncompetitive. This shows competitiveness is not the best way to promote exercise. "In the late 1970s and early 1980s a team of researchers at the University of Texas set out to identify the personality characteristics that correlated with the highest levels of professional performance. They reasoned that striving for mastery, a positive attitude toward work, and competitiveness would all correlate positively with achievement. When the first study was run with Ph. D. scientists (achievement measured by how often their published papers were cited) the results were surprising. High levels of mastery and work orientation were found among the highest achievers, but these top achievers showed low levels of competitiveness. To test the result, many more studies were conducted, each time using a different sample of subjects (businessmen, college students, airline reservation agents, and grade school students), and each time the same result was found. Competitiveness consistently correlated negatively with achievement. That is, those high in achievement were low in competitiveness. "(5). This shows that to achieve more, it is better to compete less. "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. " In competition the parties are trying to pursue a goal that is not able to be attained by all. On a sports day the motivation should not be on winning or losing, but rather to better yourself and others. If your motivation is to win, you also want your opponent to lose. "I ask you, how many times do you come across competitive situations in a day? " We are not talking about a person’s life. We are talking about sports day, a day for schools to promote exercise. The golfer you bring up, wouldn't he do better if his motivation was to be the best he could rather than to win or not lose? "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. " Yes you do, but the Paralympics are the best of the people who qualify. Many of the people in those are better than some people without any disabilities (6). They are considered elite athletes and what they do isn't comparable to a school sports day. The children in sports day are not trying to be the best in the world. As for you videogame argument I have not seen any evidence saying schools are treating it as a sport. "his 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. " The biggest motivator for kids playing sports is to have fun. Kids who are told to focus on winning become less sure of themselves and their abilities. Children should be encouraged to focus on themselves rather than on others (7). The school shouldn't be teaching that one student is a winner because he won a race. The school should focus on getting each child to better themselves. That is what noncompetitive sports do. I believe I have refuted my opponent’s arguments. I will leave you with two quotes. "the phrase healthy competition is actually a contradiction in terms" Alfie Kohn (8) "Competition is a sin" John D. Rockefeller(9) (1)-. http://en.wikipedia.org... (2)-. http://www.criticalthinking.org... (3)-. http://www.guardian.co.uk... (4)-. http://news.bbc.co.uk... (5)-. http://www.shareintl.org... (6)-. http://www.law.ed.ac.uk... (7)-. http://sportsmedicine.about.com... (8)-. http://www.amazon.com... (9)-. http://www.brainyquote.com...