I suspect this happens in most organized physical education classes in schools across the continent. You know, the attempt early on, for physical education teachers to give some of their responsibility to some of the kids. Did you ever see these teachers pick two good athletes from the class and get them to choose teams?
The two good athletes were evenly matched and in a desire to win, the teacher made these kids take turns and assumed in an effort to pick the next best players, would pick evenly matched teams. Of course every time this happened, it would prove embarrassing for the last few students to be picked. Of course these Phys. Ed. teachers would let this happen many, many times.
In my experience, this picking process happened in every grade as far back as I can remember. Roughly grade 1 to when I could get rid of intellectually unchallenging phys. ed., in grade 9. Oh you have got it right, why would I bring all this up unless I was one of the last to be picked?
Teachers paid lip service to making things fair. But even though they mixed up the two players chosen to pick the teams, they never strayed far from the top players. I should know. From grade 1 to grade 8 there were only about 24 kids in my grade – my school was that small. That’s about 12 boys. So if you were one of the last picked, you were always one of the last picked.
And every year, we would have a new phys. ed. teacher. Couldn’t one of them, any of them break the mould? In 9 years of phys. ed. I never once got to pick a team.
Did the teachers think we were physically stupid and could not pick a good team? Trust me, if I and one of the other low ranking players got to pick, the teams would be just as evenly matched. Or perhaps we could take our chance for revenge and pick the other lesser players. Which would end up in the two teams again being evenly matched. Or maybe we could just pick our closest friends. Which might have the horrible repercussion of being fun for the kids. What were all those conformist teachers afraid of?
If this part of old tyme phys. ed. was beyond changing, why don’t we spread some of the effects into other parts of the school system?
Perhaps we could make a point of handing back tests in the order of what score was received. One by one we would find out who was last and thus should be most embarrassed. Wouldn’t this be fun, every time, like clock work, for every test from grade 1 to high school?
Maybe the two kids with the highest marks could pick teams and maybe debates could occur. Wouldn’t this result in some out of the box thinking – imagine, boys might pick girls and girls might pick boys to ensure a victory for their debating team. And you know, I think it might be proper to bench some of the worst debaters on either team on occasion. They could cheer their teammates on. And if some of these cheerers were the best at sports, well then so be it.
