I don’t ever recall playing dodgeball so perhaps I have repressed the memories lol. Red rover yes. Dodgeball no.
I vividly remember dodgeball because I was hit in the face right after getting braces in 4th grade. Lots of blood!
In the examples given by one poster, citing forced choir, art and geometry presentation, there is no mention of having peers select, in order of preference, who would be on their math team, their art team or their choir team. We merely had the poster’s own self-assessment that he or she performed poorly at that activity. I believe they are fundamentally different situations. Not to mention, it would be rare to find a math class in which the students were encouraged to hurl pencils at anyone who can’t complete their proof.
The premise that being bullied in PE is just a side effect of being poor at PE is also incorrect, at least in my case.
When I was selected last at gym, it was not correlated to the merits of my performance. Rather, I was unpopular enough to not be selected, even in an area where I was skilled (for example I was the only girl that climb the ropes to the ceiling of the gym, hand over hand, but if there was a rope climbing contest I would still be selected last.) After I was chosen last, my selection was accompanied by the “losing” team complaining that they had to have me on the team. It is my impression that peer-created teams are typically determined based on popularity rather than competence. In my case, even if I practiced the skill at hand, I could not change the outcome of being selected last. This lack of control is a recipe for learned-helplessness, which can lead to depression and sometimes suicide. It is not in any way psychologically healthy.
In HS, I took mandatory chorus. After the first couple of classes, the teacher told me to stay after class and he then handed me a sheaf of sheet music, told me I had two weeks to learn all of the words and that, after that, if I mouthed the words during concerts and no sound emerged from my mouth, I would get an A in the class. This actually made me so sad as I had a dream at that time of being the new Diana Ross.
In art class, the teacher said that whoever volunteered to straighten the room after class was guaranteed a minimum 85. I worked so hard at keeping the room neat, but my art work garnered comments like: “If you wear the shoes drawn by Techmom99, you better make an appointment with the podiatrist” and that was one of the nicer things the teacher said. At the end of the year, I got an 85.
What I learned from these experiences is never to draw or sing in public. I don’t even doodle or sing in the shower. Ironically, my D sings out for money and has a beautiful voice (from H’s side). Sometimes, I feel so jealous of her ability.
My art teacher was a bully. The music teacher, I think, really thought he was doing me a favor and a kindness and I actually thought that at the time.
Bullies eventually implode on their own.
"In art class, the teacher said that whoever volunteered to straighten the room after class was guaranteed a minimum 85. "
Sounds like your art teacher made some unnecessary and callous comments but overall it sounds like you got a pretty good deal on grading. No math teacher I know gives a math challenged student an 85 for straightening rooms.
This certainly sounds like advocating bullying to me. There’s nothing “right or just” about bullying others, and being a talented athlete doesn’t preclude being talented in the classroom.
The theory that athletes should be permitted to bully the physically weaker academics because the academics are stronger in the classroom, and the academics should be permitted to beat up on the academically weaker athletes because the athletes are physically stronger leaves out the majority of kids who are neither academic or athletic superstars. Are those students not bullied by anyone, ever, because they have no one that they can bully in return? I don’t believe it. There’s no justification for allowing one kid to torment another.
Did I miss anyone who used to play “murderball” – a variant of dodgeball? Long term hiding was an art.
I wonder if Roosevelt experienced showering in middle school when he said “comparison is the thief of joy.”
My husband just recently brought up having to take showers in middle school after PE, terror in anticipation and looming humiliation. Waiting to get “checked off” by your PE teacher that you actually showered - still leaves me unsettled.
Admitting old age here, I was one of the first girls on the boys track team – there was no girls track team back in the day. I got heckled at a few schools, not only gender but race at one. At the time it was a bit disconcerting; in the rearview mirror (clarity over time), made me want to win more.
As an aside, schools have been letting out early here because of the heat. My husband remembered in his old, window-only, non-air conditioned school the Sisters allowing each student one 10-second drink at the water fountain. My parents, of course, then brought up walking MILES!!!, people, MILES to school in 10 feet of snow.
I’ve often wondered what became of the bullies I had to put with in school as they grew up? Are they still bullies? If not do they remember, realize, and perhaps regret they were bullies back in the day? Or do they just remember it all as good, clean fun?
I don’t know the answers to these questions.
Pilot- and the walk was uphill both ways, right?
@Scipio – much to my dismay none of my bullies tripped or fell off a cliff. According to facebook they mostly grew up to be fine upstanding citizens with kids of their own with the same daily concerns I have. They’re probably on CC now.
@gouf78 - Do any of them ever admit to having been a bully so far as you know?
Many people, including most people posting on this thread, will admit to having been bullied, but I’ve never heard anyone here or elsewhere say anything about those times they bullied those kids who were weaker, less attractive, or less popular than themselves.
My D admits they were unkind to their younger cousins for awhile when they were growing up. She’s grateful they were forgiving and that they are now close.
Of course kids should learn how to handle disappointments. Most kids, especially the ones that are not picked for the team in gym, wil have plenty of opportunity to learn that (and parents should not always smooth the way). But there is no need for elementary schools to support practices that humiliate kids. There is no academic or social benefit to having kids pick the teams. Having the teachers do it or doing it by random makes the most sense. Leaving noone out and letting everyone play really works for young kids.
As kids get older, they will figure it out. If they aren’t good enought they won’t be on the travel team or have their art work selected for a special show. They will (at least at our school) get cut from a team on the field in front of all the other kids. They will read the cast list and see they didn’t get the part they wanted or any part. Their friends may turn on them. Or they may be the golden child that gets all As, makes varsity as a freshman, and has loads of friends.
There was a group of “mean girls” in one of my kids elementary school class year. They were very brutal to the girls that were not in that group. At least two of the moms recognized it and one copped to being a mean girl herself and was highly embarrassed and ashamed at her past. She was trying to get her daughter to not be one of those girls (this girl ended up growing up to be a lovely kid and outgrew the meanness).
One of the bullies from my junior high and HS years joined the Army and became an MP, so essentially took his skills and turned pro. He now collects a handsome lifetime retirement.
We tell kids to play to their strengths and follow their passion. It worked out well for him.
@Scipio – No. I’m sure they just thought it was total fun to torment me. I was too easy a target.
As an adult I realize I was too “goody two shoes” and too passive. I put up with way too much. I really just should have slugged them. Really hard.
(Maybe not the correct solution but I do think it would’ve done the trick. Or at least would’ve raised my status.)
@austinmshauri : I certainly did not mean to be advocating bullying. The two bits of my post you quote were intended to be separate. In the first, I acknowledged that some of what happened to me was bullying, which I thought meant it was clear that it was not OK. But that was occasionally being teased for being quick to lose my temper or otherwise to decompensate, not the experience of being forced to play games for which I had no aptitude or skill, or of being picked last when sides were chosen for those games.
In my mind the bullying was not OK, but that was a relatively small, relatively infrequent component of the gym experience (and of course was not limited to PE). The essence of my gym experience – being slower, weaker, and less agile than almost anyone else, and yet being required to do things that highlighted those qualities – did in fact turn out to have moral value, at least for me in the context in which I grew up.
It’s not hard to find an area that others are more gifted at then yourself. When our kids had challenges (for S & D it was learning Mandarin), I told them to imagine that ALL coursework was as tough as that for ALL subjects. Our kids thought that would just be awful and I think it helped them really feel for others who DID feel that all subjects were tougher for them than Mandarin language was for our kids (who never have mastered it).
I think we can help our kids (& others) realize areas where others shine and they don’t without public humiliation and bullying and physical and mental abuse. I was really surprised in gym glass when I realized that there really ARE folks who don’t score in the top 10% on the standardized tests (we had to make a bar graph of our scores). I was also struck by how poorly I scored in clerical speed and accuracy (I think I scored under 10%). My parents were surprised and upset; I told them it confirmed that I would be an awful clerical person or similar (I obviously had neither interest NOR aptitude).
I trail walk my dogs every day and have found quite a few routes that feel uphill both ways!
i was mortified at a high school reunion a few years ago when a former elementary school classmate told me how upset she was that I had teased her about her freckles 30-40years earlier! I don’t remember saying anything but I am pretty sure I remember the circumstances. I was 8 years old, newly moved to a new town, and awkwardly trying to make friends. I am absolutely positive that I did not mean it if I said I didn’t like her because she had freckles (her memory) because my adored older sister had thousands of freckles and I wanted to be like my sister. I, alas, had none.
I really felt bad that a stupid remark that I made out of social awkwardness remained with her for so many years. I guess in her eyes, I was a bully.