I say DODGEBALL.
What do you say?
A couple nights ago on Glee, the character Kurt Hummel said:
Although she knows it to be true, my opponent Brittany has stated that my face was used as a template for Hasbro’s successful line of My Little Ponies. Well, I refuse to be bullied. In fact, I refuse to let anyone be bullied. Today I want to take it one step further. I would like to hereby pledge to ban dodgeball at McKinley High. Since it’s invention in 1831 by Silas W. Mangold, dodgeball has been used as a schoolyard instrument of suppression. It’s violent. It’s painful. It’s humiliating and I believe it’s an equivalent to modern day stoning. Let’s end dodgeball at McKinley High and send a strong message that violence isn’t okay.
For me dodgeball brings back a lot of memories… good, bad and little ugly sometimes. As an old high school friend stated on my Facebook page, it was indeed “a ‘legal’ way to get back at the nasty kids” but then again it was just as acceptable for the bigger, stronger kids to pound us back if we weren’t fast enough. I usually wasn’t fast enough. Oh sure, I would put a good fight but I wasn’t a dodgeball winner. One time I definitely was a dodgeball loser when I ended up suffering torn ligaments in my knee and found myself unable to stand much less walk. Even the PE teacher mocked me a little that day. She later apologized when I returned to school a few days later on crutches.
Oh well!
After all it was “just” dodgeball and it was definitely part of growing up.
Right?
I’m starting to think perhaps not.
Today I came to pick up my son from school to take him out to lunch before his scheduled teacher conference. I was smiling thinking of our anticipated lunch date together. Then I saw him…limping towards me. As he got closer I could see that he was crying…no, he was sobbing. I ran to him and hugged him close to my body. Before he could try to tell me what was wrong, a teacher came up to me and explained that he got hurt during a “friendly” game of dodgeball in their PE class.
A “friendly” game of dodgeball?
Friendly?
Dodgeball?
Dodgeball is friendly?
It turns out his opponent hit him hard when his back was turned to the kid and he fell down hard on his knee. The actual hit didn’t hurt but slamming his knee on the blacktop did. I looked at the teacher and grumbled, “I’m sure that game was just as friendly as a modern-day stoning.” She laughed at my Glee reference. But I wasn’t laughing. There was nothing to laugh at over this. With the exception of one other student, Daniel’s classmates in his mainstream class are nearly twice his size. So it is perfectly okay for a kid who is over a foot taller and about 45 pounds heavier than Daniel to pound him down in a friendly game of dodgeball? Then I guess it would follow that it is okay for someone like me who is 7 inches taller and about 80 pounds heavier to pound that kid down with a dodgeball?…Probably only if I was playing a “friendly” game.
I decided to wait to discuss this later (when I was not feeling so murderous) and walked Daniel to the car where I could comfort him privately. After he calmed down we went out to lunch.
Nothing like your favorite cheese pizza at Chilis to help chase away the trauma of dodgeball.
Later, back at school for the teacher conference, I enjoyed glowing reports of my son’s academic successes. He has a solid A in math and a B in spelling in his mainstream class. He remains below grade level in reading but that is why he has an IEP and spends a good portion of his day in the Special Day Class. But his teachers are very pleased with his work and with him as a part of their classrooms. His teacher proposed that perhaps he is ready to to increase his time in the mainstream classroom with science and social studies. Very good news which I agreed to so after a formal IEP in a week or two, Daniel will take on 3rd grade level science and social studies. It was then that I asked about the mainstream PE class Daniel participates in. The teacher reports that he is challenged with it but the Adaptive PE instructor is still checking on him as he transitions. Size does matter she concedes. Yes it does, I agree…especially when the kids are playing a “friendly” game of dodgeball.
I’m still working on what I want to say to the school about this because right now the only shot I want to get in is to the back of a certain kid’s head…I know…inappropriate and definitely not friendly.
Dodgeball is nothing but an excuse for the bigger, faster, more naturally athletic kids to pick on the smaller, weaker, less sports minded among them. It has always been nothing but a way for a PE teacher (a grown up form of a school yard bully) to continue his bullying ways vicariously through his pet students. Any PE teacher who has the children play dodgeball during class should be reprimanded by his principal, and told to discontinue the activity immediately, and forever. It’s not a sport, but teacher sanctioned abuse. Tell Daniel’s principal I said so.
I hated dodgeball (I was bullied because I was shorter, wore glasses, had/and still have no discernible athletic aptitude). What happened to Daniel is one of those things that gives me nightmares and keeps me up at night. I missed Glee this week (we will catch up next week) but caught our other favorite show, Parenthood, which also dealt with bullying. Don’t know if you watch it, but Max is a kid (a very smart kid) who has Asperger’s Syndrome and whom his parents decided to mainstream because they wanted him to be academically challenged. Well the other kids have been bullying him (not at dogeball, but in math club) and he wasn’t even aware of it. That’s kind of what I am afraid might happen to Hallie down the road. His mom confronted the kids. But honestly, I’d confront the school: the teacher(s), the principal, whomever. And I agree with the commenter above: dodgeball should be banned. There is absolutely nothing educational (even in terms of athletics) about targeting your classmates. Nothing.
Yes, I do remember dodgeball, and maybe I had forgotten over these many years now that I am in my 50′s. But I was not very big, or very strong, and was considered by the other kids to be kind of a sissy type girl. What I remember is that I could not get excused from any P.E. type activities, no matter what happened. So, I remember being herded into the circle, looking around and knowing what was about to happen. The memory of it reminds me of Christians being marched out to meet the lions. I’d try to avoid the ball hits (I guess I was a little weak on athletics). And I’d get shocked by the inevitable, repeated force of the ball hitting my head. It was always the bigger and athletic girls, and the big boys, who would find me an easy target. It certainly did nothing good for my self esteem at that young age (elementary school). No, I would not be in favor of dodgeball at school.