Sports VS. Music and Arts
Equal Opportunities for students , no matter what their interests are! We know not everyone is interested in sport and our extra-curricular activities reflect that. The poster for the school screams.
Reading onwards, you find a list of what extra-curricular activities are available in the school. Football. Basketball. Volleyball. Hurling/Camogie. Soccer.
Annual art, short story and poetry competition. Biennial musical. Badminton. As you can see, there are lots of activities for non-sporty children to be involved in. I sincerely hope you caught the sarcasm there. Turn on the television and chances are, you’ll find some form of sport being played.
Rarely do you find programs about the arts. Sure, you may find music on MTV, but that’s only superficial music, not anything eye-opening. It’s the same in schools. Our English class was assigned an essay. We could write about any of these topics. A match I took part in.
My local sporting club. My hobbies. Why sport is important to me. Yet again, almost all of the prompts were sport related. It seems in schools that less and less importance is being placed on art and music.
The length of time dedicated to sports is increasing. It is a rare occurrence when at least one person isn’t away at a match or training. Any practices for music must be held after school or during lunchtime. Why is that music and arts are neglected so much. Last year, our school held a sports day.
The day after, we missed three classes so we could award medals to the children who had won the most events. There was also an essay competition last year. Five minutes of class were missed so the principal could read out the winners names over the intercom. While I don’t feel this issue is a serious as some of the others out there, I do feel the lack of non-sporting activities makes a lot of children feel inadequate due to their lack of sporting ability. Out of twenty five 14-16 year olds surveyed, 21 said there should be more opportunities to get involved in other hobbies. 17 said they felt concerned at times that they should be better at sport.
I doubt this importance placed on sport is going to disappear anytime soon, but the best we can hope for is a little more recognition given to those who aren’t talented sporting wise. After all, shouldn’t everyone be given the chance to try out new things and be praised for what they are good at?
