Sport by rote: Chennai students merely bricks in book walls

Where have all the children gone? Certainly not to the playing fields or basketball and badminton courts.

Several CBSE schools in Chennai are, to the consternation of pupils and their parents, following board-affiliated stipulations under the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) and giving their pupils written assignments in sports.

At this rate, experts say, scoring an ace on paper will carry more weight than demonstration of actual athletic prowess.In several city schools, sports has taken an academic turn and children are breaking a sweat over `sports assignments' rather than by playing the games.

Many students and a number of parents are upset over the move. Time was when sport teachers would make even the most reluctant student get out in the sun to play . The new sports assignments, on the other hand, requires students to write how a game of football or badminton is played, number of players needed, and how these help -all at the expense of actual games. While the assignment is mostly for students of classes 9 and 10 who have to submit at least two such assignments, some schools admitted that they give pupils of Class 6 similar assignments.

For the students the homework during holidays makes sports more of a subject than a fun activity . “I had to make collages of pictures of javelin and table tennis during the Diwali weekend.I would rather be playing these games than sitting and writing about them. If one is to learn a new game, it's better to play it,“ said Anand (name changed), a Class 9 student of a CBSE school in Mylapore.

While some parents found the idea absurd, and put the onus of the board, schools, particularly those with shrinking playgrounds, say the new system provides exposure to children not interested in games.

Though the idea behind introducing theory in sports was to create a sound understanding of the games children usually play, the grading on the marksheet in most schools places more importance on the written test.

The skewed balance between theory and practical is where schools are getting it wrong, points out Parminder Gill, cofounder & head of business, EduSports. “ A certain cognitive sense of the sport may be required but there is no point to assignments without actual activity.

Sree Niketan Group of Schools

correspondent P Vishnucharan said understanding a game better through writing about it is not wrong. But in schools with no playgrounds it would be quite silly for children to only write about a sport and not play it,“ he said.

“In my son's school, the more you write for the sports assignment, the better grades you get,“ one parent said. “Sadly , that is how it works now.“

Schools need to change their attitude towards sports and see it as a stress buster, insists Gill. “At the end of the day, the objective must be to go out and play , not think about medals and competition,“ he added.

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