29
2012
Non competitive?
An article by Stephen Pritchard
I have as part of an ongoing project been working in a school which a member of staff described as “non competitive” for the past 2 or 3 years. Until recently, I had not been a massive thinker about competition, it just happened. I would suggest I probably fell on the cautious side with the players I worked with and over protected them from competition. Perhaps this was a sub-conscious awareness that the opportunities were inappropriate for them – in my opinion. As I reflect now I think that it could have been inappropriate because I had not done enough in the coaching environment to prepare them for the challenges of competition – particularly defeat.
I’m currently delivering a Chance to Shine project through my club. It’s a heavily funded initiative to re-introduce cricket to state schools as not only a PE activity but a vessel for wider curriculum use. I’ve been provided with clothing, coaching equipment, freebies to dish out, the full works. It links in with the MCC Spirit of Cricket and there is an assembly resource that coaches are encouraged to use to deliver the message to the school as part of the project. Having never done a primary school assembly, this was a new challenge. The link shows the promo video and an example of the assembly being delivered. If you’re short of time, read the downloadable 2011 plan, it will make the rest of the blog clearer.
http://www.lords.org/laws-and-spirit/mcc-chance-to-shine-in-schools/assemblies,1456,AR.html
So, back to the non-competitive school. When delivering the assembly, some of the answers to questions around how to respect opponents and how to act when you’ve won and lost were more unusual than when I’ve asked them in other schools. Answers such as “shake hands”, “clap them”, “say thankyou”, “give three cheers” are fairly standard fayre. Here though the children didn’t seem to know what to do when they’d won or lost. Suggestions included “giving them a headstart to make it fair”, “not trying so hard”, “swapping good players to the other team”. All lovely ideas, and things in another situation I’d hope to hear. It seemed that as the children had not been exposed to the monster that is competition, they therefore didn’t know how to deal with it’s results.
I didn’t reflect on this with any value at the time. I thought this would make for lovely sessions where everyone took turns nicely and helped each other do their best without trying to outdo one another. Having coached a few sessions my experiences have been the polar opposite. It seems that in the situations I expose the children to (where there are choices of practices and the chance to work at different “levels”) they are not equipped to cope. I’ve struggled to keep pupils on task, setting themselves goals to achieve. There is a fascination with what everyone else is doing and a worry if it is different, or if others are not doing it correctly, or if there are groups with uneven numbers. In order to make the sessions manageable I have had to revert to simple, safe, “all do the same” type activities. As part of the behaviour management I’ve been overt with praise for those who have stuck to the tasks and those who have begun to show less interest in the activities of other groups and stick to their own.
Possibly the most salient question to ask is whether I’d have noticed the groups lack of ability to cope with competition had I not been told they were “non competitive”. I’d suggest I probably wouldn’t have done so and would have simply thought them a group with challenging behaviour. I think I would have asjusted session content and delivery similarly and so achieved similar responses. Also important would be to discover why the school made the choice to become “non-competitive” and whether this step has had the desired outcome.
There is a lot of discussion currently around the value or otherwise of competition. This experience has raised my awareness of it’s importance. By removing it, a set of experiences are removed from young people’s lives meaning that when they come across them for the first time they are not prepared to cope. Rather than “protecting” children from it, examining how to use it appropriately would be far more beneficial – I guess this is a new(ish) concept for many. This experience has certainly opened my eyes. Keep yours
