When bloggers don't engage their brains

Okay, I admit it, I sometimes rant without thinking too hard about it...

A key example is the Sandra Gidley post. Although I disagree with her still, I realise she wasn't quite calling for abolition of sports days, but her comments are not exactly helpful.

Quite honestly, it should be up to the school to choose what sports they do, quite why Parliament needs to discuss this I don't know. My biggest annoyance is that this shouldn't have been said at all, nor should those statements made by others in the house on this subject.

The key is really diversity. I think children should be encouraged to compete in school. Within a year group, house or form competition can be very healthy if approached correctly.
Picking for teams in games lessons should be done by teachers to avoid the 'always picked last' problem.
As a whole school, sport should be celebrated, but not to the exclusion of anything else. My school had a lot sport, but over the years a more inclusive ethos was developed and we had inter-house play competitions, a technology competition (given a problem and 1 day to solve it), music competitions (I remember the choir well) as well as lots of other extra-curricular activities and awards in subjects and just for general academic achievement.

When MPs don't engage their brains

Iain Dale is reporting that Sandra Gidley has called for competitive sports to be banned from schools. Apparently on the basis that someone must lose.

This is absolute nonsense. We all engage in many things which we could lose at, we need to learn this and how to cope with losing (and winning).
Rather than banning competitive sport, why not encourage children to do their best, praise them for that and encourage all children to find what they are good at. Some will be better at sport than others, that is natural. Others are more academic, others best with art or crafts or mechanical things. This is natural and healthy.

To isolate children from competition risks damaging the very foundations of a liberal society, the recognition of the differences between people and the enourmous value of those differences. Also the function of competition in driving progress. Without competition we would be static at the very least.

If this stems from hating sport at school, well I hated it. Not because I was poor at sports, which for the most part I was, but because of the crass nature of some of the teachers, who were little more than bullies (I'm thinking of a certain ex-England cricketer in particular). The better teachers did not get annoyed with you for failure, they got annoyed with you for not trying. I also didn't like the cold in winter, or to be honest, exerting myself. This has nothing to do with competition, the competitive aspects were often the best. They bound us together in houses, teams or as a school and helped foster a sense of community.

This sort of utterance from an MP is the equivalent of Tory MPs muttering on about Europe or sexual morality or religion, they reinforce stereotypes about the party, which are simply not true for most of the party. They are singularly unhelpful. This will get us classed as the loony-left (the stereotype of the sort of teacher who would call for this has to be the lefty, feminist, misandronist, NUT member, primary school teacher, not the image we want for our party).