A good game of dodgeball used to be a celebratory rainy day activity for phys-ed students, but researchers warn that teaching kids to swarm their peers and pelt the weakest ones with balls may reinforce bullying behaviours.
In fact, a team of B.C.-based researchers goes as far as to suggest that dodgeball is a “tool of oppression” that unfairly targets some students.
"Dodgeball reinforces the five faces of oppression defined by (theorist Iris Marion Young) as marginalization, powerlessness, and helplessness of those perceived as weaker individuals through the exercise of violence and dominance by those who are considered more powerful," reads the abstract of the study discussed earlier this week at the Canadian Society for the Study of Education in Vancouver.
For those who are rusty with the rules of dodgeball, the game is simple: One team tries to eliminate the other by pelting their opponents with rubber balls. Those who are hit are banished to the sidelines to watch.
Researchers argue that the game teaches students to dehumanize each other and instills negative values that weotherwise teach children to avoid.
“If someone is going to be a good person when they get older… they need to have practice when they’re young and in school exhibiting those characteristics,” David Burns, study co-presenter and educational studies professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, told CTV News Channel.
“If you want people to practise the disposition of ganging up on people, if you want them to practise really enjoying throwing things at people, it can lead to all sorts of other things in the future.”
Though dodgeball has become a popular activity outside of schools, with adult leagues popping up across the country, Burns says the game becomes problematic when forced upon students in an educational setting.
“When you play a game in a school, rather than simply playing at home with your friends or something like that, you’re doing that for a particular educational reason and you really need to know what that reason is,” he explained.
Burns hopes the study will help teachers look critically at what type of behaviours they want to be teaching when choosing activities in the classroom.
“If you’re choosing dodgeball I think you have a responsibility to children to choose it for a particular reason,” he said. “And to be clear about what we are trying to learn from it.”
