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At times it is difficult to imagine where the insanity of political correctness will lead. We have already seen universities that have attempted to ban scales because they might be insensitive to overweight individuals. We’ve seen students protest “ethnic” foods on college campuses. We’ve seen culture wars rage over allegedly “offensive” cases of cultural appropriation in Halloween costumes. We’ve seen major media outlets adopt ludicrous politically correct language in an effort to be more understanding.
Now, the politically correct thought policy have found a new target: dodgeball.
Apparently the popular gymnasium sport has a dark side: a “hidden agenda” of oppressing those “perceived as weaker individuals through the exercise of violence and dominance.”
A trio of researchers, presenting at the Canadian Society for the Study of Education conference in Vancouver, made the valuable discovery and shared their findings earlier this week.
You see, it is most hurtful and insensitive to throw rubber balls at another human being. This violent and domineering behavior, of course, leads to bullying.
The distinguished trio of “researchers” claim that dodgeball is the only sport where human beings are targeted. This seems like weak reasoning all around. Human beings are “targeted” in baseball, by a pitcher who is trying to strike them out. They are targeted when players on the field attempt to tag them out as they round the bases. In basketball, they are targeted by defensive players who attempt to block their shots. In football, they are targeted by 11 individuals on the other team who are attempting to impede, by all means necessary, their progress toward the opposing end zone. In hockey and lacrosse they are targeted by entire teams wielding large sticks, who are allowed to use aggressive means to steal the puck or ball.
This may go down as the most useless, pointless research in history. Given that it is coming out of the Education Department at the University of British Columbia, one can only imagine that it is taxpayer funded as well. Should Canadians be impressed that their hard-earned tax dollars are going to fund this “research?”
The reality is that virtually every sport on the face of the planet involves some element of “targeting” another human being. Sports by nature are both competitive and cooperative. You cooperate with the other members of your team, but you compete together against the members of the other team.
A sport that involves throwing a rubber ball at another human being is hardly a means of oppression.
If you were to inject the “researchers” in question with truth serum, they would likely dispute the contention that the philosophical underpinnings of their research is rooted in Marxism.
But I would argue that Marxism is at the heart of this type of thinking; and it’s a type of thinking that is slowly but surely worming its way into higher education across the Western world…from the US to Canada to Australia to Western Europe.
With this type of Marxist thinking (and it may take the guise of “sensitivity training” or “political correctness” or “social justice” or “self-esteem boosting” or “diversity and inclusion”), feelings are more important than facts, the collective is more important than the individual, cooperation is more important than competition, and above all…society at every level must work all day every day to ensure that various classes and groups of “oppressed people” are given advantages and benefits to ensure that they enjoy the same quality of outcomes as “non-oppressed people.”
Without entering into a discussion of the inherent political, social, and economic ramifications of this line of thinking; it should be abundantly clear to any individual with an ounce of common sense (beyond political ideology) that aptitude for dodgeball (along with virtually anything else), is not uniformly distributed. Some children are more talented at throwing, catching, running, jumping, and dodging than others.
There is nothing unfair about dodgeball stemming from the fact that some children (generally those who are not good at catching rubber balls) are going to be targeted by other children who are good at throwing rubber balls (the oppressors).
Rather than wring our hands about some children having life-devastating self-esteem issues from the terrors of gym class dodgeball, perhaps we should wonder why Canada (and many other developed nations) is producing an educational system that would turn out this kind of government-funded “research” in the first place.
In the meantime. Let the children play their dodgeball.
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