I wonder sometimes if I would have become quite the sports hero had hopscotch, skipping ropes and gotti been parts of the school team (i was the unbeaten champion at all three but somewhere between grade five and six these stopped being "sports"). I probably would.
Why is jumping ropes not a school sport? It is a vigorously physical, creative, team driven game. Is it simply because it is a “girlie” game (used by boxers to quicken their pace) that it has gained no grounds? Is it the same deal with hopscotch? (Hopscotch was used by the Roman army as an exercise drill to improve their speed and feet co-ordination).
Both ropes and hopscotch are almost universally played by girls.
And how easily we dismiss this.
Boys will not be caught dead playing gotti and hopscotch.
And how easy it is to make girls dismiss activities they think of as intrinsically theirs.
How villainously our schools, where we first begin to think of ourselves both as social beings and individual entities, participate in propagating this sense of worthlessness.
How easily girls are taught to envy everything the other sex does.
