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Section One: The Fundamentals
A) What do we know about sport? What are common assumptions we make about sport and society?
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While most sports at face value promote teamwork and unity, in many cases this falls flat. In many scenarios individuals end up competing against one another on one team, fracturing the teamwork structure. Specifically with individuals believing they are above others within the team rather than equals. Additionally, this causes issues of unity, where individual can begin to feel inferior, left out, and lead to many other subsequent issues such as bullying. This ties well to Ontario elementary schools, where many games in physical education cannot include children being benched or “out”. This is partly as the promotion of teamwork and unity in a sport has been found to be often untrue, and leading to possible bullying, feelings of being left out, and negative comparisons to other children. In addition to what I have provided, there were not significantly surprising points given, but many give a wide range of ways that these points could be considered untrue. |
Exercise 3: Notebook prompt
What are some other metanarratives about sport that you are familiar with? Find an image or video clip or draw something yourself that captures this idea…
So what? Why does any of this matter? Does it matter? As something we grow up with – live with – play through – we don’t often interrogate the meanings of sport, and perhaps we don’t want to.
But being aware of these assumptions and metanarratives is especially important, I would argue, because of the centrality of sport to our everyday lives, the role that sport plays in shaping our childhood and worldviews and….. [finish that thought]
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There are many men narratives about sports one example could be how sports brings people together. This matters because from a young age shapes many aspects of our lives. Besides some individuals who fulfil sports as a full-time career, for many it influences social interactions and how we interact with the world, lifestyle choices such as competitiveness, and who we are as a whole. I believe it’s important for us to be aware of just how important these sports are in our development process and possibly what we do in the future. Personally, I can say that sports have shaped friend groups how I interact with people, brought a competitive nature, and shaped me into the adventurous and hard working individual I am today. As a final note, it is also important to note that all these aspects are generalized. They are not always perfect and leave room to also create division such as Colin Kaepernick and his protests.
<The prompt wording was a little tricky on this one, just wanted to let you know!> |
B) What is social justice?
Exercise 4: Padlet Prompt
Think back to the last section and try to look at some of the ideas we discussed differently. How might sport and social justice actually co-exist?
Record any images, video clips, or gifs you added to the padlet and identify a point of intersection between sport and social justice (can be an issue or a barrier or a debate or something you would like to explore in more depth in this course) . Screenshot or paste in your response below.
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One of the main topics includes access and opportunity for people of disabilities. For this Padlet, I will focus on sledge hockey as an example of access and opportunity. Opportunities for individuals with disabilities to play sports such as this are very dependent on where you are located and take many considerations such as facilities, funding, and feelings of being left out or humiliation as spoken on in the previous Padlet. Much of the Kawartha region has access to sledge hockey as a team sport for individuals primarily in wheelchairs. Comparatively in eastern Ontario, this opportunities are scarcer. Taking Athens, Ontario, my rural hometown as an example, all of these issues arise leading to fewer opportunities. The local rink is not designed to be easily assessable (built in 1976) with little to no funding based on the area, and from growing up there believe that the “feelings of being left out” could also be true. This all being said, I do believe that there is a point where co-existing can occur with two main items. The first, government funding allowing for greater accessibility and opportunities for both the facilities and programs in the area. The other involves more awareness with attempts to encourage these activities and bring people together for these programs.
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C) Social Justice Reading
(note: this activity is optional!)
D) KINESIOLOGY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Exercise 5:
Exercise 6:
What are the implications of bodies-at-risk discourse and the refusal to understand the health gap from a social justice perspective, according to the authors of this article?
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According to the authors, the implications of the bodies-at-risk discourse and the refusal to understand the health gap from a social justice perspective includes maintaining inequalities of low health and oppression. This without bodies-at-risk discourse and the refusal to understand the health gap places the blame onto individuals within a group rather than taking into account or solving the initial cause. Examples of these could include racism and poverty, and without solutions just continue the cycle with no change. This ties into majoritarian storytelling, where the ideal and standards are based off Caucasian individuals and other groups are left stranded without taking into account the structural inequalities. Furthermore, it goes onto say that failure to take account of historic information surrounding marginalized groups and their previous disadvantages, and their effect on current results.
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Section Two: Sport Feminism
Exercise 7: Notebook Prompt
What is feminism? What does it mean to you? Choose one of the images below and explain how it captures your understanding of feminism (or find one that does speak to you and paste this into your pressbook with an explanation of why it matters to you.
Feminism can be defined as both the belief and advocation of equality between genders. This includes leveling the playing field between the genders in topics such as opportunities, access, rights, and eliminating oppression among others. The image presented shows that feminism is not a one sided gender specific topic and is put further by the phrase found on the shirt, “This is what a feminist looks like”. Additionally, I could point towards the normalization of males participating in the topic and participation. For an individual such as myself, this show a world where individuals of either gender receive equality, opportunities, access, rights, respect, and there would be no societal constraints between them.
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Exercise 8: Notes Prompt (optional)
NB: Cornell notes is a great resource that teaches effective notetaking. Unfortunately, our system can’t save notes taken in the H5P app, so this is fully optional.
Exercise 9: Crossword Activity
Exercise 10: Padlet Prompt
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