Running up the score equals bullying?

[Lieju]

In school, teachers can't criticize students for being wrong. A new curriculum going around academia called Common Core says that if a student says that two plus two equals five, as long as they can explain how they got to the result, it still counts as correct.

Isn't it right, though, that you won't have to blidly follow what's tought to you but use your own head instead?

If a student can mathematically prove 2 + 2 = 5 and make it a proper proof, absolutely that should count as correct.

 

[Kyrian007]

isn't there usually like, a mercy rule that stops someone from this sort of thing? or is that just baseball?

The junior college conference in my area has a pretty good football "mercy rule." One juco in the bunch playes for a juco Natl. Championship every other year or so and the others... don't. The rule is that once a team is up by 45 or 50 or so the clock doesn't ever stop running. The equivelant in football (for our non-American Escapist friends) would be like the elimination of injury time if a team is up by 5 or 6. Well somewhat more than that actually, the game clock is supposed to stop quite a bit in gridiron football.

The high school league in question should have a rule like this in place, I'm guessing they did not.

 

[Kyrian007]

In school, teachers can't criticize students for being wrong. A new curriculum going around academia called Common Core says that if a student says that two plus two equals five, as long as they can explain how they got to the result, it still counts as correct.

Isn't it right, though, that you won't have to blidly follow what's tought to you but use your own head instead?

If a student can mathematically prove 2 + 2 = 5 and make it a proper proof, absolutely that should count as correct.

Well the "2+2=5" argument isn't the best one the opposition to common core folks have. There are legitimate concerns about common core, however the opposition has kind of been hijacked by the type of folks who disapprove of its teaching of evolution because they believe evolution isn't "biblically verifiable." Others have tried to link it with this paranoid "new world order" stuff about the "U.N.'s Agenda 21." It kind of makes those of us like Lysander and I who just have questions about the standards being too low seem like we're on the same side as the creepy, "righter than TEA" conspiracy nutters.

 

[Bertylicious]

I guess if the other team made us say "I'm gay, I'm gay, I'm gay" over and over again whilst punching us in our faces then that would be bullying. The other alternative would be if they'd spent the preceeding weeks following our best players around on social media, criticising them wherever possible and also sowing dissent between our team members, in the manner of Goonswarm or Arnold schwarzenegger.

This may construe bad sportsmanship on the part of the winning team, however, which I would consider to be a failing in an educational environment as it changes what is meant to be a constructive activity into a destructive one.

Maybe that is good though! I have forced a weaker child to say "I'm gay" over and over again whilst punching them in the face and I can assure you that it is tremendous fun, perhaps it even helped me become the man I am today! It is a dog eat dog world after all and the sooner children learn about subjugating others for fun and profit then the sooner they can start gaining the skills they need to make this country better.

 

[somonels]

1) No, though it is humiliating. We have already tried holding back people so that the lowest common denominator would not feel so bad, it's called communism. /now I claim the thread to be over since I compared it to communism
2) No. One of the sportsmanship rules is that the game is played till the bitter end.

 

[Dirge Eterna]

I don't think it was bullying more of a huge mismatch. If the winning team can beat down everyone in their conference they need to be moved to a harder and more skilled conference. It probably sucked for both sides to have a score like that just in different ways. I was never an athlete nor was I interested in sports much, until my son got interested in playing hockey. I learned the rules and helped him in anyway I can from just practicing with him to having a coach work with him. He is a goalie so he takes any points scored against him very personally even though he is only 6. His team was beaten 9-0 recently and thats a pretty high score for kids hockey. No one on his team was crying or upset they all just knew they needed to work harder and practice to do better. He analyzed the things he did wrong and wanted to focus on them with his coach. Thats the way to take a loss not to cry and whine to the school board. I see it in his league where there are parents who run and complain about everything in regards to their kid. The kids in my sons league spend a designated time on the ice then switch out except for him because he is the only goalie, so he spends all game out there. I have had parents complain to the coach, officials and me that he is getting special treatment cause he is on the ice all the time. I told the parent to suck it, if his son wants to be a goalie go drop the money on the equipment and training and he is welcome to play. Parents of kids in sports seem to be way too high strung and act like if their kid doesn't become a professional athlete then they are wasting their time. I just want him to have fun and play, if he ends up wanting to be a pro then I will support him but not push him. There are some fields and rinks that don't allow parents to cheer the kids on as some bad ones spend all the game jeering and talking shit to the kids.

 

[Bestival]

Spoiler: Spoilered to save space.

I remember back in my hearty old school days when men were men, boys were boys, and chocolate wasn't so freaking expensive (2005)
Watching our first-string rugby team head off in their battered mini van to travel from our small country grammar school to one of those high flying big city private schools with their own swimming pools and multi-million gyms and proper rugby coaching and real teachers and stuff, we didn't have a hope in hell of getting anywhere near their touchline, but we went anyway, high spirited and jolly, because it was fun, and if you got frustrated you could always wait until mid scrum and then stud the proud jackass that performed that slightly-higher-than-should-have-been-legal-but-the-ref-allowed-it-anyway tackle.
Well anyways, as the rusting minibus pulled out of the gates and covered the road in black exhaust smoke on it's way to inevitable defeat I remember hearing the dulcet tones of the rugby boys harmonising over the mechanical squeal of the gearbox in a glorious chorus of delicate soft poetry; "When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, what would I be..."

And I remember taking that time to stop and reflect on the fact that they were perfectly happy going off to a match they were going to get absolutely trounced at, how they'd clearly put far more effort into singing than they ever did rugby, and on an unrelated note how I should probably totally be in class right now.

Yeah... It's high school sports. Kids are developed enough to know how to deal with losing a game of football, and if someone really gets super depressed because they lost pretty badly then there's clearly some other crap going on in their lives that they need to take a good hard look at. Teenagers are not so thin skinned, it's not bullying and it's not damaging to lose by 1 point or to lose by 1000,000, especially if it's a team sport because the blame lies on no individual in particular.

That they all knew the words to this song by heart explains a lot about our rugby team.

Is there any chance you are a writer? Because that was written absolutely beautifully and had me laughing throughout. 10/10, would read again.

OT: This isn't bullying. If the coach would call the team (yes, the whole team as a single entity) late at night and mock them, and during recess he and his friends would seek out the team and throw soft clumps of, inexplicably white, potato at them, that would be bullying.

Going 'HA! LOOOOOOOSERS!!!' after completely destroying them in a match is simply a statement of fact.

 

[Neonsilver]

Well, assuming that the winning team played fair and didn't harass the other team for loosing, I can only say that the father is a retard. Instead of wasting his time on this bullying crap, he should teach his kid how to deal with losing.

The kids are playing a competitive sport, meaning they can lose and sooner or later they will lose a game. It's the job of the coach and their parents to teach them that they can lose and how to deal with that.


Filing a bullying complaint is definitely the wrong way to deal with that.

 

[Stu35]

We dont complain to an employer and say they bullied us because we "lost" a job interview to a better candidate

Some people do though.

I've a mate who's responsible for recruiting people, he's constantly having to deal with frivolous complaints of "discrimination" by blatantly unqualified individuals (including, apparently, plenty of white men, which is interesting I think).

On topic:

When I got to college I started playing Rugby Union for the local (to my college) U-17s, I'd been a Rugby League player before this, for a school and local team that had a pretty good winning habit - The reason I took up RU was because a friend at college played for this team, and they were getting spanked week in week out, and they were bleeding players because of it.

My addition did not help. I recall one game in Hull where we lost by over 100-0... 10 minutes from the end the referee asked if we wanted to end early.

We said no. We finished that game.

Losing sucks, losing badly every week sucks a lot, it hurts emotionally, it hurts physically, and there are days you genuinely wake up hating the fact that you've got Rugby that day.

It's part of the game though sometimes.

I remember one game we did win though against Rotherham - I remember it because we ended up playing 12-a-side uncontested scrums because neither team had enough players. I scored a hat-trick. Good day.

In fact, I think that was our only win all season.


Anyway, tl:dr - Losing is shit, I know this first hand. It's part of life though, people need to learn that. Reading the article it looks like the winning team did everything they could not to humiliate their opponents.

The junior college conference in my area has a pretty good football "mercy rule." One juco in the bunch playes for a juco Natl. Championship every other year or so and the others... don't. The rule is that once a team is up by 45 or 50 or so the clock doesn't ever stop running. The equivelant in football (for our non-American Escapist friends) would be like the elimination of injury time if a team is up by 5 or 6. Well somewhat more than that actually, the game clock is supposed to stop quite a bit in gridiron football.

The high school league in question should have a rule like this in place, I'm guessing they did not.

They did the running clock thing in this game.

The winning team literally made every attempt they could to stop scoring in the 2nd half short of telling the players to simply stop playing (which would be a terrible mistake) - The coach didn't call any passing plays, subbed off all his first team players, etc. etc.

The only thing to do after that would have been to kneel the ball on every play, and nobody wants to see that.

 

[tippy2k2]

Christ, I hope this doesn't become the same bullshit where that Girls Basketball team got shutout in a basketball game, and the school felt so bad that they gave them medals. For getting shutout in basketball.

If I may, I'm curious about this...

Did the girls basketball team get medals because it was a participation medal in a tourney or something or did they get a medal BECAUSE they were shut-out?

As a youth soccer coach (U9 boys champions! WHOOOO!!!!), I've never been against participation medals (though this is also at the U9 non-travel level; not exactly dealing with a young Messi here ) as long as the champions received something bigger. For example, in the league I coach in, everyone receives generic medals for playing in the tournament while the first and second place teams receive actual trophies with engraving and everything.

 

[Battenberg]

1st: No, this just isn't bullying. I understand the father's suggestion that perhaps Aledo could have eased up once they were comfortably ahead instead of continuing to embarass the opposition just because they can but then again both teams essentially agreed to try and do that simply by turning up and beginning the game. Speaking as someone who's suffered at its hands bullying is much more severe than beating someone in a football game (unless perhaps you are literally physically beating them), to me it is carrying out targeted actions against someone that have a serious and unpleasant mental effect on that person, typically something that will stick with that person for a very long time. I think 10 years from now the players on both teams will look back on this game as a funny anecdote, they won't be looking back and still feeling victimised and haunted by what happened.

2nd: Based on the above no not really. As the coach said it would be unfair to tell members of the team not to score as it would undoubtedly mean a lot to them. Some of the students may even be planning on pursuing a serious career within football in which case they will need to perform their absolute best every game, even when they're against a team that is far less skilled. Frankly if any of the players (on either team) can't take losing a football game to the point it has a serious negative effect on them they just shouldn't be playing and perhaps that is what this father should be focusing on instead.

 

[Juste Goose]

I made the mistake of looking at the comments on the article.

What was I thinking...

 

[Brian Tams]

Christ, I hope this doesn't become the same bullshit where that Girls Basketball team got shutout in a basketball game, and the school felt so bad that they gave them medals. For getting shutout in basketball.

If I may, I'm curious about this...

Did the girls basketball team get medals because it was a participation medal in a tourney or something or did they get a medal BECAUSE they were shut-out?

As a youth soccer coach (U9 boys champions! WHOOOO!!!!), I've never been against participation medals (though this is also at the U9 non-travel level; not exactly dealing with a young Messi here ) as long as the champions received something bigger. For example, in the league I coach in, everyone receives generic medals for playing in the tournament while the first and second place teams receive actual trophies with engraving and everything.

They were playing in a tournament. However (I tried painstakingly to find an article to back this up, but my powers of google failed me, so you'll just have to take my word for it) I clearly remember my local news station saying that the girls were given medals for showing "great sportsmanship" for not giving up.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Not bullying, nobody was mean to one another and both parties implicitly agreed to the rules of the game when they entered the tournament.

So yeah, parents being dumbshits and accidentally harming their kids by caring about them too much. Again.

Also, Off-Topic: how come every source I find for everything on the internet is a hardcore conservative new site? I mean, this story has nothing to do with politics and the article is fine, but it's somewhat aggravating to scroll down and finding people blaming Women/Liberals/The Economy/Handouts/"Barrack Osama"/Medicare/Communists (really) for this.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

How is this bullying? I'm not into sports, but generally one team wins and one team loses. Is the leading team supposed to let their opponents catch up to keep things fair? Are both teams supposed to win now?

I think the winning team's coach made a good call putting in 2nd and 3rd string players. They tried to even the odds a bit without just slacking off. If the losing team couldn't handle that, then tough shit.

 

[spartan231490]

If they were playing 3rd stringers, they weren't running up the score, you're team just absolutely sucks.

However, that would only be the case if we lived in logic-land. Sadly, we live in butt-hurtville, where anything that makes anyone sad is evil and death be to anyone who points out how idiotic that is.

 

[elvor0]

I don't understand . I read the spoilers and still don't i'm honestly asking this question . What exactly is being considered as bullying. I will reply with an answer when i fully understand.

Better than me. I don't even understand what was going on...something about handegg? And there were stringers...and a clock with legs? I've never heard the word stringer in my mind, but the first thing that comes to mind is a very very thin stripper. Seriously, if I hadn't been told it was about american football that paragraph would've been tantamount to lunacy to my ears.

The team at my elementary school which played real football (or soccer) managed to lose with the score 0-31 and that's really a whole lot for a sport where 3 goals in a game is considered a lot. The opposing team even made sure everyone would score, even the goalie which is something that shouldn't happen.

You wot? I've never played football in my life, but even my horrendously bad matches on FIFA vs Ultra Hard Bots never ended that badly. Were the opposing team all quadriplegics?

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Bullying is good for people. It gives them thicker skins so that they are ready for the real world. Bullies are true patriots.