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Recently, children's sports activity has been boomed more than ever. We can see major proportion of them attend sports clubs like soccer, football or hockey clubs after school. However, with this phenomena we should think about the purpose and function of children's sports activity. In my opinion, children have to play sports for their pleasure, rather than for getting victory from competing with others. It is because of educational, cultural and health.
First of all, sports for competition gives little educational value. By playing sports, children learn lessons of teamwork, attempting rules. It is the most precious value for growing citizens who will make strong society. However, When sports for children means as competition than enjoyment, they only acquire sense of winning. Sports with the only for winning, they easily learn tricks, skills rather than the lessons from sports itself. Recently Turkish professional soccer league has postponed because of players’ match-fixing scandal. One of the suspected athelate witnessed that he has been intently defeated for money since he was a junior player. It is evident that if young players only insisted to win, they are more likely to related to this moral scandal. It gives awareness of true meaning and purpose of sports. In this sense, sports for fun, as its essential value, is more educational than sports for defeating others.
Secondly, playing sport without any sense of competing frees children from gaps among other children. playing sports to win differentiates certain groups of children by race, sex and environment. We have to admit that there are physical gaps among groups of children by their ethnic, and financial environment. These gaps are very challenging, and more obvious when children encountered to competitions. Thus, children who lost competitions or contests because of their intrinsic capability, are frustrated and differentiate them form other groups. Within this competitive situation, children's sports only gives frustration and discrimination in such young age which effects on their lifetime. However, if children play sports for their enjoyment, they don’t differentiate their colleague but only regard them as their friends. In this sense, sports for children's pleasure releases themselves from gaps or challenges among others.
Lastly, playing sports for pleasure reduces children's stress wherease sports for competition gives stress. One of the reason why children play sports is to relieving their stress from their study. In these days, children have huge burdens such as getting grades, volunteering and peer pressure as grown ups. For some of them, sports is a great chance to be released from these burdens. However, if it comes to competition too, it will give stress rather than relieving. A study done in Japan, measured stress of two groups of 2nd grade elementary students who play soccer, one group belongs to a national junior league and another is not. The study showed that the group which does not belong to the league had 65% lower stress rate than another. This proves that sports without competition is more beneficial for children to relieve their stress.
Overall, considering all statements above, children should play sports for only fun, not for winning or outstanding. Some people might assert that competition motivates and stimulates children sometime, I strongly believe that children should enjoy playing sports because of its educational value, equalizing and stress relieving.: | |