Summary Of Children Need To Play, Not Compete By Jessica Statsky

Statsky’s Argument is Not Explored Broadly Enough In the article “Children Need to Play, Not Compete” by Jessica Statsky, the author describes how the competitiveness of organized sports that have been popular among many young American children in recent years can have damaging effects on their physical or psychological well-being and proper development. Statsky said an apparent disadvantage of competitive sports is young children’s vulnerability to physical injury. For instance, she mentioned about Professor Tutko’s claim that many contact sports such as tackle football are physically harmful for young children. Besides that, children’s fear of getting hurt can also discourage them from engaging in sports activities as she refers to

She stated that “Highly competitive organized sports such as Peewee football and Little League Baseball.… are developmentally inappropriate for children.…” and discussed mainly about these two sports throughout her essay (53). This excludes many other competitive sports; even the ones that are fairly competitive. How about some other team sports, such as soccer or basketball? Should people believe that all competitive sports are bad for young children because these two team sports caused problems in America? Maybe the issue is not that all competitive sports are bad for children, but rather the way people are organizing this type of sports games or events in the United States is making them overly competitive and not suitable for little children. There can be places in the world where some competitive sports are practiced and organized without involving too much competition to harm young children. Statsky’s argument is limited to only American children or society, so can’t be generalized to any

For instance, she argued that overly competitive sports involve injury, and it can affect children’s physical development by noting “…. physical actions … are bad for growing bodies” (53). She shouldn’t generalize this fact about too competitive sports to all organized sports for children. She almost makes it sound like all competitive sports are very competitive. Indeed, most sports should be competitive for at least a certain degree; if people don’t compete with one another at all, it’s not a sport. It doesn’t mean any competitive sports activity should be physically harmful for children,