A lot of worthwhile texts, both fiction and nonfiction, make direct reference to particular sports or use sports analogies or metaphors. These are difficult to understand for readers who do not know the rudiments of these sports. But there is not enough education on these sports in school, except in the context of actual participation in them. But I suspect that only a minority of children in English-speaking countries participates in all of the culturally important sports that figure in English-language texts, sports such as American football, baseball, cricket, golf, hockey and soccer, understanding of which is needed for basic cultural literacy among readers of English (I have to confess to lacking that understanding in the case of most of these sports--my own school education was deficient in this respect). Thus, either there should either be broader participation--but that is unsafe in the case of American football and likely impractical in the case of golf--or there should be teaching about the rules of sports outside of contexts of participation, say in English or history class.
This post is inspired by my daughter's noting her difficulties in reading the cricket-related bits of a P. G. Wodehouse novel.
10 comments:
I think it's up for debate whether cricket is a sport or simply an excuse to put on a funny hat and drink tea for five days straight.
Isn't drinking tea for five days straight hard on the bladder? :-)
Surely all one really needs to know about cricket is that the game gave us the saying "different stokes for different blokes"?
Surely all one really needs to know about cricket is that the game gave us the saying "different stokes for different blokes"?
I saw this problem up close when my family and I moved to the US from the UK. One of my daughters had a math (or, maths) homework problem in trigonometry. I already knew she had a complete grasp of the subject at that level, but still both she and I had trouble with it. The reason was, the problem was laid out in the form of a baseball scenario. Being Brits, we had no idea what "stealing a base" meant.
And don't get me started about the problems they faced in many subjects, especially Physics, due to the US still using non-metric units.
I thought the saying was "different strokes for different folks".
I think it was Pokémon that gave us "different strokes for different blokes".
If you could transform cricket into a game that involved drinking beer for five straight days while the actual matches only lasted about two hours it could become very popular here in the south. A festival type of affair with flags, pennants, pageantry, craft brewers in kiosks and of course traditional domestic brews as well. Banners, bunting and beer. Oh my! Much safer than American football for the players.
Like we really need another reason to drink beer. :-)
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