For week 5 I chose to write about the journal article, “Games of Character: team sports, games, and character development in Victorian public schools, 1850–1900”. The article takes a very critical look at the pedagogical views of Victorian-era schools and the importance they put on sports. The author begins by explaining what the system of sports in public Victorian schools should have been in an ideal world, citing the belief that sports would teach students valuable lessons for life in and out of the school classroom. The “Fag-prefect system” was prevalent throughout Victorian-era public schools, I found this system to be very interesting as it seem to be set up perfectly to be taken advantage of by students that would be more privileged or affluent. After explaining the ideal outcome of what sports could be, the author attacks it without mercy and succeeds in dismantling the idea that sports would have the desired outcome in Victorian public schools. Of everything stated in the article, what stood out to me was the system in which more athletic students would be given authority over less athletic students in the aforementioned “Fag-prefect” system. “Values preached and practiced on the playing field, such as restraint and fairness, were absent from student relations, characterized by a hierarchical and violent structure, in which top athletes often took advantage of their position to abuse younger students. Moreover, team sports served to justify widespread violence in student relations by qualifying it through the athletic meritocracy on which it was based, often protecting top athletes from criticism by fellow students and staff”- this quote perfectly illustrates a core aspect of the author’s discontent for the importance placed on sports.
