OpinionIs dodgeball ‘oppressive’? Academic fun police draw scorn and mockery online, and rightly so
- The two authors, university professors in Canada, have become the brunt of online jokes and outrage
- The paper, which argues ‘the lessons learned in playing dodgeball are antithetical to anti-oppressive education’ has drawn internet scorn
Dodgeball, much like life, is not fair. A killer instinct is rewarded, the weak are singled out and picked on, and there is nowhere to hide.
But what dodgeball teaches us is that sometimes you win, and sometimes you get a ball in the face, or even worse, the nether regions. But you take your licks and move forwards. This is a fact of life and unavoidable.
However, two university researchers think the sport goes too far, and in a new academic paper they label dodgeball “oppressive”, using Aristotle and waxing poetically in the abstract (the full paper is not available online) that “the lessons learned in playing dodgeball are antithetical to anti-oppressive education”.
The two authors of the paper, Joy Butler from the University of British Columbia and David Burns from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, will be presenting their “research” at the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences which runs until June 7 in Vancouver.
However, Butler and Burns’ paper has made its way online via a National Post article, and has met with equal parts scorn and laughter.
