Pressures on Young People: Sex, Drugs, Rock'n'roll and Digital Tattoos

A presentation to Berkhamsted School Y9 Parents given on Wednesday 27 November 2013

 

This Presentation included two videos produced by the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty:

What School Sport teaches young people (especially girls).

The Value of School Sport

Independent Schools devote a significant proportion of the curriculum to sport; indeed, here at Berkhamsted pupils spend more time at Key Stage 3 each week playing games than they do learning mathematics. We do this because we believe that sport has true educational value. 

Hilary Levey Friedman, in her book Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture, identifies five ways in which sport develops important transferable skills:

1. Sport internalizes the importance of winning;
2. Sport helps young people to learn how to bounce back from a loss to win in the future;
3. Sport teaches the importance of performing within time limits;
4. Sport helps young people to learn how to succeed in stressful situations;
5. Sport teaches the importance of being able to perform under the gaze of others.

Girls, Sport, Success, Self-esteem and Body Image

A study by the Women's Sports Foundation (in the USA) found that:

1. High school girls who play sports are more likely to get better grades in school and more likely to graduate than girls who do not play sports. 
2. Girls and women who play sports have higher levels of confidence and self-esteem and lower levels of depression. 
3. Girls and women who play sports have a more positive body image and experience higher states of psychological well-being than girls and women who do not play sports. 

Girls, Sport and later Business Success

A survey of top women business executives published by the Oppenheimer Foundation in February 2013 discovered that 81% of top women business executives played organized team sports growing up.

When asked how playing team sport contributed to their business, they commented that,

1. Sport developed leadership skills, 
2. Sported engendered greater discipline, 
3. Sport developed the ability to function as part of a team

A final thought . . . 
One of the most important aspects of School Sport is the camaraderie that it brings. When Old Boys and Old Girls come back to school more often than not they end up reminiscing about their sporting triumphs. It was a great privilege a forthnight ago to sit between two 95 year-old Berkhamstedians at a special lunch. It was not long before they were talking about their days in the First XV - one played Full-back and the other Lock - and that was some 77 years ago, but just like yesterday to them!

References and Further Reading:

• Hilary Levey Friedman, Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture (September 2013)
• Hilary Levey Friedman, 'Do Your Kids Need More Competitive Capital?'  Harvard Business Review Blog 03/09/2013
• 'Benefits - Why Sports Participation for Girls and Women' Womens Sports Foundation
• 'Successful Women Business Executives Don't Just Talk a Good Game... They Play(ed) One'  Oppenheimer Foundation Report: (February 2013)

Body Image: How the media distorts reality:

The camera never lies . . . (not)
Every picture tells a story . . .

 

Click here for related Blogposts: 

Miss Representation: how the Media presents women

The following film was recommended by an American delegate at the GSA Conference. It is a thought-provoking and powerful presentation that challenges the way in which the media present women. It is sure to provoke discussion in the home and schools alike.

http://missrepresentation.org

Body Image - it's all about perception

Young people have always been concerned about their appearance, but this generation is under greater pressure to look good than ever before. On average British children are spending between six and eight hours a day looking at screens, during much of which they are being bombarded with images of the "beautiful". Men's and women's magazines present distorted images of human perfection. At present the average model weighs 23% less than the average British woman, so it is no surprise that at any one time 1 in 4 women in this country are dieting and that the UK has the highest rate of cosmetic surgery in Europe.

Poor body image is not just an issue for adults. It is now an acute problem, not only for teenagers, but also for children. Age 9 to 10 is a crucial time for developing poor body image. By age of 10, 1 in 3 British girls say they want to be thinner: by 13 half have a dissatisfaction in body image. And it is not just an issue for girls, boys are increasingly feeling pressure to look good. A recent survey found that 22% of boys are concerned about their body image. 

So how are parents and schools to respond to this challenge? Parents and schools need to equip young people to develop a strong sense of self-esteem and self-worth that enables them to resist the social and media pressures that they face.

Reflections based in a presentation by Nicky Hutchinson and Chris Calland, authors of Body Image and the Primary School, at the GSA Annual Conference. www.notjustbehaviour.co.uk

Campaign for Real Beauty

Good for the Liberal Democrats who have proposed that airbrushing of adverts for teenagers should be banned.

For full Daily Telegraph article, click here

See previous blogpost "Thank Gok"

Thank Gok!

Gok is amazing! I am a fan.

Over the past year I have managed to catch a couple of programmes in recent series of How to Look Good Naked and Gok's Fashion Fix. Gok has run a one-man campaign to prove to the British public that, regardless of body-type or budget, we can all look good - if only we know how. And Gok knows how. In Fashion Fix, Gok with his high street products goes head-to-head with the designer labels on the catwalk and the public cannot tell the difference. It is always great to see an expert at work and these programmes don't disappoint.

How to Look Good Naked and Gok's Fashion Fix come from the "Dove Campaign for Real Beauty" school of thought - a view that is grounded in reality rather than in the air-brushed world of flawless models that grace our glossy magazines. What is most impressive about these programmes is the way in which Gok builds self-esteem and confidence in those whom he advises. Gok rejects the need to change the body shape through surgery - he works with people as they are. He transforms lives, not through pressure to be something that that people are not - but encouragement to make the most of what people have got. Above all, he makes people feel great about themselves and to be happy with the image that looks back from the mirror.

Self-image and self-esteem are some of the most important issues that face young people today - particularly girls - parents and schools need to keep them firmly on their agenda.



Catch-up on Gok's Fashion Fix Series Two on 4oD