Kids give booing thumbs down
They haven’t even reached double digits yet, but some primary school students are already taking a big stand against booing in sport.
The issue of booing was raised with the Room 11 students of Lower Hutt’s Muritai School by their burly, woolly-bearded teacher, Jamie Power.
He found the issue immediately struck a chord. ‘‘The kids are passionate about it,’’ Power said.
So much so, the class are planning to make their own antibooing video for a national moviemaking competition to ‘‘keep the learning rolling’’.
Eight-year-old James Cowley has witnessed booing first-hand: ‘‘It looked very disrespectful to the people that were being booed at and I felt sorry for them.
‘‘When I was playing soccer, I got booed at by the other team, because I missed a goal and they were saying, ‘oh terrible goal’ and stuff like that. It made me feel sad.’’
Orlaith Clitheroe, 9, admitted she too had been on the receiving end, and described it as ‘‘a terrible feeling’’.
‘‘It’s not nice being booed at. You’d feel you would want to cry because your insides would jumble around . . . you’d think ‘why did they do that? It makes me feel so sad.’’ Steve Rogers applauded the sentiment behind the anti-booing campaign.
‘‘Although the vast majority of our players and supporters are a credit to their clubs, schools and communities, there are isolated incidents of unacceptable behaviour on our sidelines.
‘‘We are committed to stamping this out of our game.’’
Rogers said the ethos of the campaign closely aligned with its own Positive Sidelines campaign.
Stuff has adopted its anti-booing stance in the belief that the behaviour sets a poor example to children and young people.
Auckland-based educational psychologist Michele Blick said children learned by imitating adults.
‘‘Research has found that children will imitate adult behaviour even if the actions appear irrelevant or inefficient.
‘‘Telling children how to behave appropriately is not enough, they need to see the behaviour modelled.’’
James agreed. ‘‘Booing sets a terrible example. Parents should help make their kids grow up as healthy and kind people.’’
‘‘We appreciate people have strong views about the teams they support and we don’t want to discourage that passion, but hopefully it can be displayed in the right way, which is a positive way.
‘‘We’ve been working extremely hard at the community level to improve the behaviour of supporters toward players and referees over the past two years. Although we are confident the message is getting through, there is still work to be done.’’