Do all kids need soccer lessons?

What is, perhaps for the first time in the history of pedagogy, on the mind of schoolchildren, parents, and teachers on the eve of a new school year is not foreign language lessons, school computerization, or even 12-year-long schooling but introduction of a new subject, soccer, in the curriculum. The idea of introducing these lessons in schools, born in the Soccer Federation of Ukraine (SFU) alarmed by the decline of their sport, was then seen as capable of helping to solve a long series of major national problems.

What can we offer our children today to keep them from the negative influence of the street in the conditions of economic crisis? What can we do to preserve and strengthen the health of our younger generation? Unfortunately, not so much of what we would like to. Our children, who spend four to seven hours a day in school, have only 45 minutes of physical training twice a week, which results in frequent headaches, obesity, reduced workability, and a host of other things lack of physical activity can cause. Vira Chudakova, psychologist at the Institute of Pedagogy (laboratory of pedagogical innovations), Ukrainian Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, asked to comment to The Day on the aforesaid innovation, exclaimed, “It’s great! My son wishes he had had lessons like these during his schooldays. He would like all college students to have these classes and says the schoolchildren of today are simply lucky. Our son was exempt from sport classes due to ill health, but he secretly attended a soccer society in his first year at a technical college, avoiding, of course, excessive work. Now he feels good because his craze for soccer helped him not to concentrate on his illness. When a young girl, I also liked to play soccer, and there was even a girls’ soccer team at a Kherson vocational school where I was in the 1980s. The girls were trained as service workers, so sport promoted their self-affirmation. As a psychologist, I would like to emphasize that playing soccer helps strengthen not only physical but mental health. For no other sport provides such an emotional boost, develops the ability to sacrifice one’s capabilities and desires to the interests of a team, and trains not only the muscles but brains as well.”

However, no sooner had the soccer lesson come to school, than it sparked skeptical comments, like any other innovation: the schools lack logistic support, schoolchildren are also interested in things other than soccer, an additional gym class will not effect health, etc. But pupils are really attracted by the game. Leonid Volodarsky, a veteran physical training teacher at Kyiv’s school No. 96, has noticed that most children take no interest in just doing calisthenics or just running: moreover, they often cut such classes. Watching the children, Mr. Volodarsky became convinced that, while playing soccer, the same young people carry — with pleasure, incidentally — a far heavier physical load.

Sixteen-year-old Tetiana Kushch and her classmates at Kyiv’s school No. 225 also want to play soccer and feel hurt when their gym teacher only allows boys to play, leaving the girls sometimes the opportunity to play basketball. Viktor Ovsiannykov, 14, is dreaming about a school soccer team and a professional coach, for a sports group will not accept anyone who wants to join. The mother of thirteen-year-old Oleh Kozelsky, who practices judo at the Olympic Reserve School, is glad that her son can also play soccer because Oleh’s coach, Alla Kashtanova, strongly advises this game for overall physical fitness.

Liudmyla Nykolayenko, principal of Kyiv’s School No. 185, thinks soccer classes will promote the competitive spirit in pupils, which should help them to better adapt to life under competitive conditions, as well as to develop humane feelings toward the weaker. Ms. Nykolayenko told us about an unusual soccer match held last academic year at her school. For five years, the school has leased out its premises to Invasport and holding competitions in various sports between the teams of this school and those of health deprived children. And last year cerebral paralysis-affected children defeated the healthy ones in a soccer match. Nobody expected it. Perhaps it was the result of the handicapped children’s good sporting shape or of the support of fans who were cheering their health deprived peers rather than the pupils of their own school. Ms. Nykolayenko also told The Day’s correspondent that the soccer group in her school was being managed by a woman, ordinary gym teacher Olena Hydynach.

Thus the idea of a soccer lesson, in the air for so much time, is coming down to earth and acquiring the traits of reality. The government’s program of children’s and youth soccer development envisages soccer classes in all of Ukraine’s more than 20,000 schools. The Ministry of Education and Research of Ukraine supported the SFU’s initiative and signed an agreement last March on joint efforts to incorporate soccer lessons in the curriculum of secondary comprehensive schools. (Incidentally, FIFA President Joseph Blatter, who was visiting Kyiv at the time, also signed the agreement.) From now on, six million pupils will be taught by about 30,000 physical training teachers, one and a half thousand of whom have already been qualified as soccer specialists and another 800 have done professional upgrading courses in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, and Dnipropetrovsk. As The Day was told by Stanislav Kuchynsky, deputy chairman of the Hart sport club attached to the Ministry of Education and Research, the Soccer Federation of Ukraine has already handed over 22,500 balls to schools and plans to furnish more than a hundred thousand by the end of the year.

But, so far, not all schools have enough space to utilize these balls. There will be problems in cold seasons at overcrowded schools and the schools where stadiums are too small to house several classes at a time. Perhaps the increasing number of stadiums and gyms will be the next step in the care for our children. Maybe other federations will follow the SFU’s suit, thus enabling schoolchildren to choose a sport they would like to practice in gym classes.

The revival of children’s and young people’s soccer is also of national importance today: the achievements of Dynamo Kyiv on the international arena not only enhance the prestige of our state but also inspire in young hearts a desire to become a Shevchenko, Rebrov, or Luzhny, instill confidence in one’s own strength, arouse the feeling of pride in the successes of compatriots, and nurture patriotism. Undoubtedly, we will not solve the legion of our problems by issuing soccer balls to our children, but what we are really capable of is to gradually and daily improve our own lives.