Hilarie: Kitballing, the new sport

Jun 26 2010 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

IN A SINGLE issue of a nameless and shameless national newspaper this week I found no fewer than eight stories of the ‘Killer Margarine’ variety. I call them ‘scaries.’

You know the sort: ‘People who eat sausages are 10 times more likely to die young’, ‘Cream cakes linked to asthma’, or ‘Computers cause childhood stupidity’.

While I hold my hands up to inventing the first two (in the spirit of tabloid journalism) the third is a supposedly true story, which links the increasing amount of time children spend on computers to their diminishing ability to do well at school.

In fact, the study it is based on, conducted by American Jacob Vigdor, associate professor of public policy studies and economics at Duke University, North Carolina, found only modestly negative effects on children’s reading and maths scores.

What’s more similar research conducted among children from poor families in Romania, who were given vouchers to buy computers, concluded that computer ownership “lowered academic achievement while it improved their computer skills and cognitive ability.”

It was acknowledged that these poorer families tended to be headed by parents with few computer skills of their own and who were therefore unable – or unwilling – to monitor their children’s use of a home PC. Not surprisingly, many of the children were using their PCs to play games rather than doing their homework.

As I proved when trawling the internet for this article, PCs can be extremely valuable tools – allowing anyone to access academic tracts and discover for themselves the truth behind scare stories.

Computers do not make children stupid. Using computers a lot may make them nerdy, pale and socially inept, but it will also make them whizzes at IT and help them to acquire skills, which, like it or not, are a big part of many jobs. In the future, anyone who is not IT savvy will tread an extremely difficult path in life.

Firstborn has always been a heavy computer user and plays a lot of games, but he did well at school, got a place at university, has plenty of friends and many interests away from the PC. He’s also adept at fixing our computer and keeps it virus free and topped up with all the latest programs. In fact, I don’t know what we’d do without his IT support and I guess that many parents up and down the country feel much the same way.

KITBALL, THE NEW SPORT ... FOR KITTIES

WE’VE been watching our own version of the World Cup this week, featuring our star players Gracie and Whiskers.

Kitten football, or kitball, has proved to be a lot more entertaining – and considerably cheaper to stage – than the real thing.

All the kitballers require is a scrunched up piece of paper or ping pong ball and a shiny laminate floor and they’re away, ducking and diving, pouncing and prancing. They’re so fast that we need an action replay facility and they’re certainly not afraid of taking a chance, unlike some players we know.

I particularly enjoy the way the kitballers dribble towards the cat basket/goal and then fling themselves along the floor, dusting it as they go, and wrap their front paws around the ball. You can almost hear the vuvuzelas erupting in a frenzy of hideous droning.