Cross country abuse?

A silly story hit the papers over the weekend about a document which numbered cross-country school runs among forms of child abuse ([1], [2]). The document, entitled Your Legal Rights, was distributed to 14-16 year olds by Coordination Group Publications for use in citizenship classes; more than 30,000 copies have been issued:

Margaret Talbot, chief executive of the Association for Physical Education … said: "I think what is in the book is just sloppy. They haven't researched it properly.
"It gives ammunition to backroom lawyers. This is counter-productive, as so many PE teachers try so hard.
"Cross-country is not the blunt instrument that everyone remembers when they think of school sport. It's not a case of the whole school doing it anymore just because the playing fields are out of use."

The story provided a source of amusing discussion on this morning's BBC London phone-in, with Jules Botfield, sitting in for the much-unmissed Vanessa Feltz, basically agreeing that it was. Others suggested that maths, particularly algebra, was also abuse, with it being noted that it was always the maths teachers that got abusive by such behaviours as throwing blackboard rubbers (erasers) at kids. Botfield wasn't sport-phobic, being a member of the school netball team and all, but cross-country running was too much for the poor girl, it seems.

Joking aside, my memories of cross-country were rather different – I preferred it by a long way to football, let alone rugby, because while it was competitive, you could simply run at your own pace. You could choose to try and keep up with someone else, or not; you can't do this in a ball sport like football. With cross-country there are no flying objects you have to bounce off your head, and you don't have to stick your head between other boys' legs in a scrum and risk getting your neck broken. And, unlike with football, nobody used their fists on me to get ahead in cross-country, though perhaps they cared more about football.

I can quite understand why some kids don't like cross-country running; it's no more to some people's taste than cross-country cycling is. But it's good exercise, being a sustained run (or at least walk!) rather than running one way and then another, depending on which way the ball goes. Kids are as likely to hate PE because of football as because of cross-country: it's still out in the open, often (as football's a winter game) in the cold and on a muddy field; some kids are scared of the ball (justifiably) and others of being "tackled" by the bigger members of the team. Much as fitness is important, surely the means to it should have some element of choice, so that it doesn't become a tedious, miserable way to spend an afternoon?