Design a better Phys Ed program!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

PE should have nothing to do with sports and nothing to do with “fun.” It should not be a “chance for kids to blow off steam” and it should not be a “class to teach kids how to play sports.” If kids want to play sports, they can join sports teams or play pickup games with their friends outside of school.

PE class should be about one thing only: physical conditioning.

The current system of having a unit of basketball, a unit of softball, a unit of touch football or whatever, etc etc, or just having the students play random “games” like dodgeball or other games designed to be “fun” should be replaced by a system of exercises and drills similar to the PT part of military recruit training.

When games like basketball and soccer are played in gym class, students can often just stand around doing nothing and get away with it. As long as a small group of athletic students is doing all the work, everyone else can just half-ass it.

Gym class needs to be first and foremost about making the students physically fit. That should be the only purpose for it, not to give them an opportunity to have “fun” playing games and sports. Gym should just emphasize drills, endurance, and strength. Wind sprints, mile runs, pull ups, push ups, sit-ups, mountain climbers, etc. Basic weight training should also be included.

Yeah, it’s not “fun,” and the students would hate it…until they started seeing the results. When they looked in the mirror and saw muscle definition instead of fat, and when they noticed girls admiring their physiques. Then they’d appreciate it, and moreover, they would understand how the training helped them to look better, and this would stay with them for the rest of their lives.

42

I don’t think I can say much that hasn’t already been said by the like of Argent Towers, Anne Neville, and Lynn Bodoni. Kids vary greatly, and so should their instruction.

I’d add to “physical education” things like anatomy of muscles and such as it relates to exercise, coverage of nutrition (this could tie directly into cooking classes), and maybe even things like dealing with stress. Though exercise itself is a very good way to deal with stress. :slight_smile:

43

I like the concept, but I was more using it as example of Dio wanting to get all Heinlein with regards to phys/ed. Simply go whole hog and expand it to the whole school system, if thats what he wants.

Declan

44

One big change I would make is in the training of the PE/ gym teachers. At least over here, the people who are good at sports apply to study sport, either at the special sports Uni at Cologne, or at other faculties elsewhere. They have to pass a test to show that they are good at sports, and have to play/ practice sports every day during their uni education.

This means that PE teachers invariably will be those who have a natural talent for sports, did sports all their youth and concentrated on their strengths during the university. They will simply not be able to comprehend how an uncoordinated, typical couch potatoe child, a child with a growth spurt that is all-gangly and unbalanced, a child that simply takes a long time learning a new motion because his brain is wired for different talents, feels like in gym class. One thing I hated about gym class was the fit PE teacher in cool gym pants demonstrating how easy it was to vault over the bars or drop the ball into the basket just with that flick of the wrist or whatever, when I couldn’t do it at all.

So I would require each PE teacher to learn a sport he doesn’t know at all. That will vary from each teacher to the next, naturally, but no normal person is proficient in all sports. Some are good at ball sports - make them learn martial arts. Some are good at the gliding sports (Skating, skiing) - make them learn pole-vaulting. Some are good at the track events - make them learn bow shooting. Etc. When they experience firsthand the frustration and awkwardness of learning an entirely different movement, they may be able to show more patience, empathy and better explanation when dealing with the children.

45

This is useless, because it ensures that half of the kids will hate it and thus drop it the minute they leave school. If you want to instill good habits for health reasons, then you need to pick something that they will continue on their own, because it’s not a burden. Studies by health insurances (who want people to do sports) show that team sports (soccer etc.) have a bigger chance of being continued, because a) doing things together is more motivating than jogging alone and b) the competitive part of scoring points helps with the boring part of sports.

That’s why it’s good practice to expose kids to many different kinds of sports. Some will like soccer and play Sunday afternoon in the park, others will like slow jogging, others ballroom dancing and some will like contemplative karate.

I think you are making the common mistake by going only from your own experience. A lot of people don’t care about muscles if the price to pay is a brutal regime to follow. Esp. considering that kids are not made to build up big muscles, anyway! Real fit kids - that play soccer or ride bikes - don’t have bulging muscles. The energy goes elsewhere.
And most girls don’t care for bulging muscles, either. Esp. if, under your mandatory regimen, every boy would have muscles.

46

You can’t get rid of all bullying, but you can certainly try! There is a world of difference between a teacher, a school and parents that don’t want to tolerate bullying and teach that “bullying is wrong” with different methods and keep their eyes open and do something if bullying is going on, and the shrugging-shoulders "kids will be kids " approach.

47

Most people don’t play team sports in adulthood. Sure, you can sometimes find pickup games of basketball, but for the most part, team sports require a TEAM. And most adults don’t have access to a TEAM. Plus, a lot of team sports are not the best for fitness. Most baseball players stand around for a good part of the game, with occasional running bursts if they need to run to a base, or run after a ball.

It’s better to teach them something that they can use in adulthood. You say it’s boring? Most of the learning in school is boring. Math drills bored me to tears, and so did grammar drills (what little I paid attention to), and memorizing the periodic table. However, as an adult I’m glad that I know the multiplication tables by heart and know how to plug numbers into an equation. I’ve always just looked up the periodic table, though, if I didn’t recognize the element symbol right away. The point of PE shouldn’t be about having fun. It should teach kids how to take care of their bodies, and this includes basic health and hygiene, and how to stay fit. Playing team sports is really not an option for most adults, unless they’re willing to join a sports team and make a commitment to go to most practices. However, learning how to jog, or lift weights, or do aerobics IS practical for just about all adults, because those are activities that can be done alone.

Not everything in life is about fun. Heck, MOST of adult life isn’t fun, but we do it because it needs to be done. I propose that we teach kids how to take care of their bodies. Those who want to play team sports should have that option…but they should have to demonstrate basic fitness, first. And if they can’t meet their fitness goals, then they have to do remedial work until they meet those goals.

48

You are the one making the mistake by thinking that the regimen that I described would result in “bulging muscles.”

I am talking about a measley hour a day of rigorous PE, or however long a class period is in high school. My wrestling practices were three hours a day, of exactly the exercises that I outlined, and they didn’t result in anyone getting “bulging muscles.”

In order to get “bulging muscles” - and I’m not sure what your definition of “bulging muscles” is - you need to lift weights religiously and adhere to a strict diet. One hour a day of rigorous sprints, pushups, and assorted drills is not going to give any boy a physique that women would find unappealingly muscular. It will, at best, and if accompanied by a sensible diet, result in a lean and well proportioned physique, whether the boy in question is naturally thin or naturally bulky.

49

This is true.

If you run a math and science class so poorly that it turns students off of the subject forever, you have done them a disservice. If you run a PE class so poorly that it turns them off physical activity forever, you have done them a disservice.

As a teacher, I try to never forget that my obligation is to the students first, and everything else second. If what I am doing is not working with the students- especially something as important as teaching them to make physical health a lifelong commitment- I need to rethink what I am doing.

50

I would still include the teaching of the basic rules and skills associated with major team and individual sports, to give students an understanding of them. But I don’t think those classes should be graded according to the student’s skill level. Maybe the solution is to divide the classes up according to skill level, instead of randomly.

51

So all students are straight males, then? :dubious:

52

Random data point:

I went to high school in the late 80s. You were required to take one full year of PE, but you could split it up and take a semester one year and another semester another year. Each semester was broken up into six-week grading periods. The two PE teachers (about 40+ kids in each class) offered the choice of one of three activities you could take for that grading period. In the first term, I was offered tennis, archery, and/or flag football. I went for archery and loved it. In the second term (dead of winter), we could choose from basketball, swimming, or aerobics. Our pool was gross and old, so nobody ever took swimming. However, we were required to jump in one end and swim to the other in order to be excused from having to take the swimming class. (Now, there’s a real-world skill that I bet most of us would find useful at one point or another.) If you could swim the length of the pool without drowning, you could take one of the other units, but if you couldn’t (or if you knew you couldn’t and refused to try in front of the class, which was fine), then you HAD to take swimming.

So it seems that my school had a good system of offering a combination of team sports, non-team sports, and solo fitness activities. I can’t remember all the other offerings, but I know there was softball in there somewhere, volleyball, and maybe weightlifting (although no instruction on proper form or I might have been interested)…

That said, the classes were horribly unstructured. The aerobics class consisted of the teacher losing total control over her students and simply assigning us to band together in cliques, I mean, in teams, and come up with a dance routine, which you then presented to the class as your final exam. Show up, participate, and attempt to perform the routine and you got an A.

At the tender age of 14, I chose the “Erotic City” cover by Prince. Me and the three other only white girls in the class. (I damn near got beat up for that until I asked the bully to help me learn some moves. She and her girls took the dumb white girls under their wings and taught us all how to dance. :smiley: I learned more about bully defusion than about aerobics from that class.)

For me, the perfect PE class would have expanded on that a bit more and simply offered more choices and better guided instruction in those classes. I can play volleyball but I never really learned how to hit the ball so it goes where I want it to. Some proper coaching has taught me all sorts of things about sports as an adult and I always wondered why my PE teachers, who were presumably certified in knowledge of these things, didn’t ever actually TEACH us anything? “Go run laps” doesn’t tell me shit. “Warm up running laps to increase your circulation and oxygen flow to the muscles” at least tells me why you want me to run laps and gives me a fitness reason to try.

53

Jesus, sorry for not being inclusive enough in my example. The straight male students would enjoy the attention from the straight females. The gay male students would enjoy the attention from the gay male students and the straight female students, and possibly also the bisexual male students. The straight male students might also enjoy the attention from the gay male students and the bisexual male students, as well as the bisexual female students. The straight female students would enjoy the attention from the straight male students and possibly also the bisexual female students; the gay female students would enjoy the attention from the other gay female students, as well as possibly also from the straight male students and the bisexual male students as well as maybe also the bisexual female students.

54

Scarily, I agree with EVERYTHING Diogenes said! As I’ve said elsewhere, school (at least at the HS level) is about preparing kids for life. Though I also believe (as I’ve said elsewhere) elementary PE should be about learning new sports, finding out what you like and what you’ll continue to do once you have recreational time as an adult.

55

This should definitely be included in the idea PE class: teach them what it actually takes to get huge, bulging muscles. If they want to build lots of muscle quickly, they will have to eat at least 1000 calories/day more than they currently are.

56

You’ve also failed to provide the students with any useful skills for “real life”. Actually teaching students how to excercise properly, eat properly, etc are much more important than how to play football or basketball. Yes, in theory students are learning the value of teamwork, but all to often that isn’t the case and their are better ways of doing that. And the whole “just throw a ball out and let them blow off steam” approach is undefendable. If that’s your attitude then you might as well install big people sized playgrounds at middle and high schools and let the kids keep recess. At least that’d be less likely to turn students off physical activity.

It’s different for everybody, stuff like lifting weights or using excercise equipment or aerobis are the only things I ever did in gym class that I ever contintued on my own. Well that and walking. I never liked a single team sport that I had to play. Not a fan of the individual sports either. Well I liked archery, but that was at summer camp, I never did that in school. And by the time HS rolled around I knew all this. I’d have loved the chance to do circut training or calisthenics instead of repeatedly playing sports I already knew I didn’t like and never played outside of gym class.

57

I’m essentially in agreement with Lynn Bodoni on this one. Admittedly, this is coming from someone who was very non-athletic, asthmatic, and bullied in high school. I graduated in 1985, for what it’s worth.

Nobody would think of putting the flunking-out-of-almost-everything wrestler in my calculus class. Why is it appropriate to ask me to play football against him? If we’re going to call these classes “Physical Education,” then let’s truly make it about education. Let’s teach kids how to be physically active, improve their fitness levels, and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Asking the 150 lb nerd to play floor hockey against the 200 lb football player teaches the nerd nothing except that he shouldn’t be playing hockey against the athlete, and frankly I knew that before the game. I could have tested out of that lesson.

If I had been offered a “C-level” class in physical education, where I would have learned how to lift weights, how to run, and was measured on improvements to my own level of fitness, I would have jumped at that chance. And I would be a healthier individual today. It’s only in the last three years or so that I really learned how to take care of my body, and I really wish I had started earlier. Years of “PE” class, however, just reinforced the notion that I had no business doing anything remotely athletic, and really helped cement a mindset that took a long time to overcome.

I got As and Bs in high school PE, because despite all this I dressed for class, I showed up, and I participated. But I didn’t learn anything useful, because there wasn’t anything useful there to learn.

As for the bullying issue, it would have been much, much better under a “segregated” scheme. I would have been in PE class with the other non-athletes like me. Having a locker directly across from one of the biggest, dumbest, and meanest kids in school was hell for me. It simply wouldn’t have happened if the classes were organized better, just like Jimmy wouldn’t have had to sit in my A-level English class feeling like a complete moron.

58

What weird high schools did you guys attend that didn’t have choices? I went to a school with less than 200 people in the graduating class. You’d better bet we had a choice of classes. It was pretty much like college, except you had to have every school hour filled.

I also don’t know how you expect to force kids to do things they don’t want to do. I’ve been in the P.E. classes that force the students: everyone does the bare minimum, except the athletes, and it gives them yet another way to think they are superior to everyone else. It’s pretty much a bully factory.

And graduates or dropouts are the very last people you’d expect to continue something from school that isn’t fun. That’s the age where even the most straight laced tend to rebel. Sometimes they go back, but sometimes they don’t.

So you’ve got a cruel method that likely won’t work, and may even be counter productive. What purpose is there in this, again? I have ideas, but I don’t want to voice them.

59

Much better. Thank you.

60

We had choices at my high school, just not for gym classes. You’d meet with a guidence counselors to pick your electives and whatever classes the state and your track required, they’d make up a schedule, and then stick you in whatever class fit everything else (there was a gym class every period except for the girls’ PE teacher’s lunchbreak).

Thus every class had a random mixture of freshmen, sophomores, and seniors (juniors took health instead). On paper 2 seperate classes (boys & girls) were held at the same time. Each ran their own activity; sometimes after warmups we’d be allowed to chose whose’s activity we did (very rarely they’d run one big joint activity). Depending on the weather the boys’ teacher’s activity was either touch football or basketball. The girls’ teacher was the one that varied activities.

When it came time for the Presidential Fitness tests both classes would get tested at the same time, but each teacher tested their own students.