I was a PE teacher for some time, mostly at the elementary level. Interesting thread. I bring you good news and bad news, and some comments.
First, let me say I share many of your criticisms of PE. Most people I meet have some sort of horror story, and I usually agree that the situation shouldn’t have happened.
Having said that…
The Bad News
As a field, PE is extremely slow to integrate new ideas.
The “throw out the ball” model of PE has been bemoaned and railed against for decades by forward thinkers in PE. There’s no excuse for it, yet it persists for several reasons.
One is that PE is too beholden to after-school athletics - a situation which results in many teachers being more interested in their coaching activities than being a good teacher.
Another is that PE teachers typically come from a sports background. Elite athletes are often poor coaches and teachers because they can’t relate to beginners (example: Ted Williams). Obviously, that isn’t always the case, and I’ve known some fine teachers from this background. But I’d like to see more new influences in the field. Some of the best PE teachers I knew came from “fringe” activities (rock climbing, dance, circus skills) rather than traditional team sports.
Another problem is that many school districts simply don’t care if the PE program is any good. They figure they have to have it because of state rules, but don’t oversee it very well. Consequently, the PE department lets itself slide.
The Good News
While things are changing slowly, they are changing for the better.
First, there is a realization that PE does not necessarily equal “sports”. A good program may involve sport skills, but includes more instruction and drills rather than just “throwing out the ball”. The latter model assumes knowledge on the part of the students, and alienates those who do not have it. As was pointed out earlier in the thread, EVERYONE goes to PE, not just kids who are physically skilled.
Good PE teachers are no longer preaching to the choir by tilting things in favor of the jocks. This is accomplished partly through moving away from team sports and into lifetime activities (rock climbing, moutain biking, rollerblading), and other non-traditional activities like Dance Dance Revolution, juggling, archery, snowshoeing, etc…
When I taught juggling in middle and high school I saw something really great: The jocks and non-jocks were suddenly on a level playing field. They all had no experience, and therefore just as much to learn. Disciplinary problems vanished. I even had kids who usually hated PE asking to come back for extra periods!
The testing is improving. The President’s Challenge, while still in use in some places, is in decline. Newer methods, such as the FitnessGram, are much better designed. Some kids even told me it was fun.
Nobody is playing Dodge Ball or Bombardment the way we played when I was a kid. To the jocks, it was great. To everyone else it was a living hell, and there has never been a defensible reason to use this game in a PE program. You want to teach throwing? I have dozens of other games that teach the skill of throwing without hurting people. Or it can be modified to make it non-barbaric.
Please note that I was one of the kids who enjoyed Dodgeball. But I was aware that many kids hated it. I have never had my classes play it.
As for the stories about “being picked last”, I believe that’s not happening very much anymore. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. These days teachers are trained not to let the kids pick teams for exactly the reasons mentioned in this thread.
And finally, there is better supervision in most schools these days than when I was a kid. Any teacher who does not actively supervise locker room areas and prevent bullying is asking for a lawsuit.
Comments
Some people in this thread have pointed out that there is no “tracking” system in PE. Skillful athletes are in there with kids who never play sports. I take their point, but have to ask how one would do it differently.
How do you rank kids according to physical skill? By strength? Endurance? Ability in team, racket or contact sports? There’s so much variety in physical activities, I can’t imagine a system where kids would always grouped with others of similar skill levels.
You can do it by electives. But should a kid on the basketball team be permitted to satisfy a PE requirement with several years of… basketball?
I say no. That’s a waste. Everyone has a physical body, and even elite athletes have things to learn about the physical world. A good program should be able to involve all these kids - jock and non-jock by using a variety of activities. And let’s not forget about nutrition, basic anatomy and physiology, etc. (Again, a GOOD program.)
To close a really long post, I’ll say that PE programs can offer a lot of benefits. But they’re hard to do well. Nobody really expects math or science class to be loads of fun for everyone. Interesting, hopefully. But in the end the kids are there to learn, not have a ball.
Good PE teachers feel somewhat the same. The kids (some of them, anyway) might enjoy it more if we just let them play. But that alienates many, and concedes the commonly held opinion that PE doesn’t have anything to teach.
Well, it does have something to offer. But it takes committed teachers who are there to TEACH, not just coach the football team.
As I often said to my colleagues: People might begin to take PE seriously if we teachers did the same.
) and I got to first base. As I’m standing there waiting for the next person to get up to kick the ball I hear the guy guarding first say my name and I look over to see him chatting with two friends.
). I actually felt a sense of accomplishment (eg “I rode the equivalent of X miles today.”). Of course the teachers only seemed to let us do that when they couldn’t think of other activities. The female PE teacher once told me that she’d love to be able to have us do more of that kind of stuff (since even the kids who hated PE enjoyed it), but the administration “didn’t like it” since they weren’t “teaching” us anything. My senior year they did introduce a weightlifting elective, but you had be on a sports team to take, and it was in addition to (not an alternative to) regular PE. What you said about after-school athletics rings true. Every PE teacher at my school was also a coach (as were all the social studies teachers for some reason 
). At time they seemed more concerned with “scouting for talent” than teaching us.