Do they still allow that crap where kids pick others for their team, and someone always gets “stuck” with the last kid remaining?
I was often last or second to it.
I had to take gym during grade school and only needed one semester of it in high school. I agree that a lot of you guys sure had shitty gym teachers.
I loved my grade school gym teacher (Hi, Mr. Pomaville!). We had a general structure of having each class start with the 5 minute run/walk (run for one minute, walk for one minute, until 5 minutes are done). Each month of the school year would feature a different sport and Mr. Pomaville was the one to assign everyone to teams. Each team had a captain and a co-captain, and he assigned those to people who put effort in, not necessarily who was the best player (and he rotated who got to be captain or co-captain and rotated the team roster each week).
He graded you on effort. Most of the girls just stood together and chatted, even during organized games. I always got an A in gym because I played my heart out, even if I wasn’t all that good at certain games*. He wouldn’t stand for any bullying or teasing. We had to do the stupid President’s Council tests, but he didn’t post or announce your results to everyone (he just let you know what it was so you could work on improving it).
In 7th and 8th grade, we had to do a sports report each quarter. You picked a sport, researched it and wrote 3 page paper about the sport, its rules, history, etc. He was pretty liberal with what a sport would be (I did a report on karate and did quite well; it wasn’t all just football or basketball. Having to write 8 reports total in those two years, you had to get creative with finding a sport you hadn’t written about before, anyway). This was part of our grade, in addition to attendance and effort put forth.
I don’t remember too much about high school gym, since it was only one semester 10 years ago, but it was fine as well. No one really cared if you sucked or not, including the gym teacher. It was about giving your best.
Sounds like a lot of gym teachers should study under my gym teachers!
- I RULED at floor hockey. I got respect for weeks when I blocked a puck with my leg because the goalie was out of the net. I saved the game and had a puck-shaped welt on my thigh for 3 weeks.
Not to mention history, English, social studies and all the rest. For students who are not academically inclined, nearly the entire school experience can be deeply humiliating one; far more so than the 50 minutes a day oh-so-heroically endured by those of us who were not athletically inclined.
And alphaboi’s suggestion that tracking somehow makes it all easier is not true: students who are tracked know it, and they are well aware of which bin they have been placed in. Even if they do well, they know they are doing well in the “dumb kids class.” A student can get straight A’s for years and not move up, solely because the standardized tests indicate that she belongs in the “vocational track.”
School has plenty of humiliating moments for everyone; which is is probably just as well, since life has humiliating moments for everyone. All things considered, people whose worst moments were in gym class got off easy.
Goddamn wrestling unit in junior high. They separated weight classes by 10-pound intervals, except at the top. If you were over 180, you wrestled in one big class. Great.
I was 183 and a football player. I didn’t know anything about wrestling.
This meant that I got to wrestle Lonnie. Lonnie was 300-325, if he weighed an ounce. He was morbidly obese, but he was insanely strong.
Oh, I also got to wrestle Andre, the token 21-year-old-still-in-junior-high, multiple-flunking, antisocial gang member who drowned kittens.
Good times. :dubious:
I wouldn’t have minded PE if it had been focused on fitness and health. I think teaching kids how to work out and stay in shape is a valuable use of school resources, just like teaching history or math.
My problem was when PE class became “Practice basketball/volleyball/soccer skills for an hour.” To me, basketball (or any organized sport) is just one recreational activity among many, with no more or less inherent value than chess, or listening to music, or designing clothes, or building Lego sets, or restoring classic cars, or whatever other weird things that some people like to spend their free time doing. It doesn’t make sense that sports are rarified and sanctioned in school, above all other recreational activities. IMO it sends that message that if your idea of fun doesn’t include sports, there’s something wrong with you.
If your idea of fun doesn’t include some form of physical activity, there IS something wrong with you, and you will pay the price for it eventually.
It would be nice if PE classes could include more non-sports physical activities, but I suspect that is partly a lack of imagination of the part of teachers, and partly a function of the limitations they work under (50 minute class periods, etc).
Pity they never taught you the 5 D’s of dodgeball:
Dodge
Duck
Dip
Dive
and Dodge!
Oh my god, they’re always named Andre!
There are a lot of physical activities that are not competitive team sports. I think the over-emphasis on competitive team sports in PE classes really turns off people who are weaker athletes.
I don’t buy lack of time as a reason why PE classes have to emphasize team sports so much. You can certainly have a worthwhile 50-minute aerobics or kickboxing class- YMCAs all across the country do it every day. If a school has a track (as many schools do), there’s no reason why a PE class couldn’t include an activity like walking or jogging around the track for part or all of a class, without timing students or making it into a race.
I fully agree! Note the first paragraph of the post you quoted from. Learning how to stretch, work out, and stay in shape is what PE class should be about. Not forcing kids to memorize the arcane rules of a few particular games.
I wouldn’t go quite as far as that. I work out very conscientiously, and I enjoy doing it, but “fun” doesn’t seem quite the right word. It’s more like a need that I have to fulfill.
Keep doing what you are doing, and hopefully you will be able to reclaim that.
I had a terrible time in sports as well. Last picked for teams, eyerolls when I was at bat, having other kids pass me on their second lap around the field while I was struggling to make it around the first time. There was no training aspect to being told to go out and run around the field 5 times; we were just supposed to be able to do it. Any training program I’ve looked at since is based on the idea that one has to build up to athletic pursuits.
I spent years feeling unathletic, clumsy, and slow. I started running 2 years ago to get into shape after my second baby, and last October ran a Half Marathon. I’m hoping to train for a full marathon this year. None of this happened overnight, but all of it is slowly working against the negative perceptions I had of myself after years of suffering through sports in school.
To be sure, maintaining a generally healthy body is one of the responsibilities of an adult; but I think it’s more than that.
Our physical bodies are an integral part of our humanity, and thus someone who is unable to find pleasure in any form of physical exertion at all is missing out on a big part of life. To be clear here – I include a brisk walk in the park, a sweaty bit of work in the garden, or wrestling with the kids as “physical activity.” If you find no physical activity whatsoever to be honestly pleasurable and worth regular inclusion in your life, there is something wrong.
I’m not necessarily saying it’s morally wrong (it is in some cases), but it’s at least akin to someone who does not enjoy any kind of music at all, the “trousered ape” who has no imagination or appreciation of natural beauty, or the person who is so completely introverted they cannot bear anyone’s company (or so extroverted they cannot bear to ever be alone).
Such people are pitiably out of balance in their lives: in my mind that qualifies as “something wrong.”
To a certain extent, I take your point. But there is plenty of anectodal evidence to support the contention that in some cases gym class was more traumatizing for unathletic kids than, say, English class was for a football star.
After all, most of us are familiar with the phenomenon of the more popular kids taunting the nerds. When’s the last time (outside of the movies) you remember the geeky kids ganging up on the popular kids and making them suffer?
I remember the Jr. High gym class where several classes were all together and the coaches put up a bunch of nets, selected team captains, and handed out the volleyballs. I was used to being chosen last, and things were going according to the norm. As I stood there, the last one out, each team bickered over who was going to have to take me. One of the older kids just told me to go sit on the bleachers–they all decided I shouldn’t play at all. I obeyed–kids are more to be feared than the teachers, you know. When the coaches noticed me, one came over and told me to get out there and play. I was too chicken to defy the kids or to tell the teachers what was going on, so I said that I didn’t want to play (a response totally out of character for me, I was NOT the kind to talk back or refuse to mind). But I know that my trembling voice and pleading eyes had to tell him something wasn’t right. Didn’t matter–he barked at me that it wasn’t important what I wanted, HE wanted me OUT ON THAT FLOOR!!! I was humiliated by the laughter of the other kids and the fact that all the other adults in the room heard, loud and clear. A lot of details of the rest of that class are lost in the haze of pain I remember from that day–I don’t think I ever did play, but I dunno just how I managed to escape. I do remember that choir (which I WAS good at) was a washout that day because I found it impossible to sing with a hard knot in my throat.
(As for academics, I was very good at that–which earned me plenty more scorn from the popular kids, who called me “teacher’s pet” and ridiculed my intellect, until they wanted test answers and homework help, of course. So I got the short end of both sticks.)
I actually didn’t mind square dancing, but there were enough girls to match the boys, so that wasn’t a problem. There were only one or two extra, and they would sit out one dance and then replace someone on the next.
And no showers, so changing wasn’t an issue.
I think it boils down to the people in charge. We had two coaches for boy’s gym (small school). Coach Osmer was friendly, but firm. Coach Utz was a real hard nose. Neither would stand for any hazing. I once shouted out, “be sure to cover for XX” – referring to a weaker player on one of the teams. Utz made it clear that I was out of line and I’d better not do anything like that again.
Any humiliation was minor and everyone was subject to it, like going out in shorts on cold spring mornings.
I didn’t always enjoy gym, but I never found it horrific.
Of course – because the smart kid goes on to write a searing, painful memoir about the terrible pain of his ostracism, which all of us smart kids read and nod our heads to, saying “so true, so true.”
The “dumb kids,” because they are not as articulate, do not write memoirs. They just accept that it is their fate to be stupid. I’ve long since lost track of the number of kids I get in my class (college age) that say things like “I’m not good at school,” “I can’t write,” “I’m stupid when it comes to reading.”
In some cases it’s an entirely realistic assessment of their skillset – but it’s nonetheless obviously a realization that has been driven home mercilessly via twelve years of schooling.
IME the most popular kids were generally not the ones that struggled academically; they were the most mature physically, athletically and most importantly, in social skills.
Seems to me a lot of the nerdy brains go on to be the doctors and professors and computer programmers of the world; plenty of whom put themselves on a higher plane that the guys digging ditches or working at Jiffy Lube. Certainly adult society – including the teachers at school – values their skills more.
Inspite of how much I hated PE I do think the PE, done right, should be compulsory grades 1-12. The key is how it’s done. The focus should be teaching students how to exercise and stay active and enjoy it. Ideally students (at least by high school) should be able to choose among different activities, and they should have “non sport” options. Some students will jump at the chance to play sports, others migh like weightlifting or aerobics or dance or swimming. Bullying, verbal or physical, should not be tolerated. Also if students are to be expected to actually work up a sweat they should be given time to shower* if they choose.
*The only reason I didn’t shower after class (other than rarely working up a sweat) was that none of the boys in my class ever did and I didn’t want to set myself apart from the herd even more and be called gay. I managed to get over my fear of group showers at summer camp when I was 10. That and my family vacationing at more “rustic” campgrounds.
Okay, I have to reply to this, because I spent all of junior and high school smelling of chlorine and with swimmer’s hair. Maybe it was less traumatic 'cause I’m a boy, but the girl swimmers suffered the same and didn’t seem like they needed counseling.
But finding out that I was a fantastic swimmer was one of the best things about growing up. I sucked mightily at sports on dry land (except, later, running and weightlifting). But once I was wet I was Mr. Coordinated. I vaguely recall misliking gym class from grade school, but once I exceled at swimming, the good of gym far outweighed the bad. Even though I still sucked at basketball, and baseball, etc.
And, when I was younger, I’d been placed in the remedial English classes – my writing was judged inferior (I hold my pen oddly), and my reading skills also under par. 'Cause I was bored, really. Eventually someone got it sorted out, and I jumped from the “remedial” class to the “advanced” class.
But it was far, far worse to my self-esteem being in the “stupid kid class” than being the second-to-last guy picked for teams in gym class. Even now it’s particularly galling when others complain about how “the jocks” are bullies, whereas “smart kids” are portrayed as saints – having been picked on and belittled as a little kid for being “dumb” I’m well aware that all kids are bullies at heart.
But, anyway, the only people I ever asked out in school were the chlorine-smelling type like me, so first period swim class could have been your chance to hang out with the other drowned rats. We’re much cooler, really.
Chunky? Check. Always picked last? Check. Oblivious P.E. coaches who thought bullying and harrassment were “character building”? Check. Plus I was a mouthy little shit, and made my opinions about competitive sports and being forced against my will to work up a sweat very clear, which didn’t do much to endear me to the fuckwit P.E. teachers.
The worst episode was 8th grade; it was getting towards the end of the period, and the coach told us all to run one lap and then head for the locker room. I walked my lap, as I always did, because running hurt my knees and back and made it hard to breathe. When I finally came back around the the bleachers, that sadistic bastard announced loudly that since I couldn’t follow instructions, everyone was going to sit right where they were until I RAN two more laps, and he didn’t care if everybody was late to their next class or not. I should have called his bluff and just sat down where I was and refused to move, but everyone in the class started yelling at me, so I ran the two laps in tears of rage and ended up in the nurse’s office with an aching back and every breath feeling like an ice-cold knife stabbing me in the lungs and a brain-dead nurse asking me if I was about to start my period. :rolleyes:
My ideal physical education class would focus more on teaching kids how to be healthy; various physical activities, nutrition, health and hygiene, first aid and CPR. I think it would be great if we could have every high school student certified in CPR by their sophomore year, and re-certified their senior year. That would be a worthwhile skill; Og knows I’ve never used any of those dodgeball-dodging skills I picked up in junior high.