Some friends of mine moved recently and their orange tabby, named Hamish, is nowhere to be found. This wouldn’t happen to be the same Hamish would it?
Marc
I would have to agree. If you ask me, there are more than a few problems with PE as it stands now. To wit, basically our schools right now (at least in the South) are institutions of football, not learning. Since they’re institutions of football, it’s natural that they will put a big priority on hiring a good football coach. However, they can’t justify hiring someone just as a coach, so they set him to teaching math, English, and other subjects which are more or less foreign to him.
Even within PE, the coach doesn’t care about anyone but the football players. The best PE days for me were the days when the coach just didn’t hold PE at all, because he decided that he had to spend time coaching the football team. (Some of my friends tell me that their coaches did the same thing to math class!) On the days when I did do PE, I learned nothing whatsoever- the nerds just sat in the middle of the basketball court while the jocks played basketball around us. What’s the educational value in that? Plus, there’s the whole ordeal of picking teams. Invariably the coach would pick his two favorite students (the best jocks, naturally, and IME the most brutally sadistic of the bullies) and appoint them as team captains for the day’s sports. They, in turn, pick the best jocks for their teams, randomly pick a few middling sorts, and openly argue, in front of the coach, about who will get shafted with the nerds on their team.
I think that if it were up to me, I would axe PE on the grounds that our culture is simply too sports-crazy to handle it. Ideally, if I were to have PE, I would make it more like PE was in grade school:
- No horrific favoritism on the part of the coach
- Teams are allotted randomly
- Somehow, sports are picked so that everyone gets to play
- Good sportsmanship must be taught. It’s just inexcusable to me that I was forced to spend an hour a day, five days a week, sitting around watching people play basketball while they (sometimes) openly insulted me, when I could have been studying or reading a good book. If you’re going to force students to participate in sports, then you have to create a situation that will allow them to participate.
In fact, come to think of it, high school is when sports really turned sour for me. I enjoyed it a great deal back when we played kickball and crab soccer- it’s only when the games turned to football and basketball that PE lost any redeeming value whatsoever. Why not just drop PE from high school? I mean, I’d be pretty infuriated if my college or graduate program had forced me to take PE, particularly if it were anything like high school PE.
While we’re at it, it occurs to me that there wasn’t a lot of difference between PE and many of my other classes. The breakdown:
PE: you’re orded to sit around doing nothing while jocks antagonize you.
History: you sit around reading aloud from a history text which you are quite capable of reading much faster silently.
Alabama history: you sit around reading aloud from an Alabama history text which you are quite capable of reading silently. BONUS: Alabama history is taught by your nearly illiterate coach (how would you like for your exams to quiz you on the “Tinnisee Valy Athority”?) whose pedagogical method is to “prepare you for note-taking in college” by forcing you to copy the textbook longhand and then give open-note tests on bizarrely irrelevant details of history. I mean, if he didn’t ask about the irrelevant details, we would never find out how meticulous your notes are, now would we?
Current events: you sit around reading USA today and being quizzed on the name of the prom queen mentioned on the front page of the Life section. Meanwhile, the Iran-Contra investigation continues. (This was actually taught by my American history teacher, although at least she could spell.)
Math: my math teacher was quite good. Not only was she a good teacher, but she understood that the best way for me to learn was to sit at the front of the class reading Calculus for Beginners.
Science and English: I will admit, my science and English teachers were quite good.
Bible: ah, yes- since my school was run by fundie creationists, Bible was the most important class of all, and accordingly was given a half-period, taught by the coach. “Now, in the video we saw on Mormonism, what color tie was the cult expert wearing?”
World History: My world history teacher’s born-again Christianity led to some weird mistakes (any time anything remotely religious and non-Christian was discussed, even alchemy, he would tell all sorts of weird ULs about how evil it was) and weird behavior (he would perpetually interrupt class to draw Chick diagrams on the board, with little stick men representing you and Jesus.)
All in all, several hundred irreplaceable hours of my life wasted! Ah well- at least I entered that school in 8th grade rather than seventh, or I would have had to take a class in creation science.
-Ben
Chick diagrams? Talk agbout an opportunity for MST3K…(see, I’m obsessed)
I remember in 7th grade voluntarily sitting out gym class and doing written reports on certain sports because everyone picked on me so bad…
I hated PE…
I’ve always believed that P.E. was a waste of my valuable learning time in high school(which there wasn’t a whole lot.) I don’t think that it should be required at all, but they could offer it as an elective course for the athletic types and people looking for easy credits. If they made it mandatory, however, they should only make you take it for one semester at the very beginning of your freshman year, to get it out of the way for the rest of your time there, IMHO.
**
You know, like Jack T. Chick.
Ugh- I was able to do that in junior high because the coach thought my allergies prevented me from going out of doors. It wasn’t an option in high school. Plus, the high school coach (not the illiterate one- the one who looked like the ugly guy from “Police Academy”, only uglier and without the ability to use fire or stone tools) was just gratuitously mean. I remember for a while we could jump rope in PE, and when I went to him to get a jump rope from the box, he gave me one with a broken handle. Bear in mind that there were plenty of non-broken ones, and I was one of maybe three students who was jumping rope in that class. When I asked if I could have a non-broken one, he demanded to know why. When I said I just preferred a non-broken one, he screamed at me at the top of his lungs “I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU PREFER!” Of course, in pep rallies the more brutish bullies would stand in front of the assembled school, heads reverently bowed, and talk in hushed tones about what a great spiritual counselor the coach was and how much he had taught them about life.
Can you see why I want to have organized sports removed from schools? If you want to play football, fine- do it as a loosely organized extracurricular activity, but I don’t think we should be elevating the most disruptive, least studious students into some sort of elite.
And while we’re at it, no more spelling bees!
Hey! Teacher! Leave us kids alone!
-Ben
Most of the above criticisms of P.E. have to do with people’s bad personal experiences. Yup, it sounds like P.E. sucked for you all. (Sucked for me too, at least until I got to high school, where it got better.) But just because we had bad experiences in P.E., should we say that the entire concept of physical education is unsound?
I had allegies and asthma.
When we were forced to run outside I would usually have an asthma attack, but if you stop running you fail. I could not afford to fail because PE counted gradewise. The coach found it amusing when I puked up all the phlegm from the asthma or collapsed from the attack. My mother did not care, did not think asthma was a big deal if the teacher did not think it was a problem. I hated gym, i had many injuries and still have longterm health problems that began with those injuries. The whole class seemed to be built around torture and making the students as humiliated as possible.
I moved to california for my sophomore year in high school. In California when I had PE it was a safer, more productive class. It was taught in such a way that you learned about keeping fit. Warm ups and streatching were done before more strenuous exercise and if something was unsafe for you to do, then you did something else. I cannot run much. It triggers asthma. I don’t know why, but I found out that year that I could do a lot to get into shape and how to exercise without having an asthma attack, but running was guaranteed to trigger it. The coach found other exercise for me.
If gym is going to be about humiliation and torture, then it should not be required or even allowed. If it is about health and fitness then it can be beneficial.
- It is badly taught. I remember just being expected to know the rules and techniques of games. They throw us out there and say “play flag football”, a hard thing to do when you don’t know the rules. Inevitably the large guys in the class would go “you, girl, go over there and do this”, and I would go over there, not knowing what was happening, and screw up. Granted it can be taught well, but that would require massive changes in “the way things are done”
- Harrasment. First, you create create an elite of strong young men who can do better than anyone in the class at everything. Then you add teachers that believe in doing things the tought way. Add in little teacher supervision, and you got trouble. I, being a slightly wierd bookish girl, dreaded PE. I could handle the name calling. When they stole my clothes and soaked them in the shower, I was okay. I could even handle the humiliation of always getting picked last and that sort of thing. What did it was when they started throwing rocks. For four years I dreaded that locker room. I think that most people who dont quite fit in felt the pain most in PE. It is a breeding ground for harrasment.
- We have better things to do. My high school required two years of PE and only one year of anything art related! For people that are just fucking around, getting in the minimum requirements isnt all that hard. For someone following a college-prep and AP laden schedule, PE takes away time that could be spent learning.
While we cant just kill PE entirely, I suggest that we reform it. First off, get it out of high school requirements, where high acheiveing kids are hard pressed enough to get all their classes in. Of course it can still be offered as an elective. Teach real skills in elementary school in a non-competative closely ssupervised setting and always have an array of after-school options.
I agree with Lee, and many of the other posters here.
I have no problem with PE as a way to help kids keep fit, and develop good fitness habits. I remember ONE quarter of PE I had that was like that. We did weight training, and aerobics. No one was competing against each other, the nerds and clutzes were not being singled out and tormented. It was a good experience. And…I lost weight! And I didn’t dread PE. What a concept. The lazy, clutzy fat girl was losing weight, and was enjoying PE!!! Well, they had to nip that in the bud, didn’t they?
The remainder of my PE experiences were hellish. I don’t need to repeat them all here, they are strikingly simular to what others have shared. “Winning” in some game took priority over anything else - the clutzy kids being treated like lepers, yadda yadda yadda. State mandated torture, if you ask me.
If PE could be like that one good quarter I had, where I lost weight and was happy, then I am totally for PE. But if it’s just going to be a organized way to torment the nerds, screw it. I don’t want my tax dollars going for such torture.
Oh poor Pepper. If I could I would reach out ot the computer and hug you.
If you are athletic enough, and you can swim for example, see if your school has a program in which you may attend only the final exam, like they have in college. Or, try speaking to your School District about your dilemma. I doubt that they would want you to eschew a college credit course for gym class. If the news gets hold of it, it would be very bad PR. That is all I can really suggest on Sunday morning.
I know what Chick Tracts are, Ben. I was just kind of surprised a teacher would actually DRAW them on the board!
Wasn’t this against separation of church and state?
Hmmmm…
Or was it a religious school?
My high school must have had one of the few non-terrible PE programs. We had to take a gym ( or health, they were the same department) class every quarter.( not a certain number total, so that if it took 4 years to graduate, you took four years of gym. If you got out in three, you needed three years.If you only spent two years there because you transferred in, you needed whatever you already had, plus credits for the two years you were there)
We had our choice of the regular gym class ( a different sport each quarter),team gym (if you were on a team, you had gym last period and practice started early-also kept the jocks out of regular gym classes) or almost anything you could imagine being gym (yoga, dance, swimming, gymnastics, cheerleading, aerobics and optional health classes like first aid, CPR, and nutrition, along with the usual volleyball, etc. )Other schools included such things as bowling,and I think one even had horseback riding.
Aside from the one required quarter of health, you could take the same type of class every quarter.The only way to fail was to either be absent or unprepared ( didn’t change to gym clothes) too often.
The physical health of a person is very important and P.E. programs can do a lot to introduce sports and activities to individuals.
Mandatory participation in specific activities should not be required, I think that P.E. students should be able to choose the sports or activities they are interested in or enjoy. Making students run miles is just cruel unless you actually like that kind of thing.
If someone is not competitive don’t make them play in competitive sports, it is just embarassing for the student if they are poor players.
If a student is actively involved in an outside sport they should get equal credit. Our school gave credit to students who were taking external music classes so why not do the same for Phys Ed? I took formal Karate lessons and taught classes through high school but could not get credit for it. I thought this was unfair.
Physical education IMHO is an important part of the curriculum but as many have said, it could be greatly improved. I actually considered going into teaching at one point and thought Phys Ed as a minor would have been a possible choice…
I went to a HS where you were required to take a “sport”. Every damn day, for about an hour and a half, we would engage in some stupid activity or another. Of course you could only have so many people on the baseball team (which I would have liked to be on), so once it was full I was forced to sign up for something else - the only thing left - track. This means I don’t get any better at baseball, and of course I won’t make the cut next year, either.
I hate long-distance running. I’ve always hated it. I’ll always hate it. And there I was, slogging around pretending to run. And of course, I wasn’t allowed to try something of track like, say, the javelin, which I might have enjoyed. The “coach” said he’d teach me that once I could run five miles in some set amount of time. Brilliant, eh?
We had three sports seasons a year, fall, winter, and spring. So you got to do three different things. Of course the same shit happened every time, with the same people filling up the fun sports so I was always in the catch-all category (track, loser soccer, whatever), all that varied was the activity we were pretending to engage in. I was no good at the fun sports, and never got any better.
There was no allowance for one to find a sport they enjoyed on their own.
But I did it anyway. My junior year I started lifting in a private gym by my house. It was great. I LOVED it! I was doing it about two hours a day. Unfortunately, there was no way to count this towards my P.E. credit. So with the hour-and-a-half bullshit at school, I had almost four hours a day devoted to physical activity. Needless to say, my grades suffered. My best option: Give up on the single sport I had found that I enjoyed; abandon the real, physical gains in strength I was experiencing and the good exercise habits I was forming. This would allow me to spend more time and energy on my studies, and of course the PE nonsense I couldn’t get out of.
I still lift. It has been a life-long habit, and it remains the principle exercise I get. I very nearly dropped it BECAUSE of the stupid P.E. requirement.
Some reforms I would suggest:
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Require P.E. the freshman and first half of the sophomore years, when there are fewer electives anyway. After that, all P.E. should be offered as either elective or extra-curricular.
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Focus on training methods first, i.e. stamina training through running, strength training through lifting, agility training through basic gymnastics, etc. This way kids can see what their basic physical gifts are, learn how to shore up their weaknesses, and learn to enjoy physical activity where they are competing only with themselves. Once the basics are covered, only then should competition be introduced, and only after one-on-one competiton has been experienced should the social complexities of team sports be brought in. (In practice, this would mean no team sports until the sophomore year) I think a lot of the unfortunate social consequences of the teams could be attenuated this way.
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Make allowances for activities not sponsored by the school.
Comment from someone who had this problem…no, there wasn’t. I took math all four years, science all four years, and Spanish. I did this to get into a good college, but because my school only requires math and science for 2 years to graduate, they were seen as electives. PLUS, I had to take one year of “fine arts,” plus one of “practical arts.” Which was orchestra one year, and then I took business computers for a year. Which was freaking pointless…I sat in class and did my chemistry labs instead.
I managed to FINALLY squeeze PE in my senior year. And once again, it was pointless. We sat around and did nothing in an “Aerobics” class. Basically, it was sitting on the mats and gossiping. Yeah, THAT helped my physical fitness. I honestly don’t think having mandatory PE classes helps kids get physically fit. If they’re fit to begin with, they’ll continue regardless. And if they’re the chubby nerdy kids (like me), they get picked on, which doesn’t help anyone.
Just my $.02.
It was a private school, which, in my home town, meant that it was religious. I could have gone to a public school, but they were all named after the founder of the KKK and suchlike. Realistically, my pathetic high school provided the best education available in my home town.
-Ben
Ouch. That really must’ve sucked.
I remember the worst thing about HS gym was that we had this really creepy older man for a gym teacher, Mr. Phelan. The man used to wear thin WHITE swimming trunks (until some students complained), he would actually come into the girl’s locker room and into the SHOWERS. Which wasn’t so bad about that…since we weren’t required to take showers-this was during swimming, so we were just in our bathing suits, washing our hair…but it’s the principle of the thing. And the man would keep us until there were about 2 minutes left in the period, and if we were late, he refused to give us late passes for our next class-thankfully, most teachers understood this.
He eventually had a stroke and had to retire…only this was AFTER I graduated. No fair!
Isn’t there a way they could screen out sadists when selecting PE teachers?
It isn’t possible. Here’s the two big things I’ve learned from the SDMB. #1. All jocks are assholes. With the exception of the wrestling team of course. #2. Nobody ever had a good experience in gym.
Marc
I went to high school in Illinois, which AFAIK is the only state that requires P.E. through grade twelve.
My high school P.E. program, quite honestly, sucked. We were sorted into groups after being tested on 5 areas - how many laps you could run in 12 minutes, how many situps in a minute, how many pull-ups in a minute, how strong your grip strength was, and your body fat percentage. These were weighted and you were then in one of four groups. The lower two groups had extra laps, etc to run to get them into better shape (which almost never worked).
We spent almost no time playing sports. We ran at minimum 3 days a week, and usually two of those were running for at least 20 minutes at a time. The other days would be wind sprints, aerobics, or weight lifting. The only sports we played were volleyball for 2x a week for a month in the fall, and softball 2x a week for a month in the spring.
Getting out of P.E. was damned near impossible. I only managed to get out of it for a quarter by taking driver’s ed and for a semester by taking Health. To top things off, you only got 1/4 a credit per semester of P.E. (normal classes gave you 1/2 a credit). At least P.E. grades did not count towards your GPA when I was in high school, but they did a few years later when my sister attended the same school.
–tygre