The Wonder Years did a good job portraying the fear 11-14 year old kids had of their junior high/middle school P.E. coaches. At least in the 60’s and 70’s these people were the ones that often dealt out punishment with a paddle. At our school, anyone needing punishment was sent to the coach’s office. Take everything out of your pockets, bend over & grab your ankles. Never more than 5 licks with the paddle. Just enough to get the kids attention. Usually 2 or 3 licks for talking or chewing gum. It certainly gave me an attitude adjustment.
My P.E. coach had several non-physical punishments for kids caught talking, chewing gum, or goofing off in P.E.
He always had a wad of Red Man in his cheek. A few unlucky kids in our class caught doing something wrong had to wash out his spit can and put in a fresh paper towel. Other kids were punished by collecting the wet, smelly towels after showers.
Crabbing - was his favorite physical punishment. Try bending over, hands on the ground, ass in the air. Now do a lap around the practice field like that. That’s worse than taking licks with the paddle.
Really the coach’s best weapon was pure intimidation. Pure testosterone and I swear we could smell it in the air. Even the toughest 12 year old bully didn’t dare F around with a coach.
Please share your P.E. memories and the coaches. How did they like to punish kids?
Also, lets share the great things about coaches. Looking back, I respect them a lot. I was a stupid little shit when I was 12. Heck, most boys that age are. The coaches helped us grow up and mature. Be a man. I use a lot of what I learned everyday in my life. I know how to deal with problems and accept set backs without crying and whining. I don’t blame others for my mistakes.
I wouldn’t change my experiences in P.E. for anything.
I honestly can’t really remember anyone ever needing to be punished in gym class. P.E. was the one place where you could really let off steam in school. I guess if anyone ever did anything serious enough it would just be detention.
The P.E. class starts at 3:08. That 30 second segment brings back so many memories. Dressing out in those gym clothes. Sitting on the floor while the coach talked. Totally captures my memories of P.E.
Notice how the coach is shot from an up angle? Makes them look like giants. That’s how they seemed to us when I was 11 or 12.
Running laps or just yelling at people who misbehaved. Corporal punishment was banned in Maryland public schools the year I started first grade (1993) and my parents didn’t spank, so I never grew up with any of that stuff.
I always hated PE, but that was because I was totally unathletic and sucked at most of it. My only shining moment was in 8th grade when we did a unit on handball. For some reason, I was actually kind of good at playing goalie for this and my classmates noticed. Suddenly, for those few weeks, I was among the first picked for teams instead of the last. It was an out-of-body experience.
Kids have so much pent up energy. It’s hard for them to sit still and be quiet. I always thought the coaches used running to drain some of that nervous energy. It made it easier to get the kid to concentrate afterward.
totally agree. If a kid is trying that is all any teacher/coach can expect.
It wasn’t always for acting up in PE. Detention duty rotated among the teaching staff. It was the worst if you got a detention when the PE teacher was on point. You had to go to the gym, suit up and do laps, sit ups, push ups, and whatever other calisthenics they could think of make you miserable.
I picked the talk option, but that’s only half accurate. The boys’ gym teachers didn’t urge us to be better people; they’d just threaten to send someone to the office or make a hollow threat re failing us. Even that was rare.
I hated all of the boys’ gym teachers (& I use the term loosely) I had in middle/high school. As far as they were concerned their “real job” was to coach the sports teams; teaching gym was just a distraction. They didn’t hide their opinions either (I was actually told “It’s not my job to teach you anything”). Depending on the weather & season most gym classes consisted of either going outside to play touch football or staying inside for basketball in out half of the gym. No attempt was made at instruction, nor did they actually pay attention to the game. They just sat off to the side doing paperwork or going over game plans. Twice a year we’d do those stupid fitness tests and occasionally a joint activity with the girls class. Often we’d be allowed to pick which teacher’s activity; everytime I’d pick whatever the girls’ teacher was doing. She’d actually make an effort to do different activities and teach us things.
I only got sent to the office once and it was totally worth it. Senior year and we were doing the fitness test. It was time for the chin-ups. I had alot of trouble doing one. His idea of “motivation” consisted of telling me how I wasn’t even meeting the girls’ standards and to be a man. Naturally there was a small audiance of classmates. I finally did one. As I was walking away afterward he said good job and smacked me on my ass (yes I know it’s a jock thing). My response was to snap, turn around and (at the top of my lungs) call him a “fucking pervert” and tell him that if he ever touched my ass againt I would break his fingers. I was really loud. The girls’ teacher came running over from the other side of the gym, two teachers who were in the hallway outside came running in. Naturally he was shocked and got really, really mad. I didn’t even get a chance to change he sent me right to the office.
Of course our vice-principal was livid that I’d say that to a teacher (this was only the 2nd time in 4 yrs I was even in his office). It didn’t help that I kept interupting and made him get out a copy of the school handbook and read me the sexual harrasment policy. Especially the part about unwanted touching. I could see the realization kicking in and the VP going from an anger expressions to a “please make this go away one”. Suddenly he got very apologetic, and kept trying to nicely explain that wasn’t what the he (the gym teacher) meant, the coachs do it all time, etc. All of which I knew of course. No punishment. I even got him to switch my gym and study hall around so I had a different teacher. He then escorted me to the lockerroom so I could get my stuff and change (& also talk with the teacher).
In conclusion PE as was it was “taught” at my school was pretty much a complete wast of time and taxpayer money. I got nothing from it (other than turning my disinterest in sports to an actual loathing). It took years before I voluntarily set foot in a gym again and I still don’t like sports.I ended up skipping gym alot (usually be pretending I was sick or getting a nosebleed so I could spend the perion in the nurse’s office. Senior year I had gym first period and a car so it was pretty easy to just come in late, give the attendence secretary a semi-bullshit excuse about a post-nasal drip, and miss gym. I think I actually skipped more gym classes than I attended that year.
Detention, just like any other class. I don’t remember anyone ever being “punished”, at least not in my class, so maybe there was something else. I did have a teacher who wanted me to stay after school because she didn’t think I was good enough at handball*, but that’s about it.
I was in remedial gym, and even then, our school was pretty small, so sometimes we were mixed with other classes. Most of the teachers were pretty cool including, believe it or not, the football coach. He was a little TOO enthusiastic, once telling my friend and I, “you’re not allowed in here without a smile on!” Nice guy, though. The big jock was one of the female teachers, the one I mentioned above. The other female teacher was pretty cool and more of the “give it your best shot” and as long as you actually worked hard and made an effort, you were good.
But I don’t remember any punishment for goofing off, or misbehavior, or anything of that sort. Gum – we were allowed to chew gum at my school, but not at gym. So they had what we called “The Gum Poster.” (A big sheet of poster board pinned up in the locker room. Before you went into the gym, you had to stick your gum to it. ;)) So if anyone was still chewing gum, they just told you to get rid of it.
Gym may not have been my favorite class, but I lucked out.
*I had an after school job, so I told her I couldn’t. So she ended up calling my mother and was forced to admit that I wasn’t slacking off, I already did the work, and I always made an effort. This was the same teacher who called me “retarded” the first day we played golf, and I grabbed the wrong golf club.
I got punished with extra exercise… or well, extra attempts at doing stuff I couldn’t do. And yea, the punishment was to do more exercise for those that try but couldn’t be on par with the rest.
The PE in my secondary school sucked! It rotated between teaching volleyball, basketball, softball, and track and field sports every year. We had written tests on the theory and rules of each game, which I actually studied for and aced. That was the only way I could pass class.
I sucked at the rest. I couldn’t hit hard enough to pass the ball in volleyball. My eye-hand coordination sucked for basketball, although I was marginally better at it. I also sucked at track and field, and was slightly better at softball, especially in the field.
It wasn’t until I got OUT of high school that I actually slowly improved my fitness. I wish the class had been more aerobics/general physical conditioning and less “let’s play these sports and if you suck at them, you’re screwed”.
I used to be a PE teacher, and I’m always sadly amused to read threads about peoples’ experiences. Don’t even know where to start on this one, except to say that nobody should have to have gone through the nonsense described in some of these posts.
First of all, it’s amazing that there should even be an expectation of nasty punishments in PE class. That’s one of the failings of the field, and why it often deserves it’s poor reputation. As I say in most of the PE threads, you may take some comfort in the fact that the culture is slowly changing. New teachers are taught never to use exercise as punishment. After all, PE class is about learning to stay active and fit. Activity shouldn’t be thought of as a drudgery.
The problem of PE teachers not really caring about that job in favor of coaching is a big issue. It’s a big part of why I left the field. I was well trained and dedicated to being a teacher first and foremost. Turns out that even in school districts that do take a progressive view of PE, coaching is often the de facto main job.
I agree that the way PE is taught at the secondary level is often pointless, often harmful. Even proponents in the field admit that. But it can be done well, and some places do it.
Finally, I’ll answer the OP’s question from a teacher’s POV: I never punished kids with exercise. At the elementary level, the worst punishment was to remove a kid from an activity. They loved to come to PE, and threat of having to sit and watch was usually enough. At the secondary level, it was more administrative. The kid could be required to fill out a worksheet on the activity the rest of the class was doing, in addition to losing points on their grade. Detention was also an option.
My teachers handled their own punishments, thank you much. The closest we came to physical punishment at those grades was the one teacher who’d send us to the corner of the room, facing the wall; he threatened with making you hold books in each hand, but I think he only did that once. Eventually other teachers found out he was doing this corner thing and told him to cut it out. The most common immediate “punishment” was being sent out to the hallway for disturbing the class (you could go to the bathroom but not roam around, and the teacher could call you back in at any time); we could also be given “study time” during recess or on Saturday morning. The PE teacher was a bitch but the punishments she handed were the same as any other teacher: timeouts or study time. This was in Spain in the late 70s/early 80s.
I had a pre-K teacher who’d spring a ruler against my bunched-up left-hand fingers for “using the Devil’s hand”, a kindergarten teacher in a French-language immersion school which refused to let us go to the bathroom until we asked for it in French (the other students had been taught how by their mothers - I simply did not know how) and who also would not let me go back to class in the afternoon until I had eaten dessert (it’s been 39 years and sorry: I still find melon and watermelon too sweet and watery).
I’ve also told before the story of how I came to be slapped by my JHS principal, but that wasn’t a punishment per se, it was a loss of control: the short version is, she was berating a group of us for being “out of uniform” in a day in which uniforms had, traditionally and for at least 100 years, not been required and I asked where her own habit was (she was one of those “modern” nuns who dress like nuns but not in their Order’s habit).
Remembered an extra: one of my HS classmates would sometimes be sent to “run some laps and come back” early in the morning, but it wasn’t considered a punishment. Nowadays he would probably have been diagnosed as having mild ADHD, back then we just said his ass was not made for sitting down; burning the extra energy off made it possible for him to concentrate and let the rest of us do so. He’s now that same school’s PE teacher and he’s good at it (as all of us who were his classmates were sure he’d be, when he got the job - he understands that not everybody is as energetic as he is and works at helping each student find something (s)he likes).
Our coaches never did any punishment – no one thought to give them guff. If you did, he’d chew you out, however, I can’t remember anyone getting to that stage. Usually a word to stop it was enough.
Our school never had a jocks vs. anyone dynamic. It was so small that the jocks and geeks were interchangeable (the best player on all the teams was in the National Honor Society; and the cheerleaders my senior year included the valedictorian and salutatorian of the senior class, plus the valedictorian of the next year’s class). The coaches worked to make sure that it wouldn’t develop, too – if you said anything negative about anyone on the field, they made it quite clear that you were in the wrong.
To this day I have no idea why my 7th grade gym teacher did what she did. We were playing kickball outside one day. End of class and I had the ball, so I tossed it to her to head inside to change. Easy toss, bounced a couple of times before it got to her. I turned around and suddenly she whipped the ball at my back, screaming “How do you like it?” It bounced off my back to her, she picked it up again and threw it at me. Bounced off my chest this time and back to her. I was too shocked to react in time to catch it. I didn’t want to get hit with the ball again so I went over and knocked the ball out of her hands. I got an in school detention for “striking a teacher” for that.
I really have no clue why she did that. Wow. Almost 30 years later and I still get the shakes when thinking about that.
The other teacher who dealt out punishment was our 8th grade French teacher. There was one kid, Billy, who this teacher decided he hated. I remember him getting lifted out of his chair with a pointer under the chin. Yeah, fuck you Mr Boisvert.
Early '80s - the coaches would tell us to run laps around the field. No one ever ran, though, being the little shits we were. We’d walk, and take our sweet time. To those of us who hated PE, a leisurely walk was far preferable to participating in whatever sport was the flavor of the day.
For me and the kid next to me that day–grabbed us by our shirts and slammed us against the locker room wall. The back of my head got a lump bouncing off the tile.
Usually 2 or 3 licks for talking or chewing gum. It certainly gave me an attitude adjustment. 
(she was one of those “modern” nuns who dress like nuns but not in their Order’s habit).