I sort of agree with the OP. I think sports are important to teach in school, but there are lots of other ways to teach fitness as well. Other classes take field trips, why can’t Phys Ed? Take the kids to an fun, yet somewhat challenging obstacle course, or on a couple hour long backpacking trip, have the school invest in bikes, load them up and go on a back-road bike trip or a “mountain” biking trip. (many cites, towns, etc have a bike path, or one nearby)
Heck, teach the kids some dumbed down yoga, tai-chi or some sort of aerobic styled martial arts. Or just teach martial arts.
Thousands of ways of teaching fitness, and many are much better at ACTUALLY promoting fitness than sitting on the sidelines waiting for another game of dodgeball to start up, or standing around half-ass playing badminton.
I’m glad PE is changing in some areas. Here, it’s not. Not yet. My son is luckily rather athletic all on his own, and he’s managing all right, but it’s the same ol’ same ol’. No instruction, kids choose the teams, dodgeball is played whenever the students are extra squirrelly or the teacher’s hungover or just didn’t plan anything else to do that day.
The one thing I think they got RIGHT at his junior high was getting the other teachers involved in the PE “curriculum” as well. About four times a year, the teachers (gym and other subjects) played the students at basketball, volleyball, dodgeball and softball. (I’m not sure how the teams were arranged. I think the students had some sort of play-offs and the winning team played the teachers.) This got the whole school trash-talking (in fun) and excited, and got the gym classes a bit fired up and actually practicing their skills, so they could “take down” their teachers. The teachers, by the way, won every game, but they really worked hard to do so!
My son really respected his PE teacher, however. The man started every school year by wrestling three of the baddest gangbangers at once and winning. He was a gym GOD after that!
We aren’t fond of the kid’s PE teacher - who seems a little “drill sargent” to be teaching kindergartners. But he is one of the best teachers in the school for explaining what he is teaching, why he is teaching it and what life and physical skills he is hoping to teach. And as the kids have gotten older and less distractable, he’s become a better teacher for them - his expectations no longer seem out of line for their age (what a difference two years makes).
There are still plenty of overweight kids, but it isn’t because they weren’t given the opportunity to learn about physical fitness and encouraged to stretch themselves physically at school. As is being discussed in the middle school parents rant in the pit, a school can’t be expected to magically fix a kid’s home life. But it might provide some encouragement and information to overcome it.
Ideally, I think PE should be broken down into two distinct, but overlapping, areas.
Fitness Component
Kids are creatures of habit, and if you get them interested in a physical activity they’ll stick with it. This doesn’t have to mean competitive sports (even though that could be a component). Running, biking, hiking, etc (all activities that involved physical effort but can be done alone) fit this mold. Other activities designed to get kids outside would work as well. For instance, in my senior year of high school we had a PE section on fishing. Our school was on a lake, so we learned about various kinds of reels, techniques, how weather plays into it, hand-eye coordination, etc. I was brought up fly fishing, so I brought in a fly rod and some popping-bugs and got to teach a class on how to cast with a fly rod. Everyone was outside in the fresh air, on the water, hiking around the lake - it was a treat. Next week, we went back to softball, or volleyball, or whatever.
Sports Component
This is just what it sounds like. Learning the fundamental rules of a game, learning the skills to be able to play the game, and learning how to be part of a team.
That’s how I’d set it up (actually, that’s how my brother, a former PE teacher, did set it up).
My kids are active but not traditionally athletic and they’ve enjoyed PE so far. They have learned some traditional games like soccer and basketball, but also a lot of more creative stuff. Their coach also conducts a “running club” half an hour before school and kids can earn treats and awards for racking up certain numbers of miles.
Not all of them. I wouldn’t. I’m also that person for whom exercise is never, ever “fun” and the endorphin rush doesn’t work. I can’t tell you how many times I started crying in gym class because the teacher cajoled (not yelled) at me that if I just worked harder, I’d start having fun. No, sorry, I didn’t and I don’t. I’m learning now that I have to work out even if it’s not fun, but can you imagine the “what’s wrong with me?” story that the Exercise=Fun idea set up in my noggin?
There, that’s the whiny part of the thread everyone was expecting.
If you are the guy that blows the curve for all the jocks in math class, then getting beaned with a dodge ball during gym class is more than fair. Suck it up whiney boy.
We did! And that was back ~1980. We had several field trip options – I ended up going on the rock-climbing one, twice.* We had to qualify to go on the trips by passing test in PE. For the rock-climbing we had to climb a certain distance up a rope and a climbing wall, and had to stay after a few times to go over techniques and such.
Way more fun than any of the other field trips (such as the history class trip to Missouri’s “historic first state capitol.” yawn.), and it really motivated people in PE to get qualified to go on those trips.
… and I have to wonder if there are message boards where all the “jocks” are still whinging years later about the “emotional scars” of having to do long division or read Shakespear or something.
going twice got the art teacher mad. as if staying to make macreme was vital to my development. sheeyeah. dump art, keep PE, say I.
I had PE and or Recess, in 4 different schools across the US (Bay Area, Seattle, Washington DC and Atlanta). I don’t ever recall much in the way of abusive stuff. There were some bullies along the way, and two-three times I had to kick some butt, but then there was nothing to deal with (and twice it was kicking butt on behalf of others, not to protect myselt). But my teachers/coaches would not put up with crap. It wasn’t dodgeball every day, and for a couple of those schools it was just a sort of free form recess. Girls did their thing, for the most part, and boys did theirs. I was in parochial school until fourth grade and don’t recall any “pick on the brainy kid” behaviour, although there was a tendency to pick on the physically ungainly (hence at least one of the fights). I think I watched too much TV and had a ingrained sense of justice from that. There really weren’t many kids who were fat, and even they would have been judged average by most of today’s standards. We were blessed with a sparcity of junk food and soda.
FWIW, I got straight As through most of school, and was decent although not gifted athletically. I also had a couple of brothers that I fought with on a regular basis as sparring partners, and had a much greater understanding of leverage and pain points (and higher pain tolerance) than anyone I ever went up against in school. I also had a decent ability to get along with other kids of most stripes, even if they weren’t as smart or whatever. I avoided a lot more fights than I got into by making friends. Then I’d pressure these “friends” to behave decently.
My elementary PE memories are fuzzy. I remember doing aerobics to 80’s hits like “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Rapture.” I remember square dancing, which I thought was lame even then. I recall being excellent at dodge ball because I was tiny and fast, but hating getting hit, because that shit hurt.
Our middle school PE teacher was a nutty Vietnam Vet who let us do all kinds of crazy things. It’s a wonder no one got killed. He was funny, though.
My high school gym teacher was literally 300lbs. Her making us do sit ups and laps was insulting, and the irony was too much for me-- the woman could barely walk. I am not kidding. I also hated the polyester school gym uniforms, and changing into/out of them. Thus, I’d say elementary PE was more fun than secondary PE. It was probably because of the teachers more than the subject matter. I’d love it now if I had 40 minutes per day set aside just for exercise.
As a kid it depended on what we were doing if I liked or hated it.
Running? Sucked at. And if what I suspect is true I may have asthma (going to go to the docs soon and ask about being checked) what I get now sometimes I remember as a kid. So I hated stuff like soccer, baseball (or soccer baseball), floor hockey, basketball (and I get asked all the time if I play… no, my game is volleyball)… I wasn’t half bad at dodge ball, and I don’t recall ever sitting out once you got beaned. We’d play it, you got hit with the (soft, half filled rubber) ball you had to go to the back of the other team’s side of the gym…from the back you could try and catch runaway balls and get the other team from behind, so in the end you were dodging from both sides… was never very good at lacrosse.
Honestly, I don’t really have bad memories of gym except the time when the kid at first base deliberately tripped me. Some things were good, the rest I survived.
That’s how it was for me. My school had this policy in most classes, where the kids who were best for any given subject would be paired with the ones lagging behind. The big exceptions were “Pretecnología” (introduction to trades) and Phys Ed.
Our PE teacher spent two and a half months on maternity leave, was replaced by her sister. The sister promptly did that kind of pairing; she paired the four best girls (the ones the PE teacher had told her had to get A’s no matter what, I accidentally overheard the conversation) with us four worst ones (the ones the teacher wanted flunked, again no matter what). I got an A! I got an A! I got…!
All I needed in order to learn how to stand on my hands was someone to explain it and to hold me the first few times until I felt safe enough to try it alone. But it wasn’t the normal procedure - not in that class.
For some reason, people who had problems with math or reading got tutoring, those of us who had problems with physical stuff didn’t.
A hyperactive classmate of mine is now the PE teacher in our old high school. When he started, some of us went there (the fields are a public access area, and no we didn’t go there as a gang… we just all heard about it and had to see it) and spent a couple hours just chatting, catching up on each other’s lives and looking on. When classes were over, he came up and said “ok, let it rip… c’mon, say whatever.” We kidded him lightly about becoming a colleague of the teachers he used to drive up the wall and told him we thought he was doing a great job and that we figured he’d be good because on one hand he loves sports and on the other he knows not everybody does… I know his students love him and he does bother explain. He hadn’t expected a positive critique at all but hey, we hadn’t been afraid to tell him to “stop fooling about, you idiot, the rest of us want to hear the lesson” when we were 16 and we weren’t afraid to say “good job, dude” at 26
I was a really fat nerdy girl in school and I loved PE all the way through. I was so big, even, that in high school I had to make my own shorts because the uniform shorts didn’t fit (hi nonny!), but I excelled at all of the sports - except running a mile - because usually none of the other girls gave a shit and it made me stand out. I always got A’s, possibly for effort but I could still shoot a basketball and aced all of the written tests. Even though I was fat and nerdy I played soccer as a kid, basketball in middle school, and softball from ages 5 to 18.
Didn’t keep me from growing up to be fat and nerdy, tho. But at least I know HOW to play a variety of sports
