SNeck
Run Run Run
Basketball is a physical game. It requires that you be somewhere near the basket to shoot.
Are you a runner? Not many people really are. How many people can even approach the times of todays super stars. They are coached. If you join the basketball team you might be trained to play basketball.
I have a 13year old daughter that thinks she should be on the basketball team. She is. The Jr high plays three games each time they play. The A team consists of 14 players. She is not one of them. The B & C team consist of 26 girls. She still looks at herself with blinders and still tries to shoot baskets from mid court.I don’t know how many times I have told her to shoot from near the basket until she can make that shot every time. Then move to another spot.She sees herself as someday being the hero by making that shot.
Not many people can be an athletic hero. most never get close. It takes a lot of work and not much cheering when the largest amount of work is going on. You have to practice, Practice <practice and when you are done you have to Practice ,practice ,practice some more with someone else that may take the shot that makes him the hero.
Sneck
Just the running is doing your heart,lungs and leg muscles a great deal of good.I tried to play basketball and should have been good at You see I’m Tall, Thats all it takes isn’t it? It wasn’t until I was out of school that it dawned on me that if I could just beat the guy I was to guard I was winning weather the team was or not.
I’ve a feeling this is going to IMHO
Doubting is fine. I’d have a hard time believing it myself if I hadn’t seen it. But it happened, and I did.
This was, if memory serves, 1972. The strap had only been outlawed for a few years in Toronto, where the incident occurred. Many people still were of the mind that the school knew best in matters of discipline, and teachers basically were in charge during the school day. Any parent’s objections to teaching methods and other matters at school were routinely dismissed.
Moreover, this teacher was known as a hard case. Other teachers didn’t force their male students to take showers; for all girls, showers were optional. But this teacher made it plain that the only thing that would get one out of gym or showers was hospitalization or death. And we all accepted it, because we knew no better. Let’s face it; most of us had been told for years to obey the teacher. So we did.
Maybe a physician’s note would have been useful, but maybe it wouldn’t have–and it might have opened up the user to more of the teacher’s ridicule.
Today, all of that wouldn’t be the case, of course. If the incident I described occurred today, the teacher would have lost his job at the very least, and might be up on criminal charges. But the incident serves to show just how much attitudes have changed towards this sort of thing.
Now, if we could only change PE further, as SNenc suggested–do away with gym classes that favour the athletic (though I still vote for keeping the study of skills, as RickJay noted), and switch over to things everybody can do, as well as teach how to lead a healthy lifestyle.
Gym gives me my only chance to play sports. I am busy eitherwise. A little gym never killed anyone. If you dont play a sport in my class, you have to walk laps in the gym or outside depending on where the class is that day. Thats the only excercise kids get some days. I see nothing wrong with gym, just as long as kids aren’t forced to do humiliating things, i.e. showers. Gym is fine. If some kids are humiliating other kids than they are jerks, but I hardly see it as the fault of the class.
Uh . . . Mercutio, it is the fault of the class if kids are humiliating one another. Or, more accurately, it is the fault of the teacher. It is the teacher’s responsibility to create an environment where all students can learn and be successful. If the teacher allows that kind of verbal abuse and physical intimidation, then some number of children will be so busy trying to protect themselves, they’ll close down to the learning process and disengage from the class. It is exactly that process that turns PE from it’s purpose of creating fitness to a debacle that scares children away from the very concept. Perhaps if PE classes were taught better, then PE wouldn’t be the only place students got exercise.
Justwannano, I’m not sure what the argument is of your previous post, especially the extended basketball anecdote.
I wasn’t asking to become an athletic hero in gym class. I wasn’t asking to learn how to play basketball really well. But I could have at least been taught the proper way to shoot a basketball and some basic defensive positions.
And if you’re saying I should practice outside of gym class, I don’t see the point of that. Since I was involved in several other activities in high school that would later help me as an adult, praciticing for a gym class wasn’t high on my priority list. Again, I was never asking to be an amazing athlete.
And if my heart and lungs can get a workout running or doing a variety of other things, why should I have to do those things in a basketball game that I was never taught how to play and that I’ll be ignored in by those who do play on a regular basis?
Finally, justwannano, and I apologize if this is in a rude tone, please try to spell my screen name right. I’ve double-checked to make sure I got yours right.
SNec
Sorry about the misspelling
My point is not very many know how to play basketball.
You are not alone.You are just verbal.
The anecdote was meant to point out that even the athletes do not know a lot about the game and even if they do it is usually just frustrating. You are not the only one that is frustrated.
Have you ever asked the coach to show you how to shoot?
He’ll probably be surprised you don’t know how. Also it would help if you have the strength to reach the rim with the ball.He has a bunch of guys that have some knowlege of basketball that take up his time. Show a little initative and maybe you’ll be awarded with some knowlege.And who knows maybe if you take your time to show him maybe your son/daughter will be a basketball star.
First of all there has to be desire.
That is an inward thing.You must want to play more than anything. Thats the attitude those jocks have and that is what you have to contend with. Life ain’t easy. You have to work at it.
Why, pray tell, should the coach be surprised you don’t know how to shoot a basket? That’s like being suprised that a first grader doesn’t know how to read when you start teaching him!
My experience with gym class is affected by the fact that I attended Quaker schools, where community and tolerance are expected.
My high school had required sports. There are several things that they do that make this work.
[list=1]
[li]They happen after school, so there is less need to shower before returning to class - especially if you live on dorm (it is a boarding school)[/li][li]There is a variety of sports available each term. Fall is soccer, cross-country, field-hockey. Winter is wrestling, basketball, swimming, volleyball. Spring is track, lacrosse, baseball, tennis. There is also dance, wieght-training, and theater set construction (really, that’s what my sister did). This variety allows you to choose a sport you enjoy.[/li][li]Not all sports are inter-scholastic, or are at several levels. Soccer has Varsity, Junior-Varsity, 3rd Association (mine) and 9th grade. There were several seniors on the 3rd Ass. team because we enjoyed soccer but couldn’t play it at the varsity level.[/li][li]The coaches are teachers, a requirement when you have this many sports at once. There are no full-time athletic coaches. I think that all teachers had to coach a sport, so in effect sports were required for all. And that helps the community thing too. I had one class with the baseball coach, and taking East Asian History from someone wearing a baseball uniform is amusing.[/li][/list=1]
I also agree with RickJay that there should be a class on fundementals. In 8th grade we did sample some of the sports, but not as intentionally.
A nice philosophy for anything that motivates one, justwannano**. However, there are some remarkable points being brought up in this thread that are worth looking at:
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In “academic” classes, the teaching level is pitched at the median or mode of the class ability level, with those capable of more advanced work and those who lag behind it getting extra help outside strict instructional time (e.g., while the rest of the class is doing an exercise, after school, etc.). In phys. ed., the teaching level is pitched at the outstanding, and the others are made to feel inadequate for what they have not learned on their own.
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Agreed that a student who doesn’t know a fundamental skill of a sport could ask for extra help, why should he/she? It’s the teacher’s job to identify and offer such help. (And the skilled players can get some ego-boost by being assigned to coach the less skilled one-on-one – your mark depends not on how many baskets you can shoot, but on how good you do at showing Clarence here how to do a free throw competently – which teaches teamwork.)
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Enthusiasm for anything should be encouraged. But why should every child be expected to work himself/herself up an enthusiasm for some sport? If you are an outstanding stamp collector, amateur astronomer, skateboarder, fellatrix, etc., you are not encouraged to follow that up in school, nor are all your fellow students expected to share your enthusiasm for your chosen field of excellence. Why should this be so for sports?
Count me in as one of the people who hated gym class and got nothing out of it. I was always a small for my age and uncoordinated. Being a girl didn’t help me get picked for teams either. We did learn a little bit about basic sports (basketball, softball and volleyball) in eight grade. For 3 memorable weeks the boys learned football and the girls learned how to jump rope (I am not kidding!)
In high school it was basically the same thing. We only had to take one year of gym and you got out of it for six weeks to take driver’s ed. I don’t remember even sweating in gym class once. It doesn’t take much energy to play outfield or stand on the edge of a volley ball court.
I would rather see kids get some real exercise in gym class. Why not aerobics and yoga and weight lifting like some other posters mentioned? These are the things that I do as an adult to stay fit.
Always found gym teachers to be a strange breed. They had little tolerance for those of us who were in my schools arts program. We weren’t sports people, not interested in chasing the ball and not particulary competitive. After much complaining from parents, the school set up dance as an option.
As for showers, I’ve never been in a school that had them. After gym we all reeked of spray deodorant or patchouli oil. I find it kinda weird to force kids into community showering. But as I said … gym people are a strange breed in my opinion.
Another “In theory yes, In practice no” answer.
In my school the first year of PE was supposedly like RickJay’s class. We did have to learn (and were tested on) the rules of the sport. We supposedly picked up basic skills - but most instruction consisted of “you just throw it” followed by “throw it again until you get it right.” Change the verb depending on which sport we were talking about. Then, of course, the instructor graded on a true curve (the only true curve I was ever subject to) - so the top athlete got an A, the next best or so got B’s, most of us got C’s, and the worst (despite effort and/or improvement) got D’s and F’s.
((I hated that class, usually I lucked out due to random flashes of ability (for example, for some reason, I could punt footballs really really well. So even though my throwing was erratic, and catching was even more so - the kicking saved my grade) on the other hand, I still have no idea how on earth someone can hit a tennis ball with a tennis racket in such a way that the ball goes over the net AND stays inside the general tennis playing area.))
On the other side, when I was in elementary - I had a teacher who loved sports, loved playing sports, and loved having his students play sports. Generally, when it came time to pick teams, the captains only got two or three picks - and the rest of us were split up at random, so no one ever had to be the last one picked. And twice a year, every year, he made (and as a consequence, everyone else made) a huge deal of the “Sportsmanship Award” for the person who had tried hardest, encouraged others, had the best attitude, etc. A lot of other things like that made being an uncoordinated klutz not quite so bad - and even though I didn’t love PE, I never hated it, then.
amarith
I still have no idea how on earth someone can hit a tennis ball with a tennis racket in such a way that the ball goes over the net AND stays inside the general tennis playing area.))
Amen,Brother/sister
I couldn’t hit that sucker either.
And my golf balls still don’t go straight.
Perhaps it is the school systems fault rather than the coaches that so much emphasis is spent on football,baseball basketball.
That gym is made to play basketball in. the best use of it is basketball.
You can play 20 people at a time if you play 1/2 court. with another XX waiting to play. and the rest of the class doesn’t care because they just skip class or are always trying to get out of it.
I can already hear the “But ifs”. A coach like everyone gets numb to the excuses. IF you want to play you will be there ready to play.
You guys had tennis rackets?
My school was so small and poor, we had to stick to the bacics. Basketball, indoor soccer, volleyball, track. Thats it, Running shoes, a ball and sometimes a net was all we had.
well, first of all, some people hit puberty later then others, even into early high school. Kids are not all that understanding about such things. Luckily where I went to school, the showers were never used, so I never even thought about it, but I have talked to people who had to endure that sort of thing, and have heard horrors stories.
Personally, my experiances with PE were on the most part pretty bad. Even though I wanted to be good at sports, and worked at it constantly after school, I pretty much sucked at sports in general. I was much taller than the other kids in school, but I still wasn’t any good at it.
Then things got worse. In high school I was put in a class almost completely filled by seniors. Senior jocks, and me a freshman. I was constantly getting knocked around, things thrown at me, beaten etc. I went to the teacher, who spent all his time reading the paper inside the building, while all the kids were outside, and he did nothing. My parents went to the principle, who talked to the coach, who did nothing again. My parents had enough, and decided that it was a danger to my health to get assaulted everyday in school, and my doctor agreed with them. He wrote me a note every year excusing me from PE until I was a senior. After that, I didnt have a problem. After that experiance, I deveoloped an extreme dislike for sports, jocks, and PE teachers. If my sons winds up in a similar situation, I will probably wont be as nice as my parents were. I don’t think I have really got into a football game since Stabauch stopped playing, and the last baseball player I knew anything about was Gaylord Perry.
PE if done right, could be benificial, but to most people I know it was just another thing to endure.
New and Improved Scott said
You guys had tennis rackets?
No remember I said I was the first graduating class. In football WE were our only tackeling dummies.We basicly had nothing.Hell I remember going to the closet where the basketballs were kept and everyone of them were flat.
bdgr said
“well, first of all, some people hit puberty later then others, even into early high school. Kids are not all that understanding about such things”
Thats my point.Everyone went through that. There were two kids that were in my class that were one and two years older than the rest of us. They started school with everyone else so we didn’t know.
bdgr said
PE if done right, could be benificial, but to most people I know it was just another thing to endure.
justwannano said
World Lit class,if done right, could be benificial, but to most people I know it was just another thing to endure.
Tuff world out there Huh
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by justwannano *
**
bdgr said
“well, first of all, some people hit puberty later then others, even into early high school. Kids are not all that understanding about such things”
Thats my point.Everyone went through that. There were two kids that were in my class that were one and two years older than the rest of us. They started school with everyone else so we didn’t know.
Well, you said
As far as showers go why should you be ashamed of your body? You’ll get over the embarrasment. If you are grotesquely obese as someone mentioned maybe you should begin getting serious about doing something about it.
My point was about what you said about the shower situation, you put a kid in the shower that has not gone through puberty, with a bunch of students who have, and and that kid is going to go through hell, both in gym class and out. They aren’t going to just “get over the embarrasment”. You don’t put them in that situation, they don’t have to go through that. The schools in my area were smart enough to figure that one out.
bdgr said
PE if done right, could be benificial, but to most people I know it was just another thing to endure.
justwannano said
World Lit class,if done right, could be benificial, but to most people I know it was just another thing to endure.
Tuff world out there Huh
Yeh, but the object is to make it less of one.
bdgr
you said
My point was about what you said about the shower situation, you put a kid in the shower that has not gone through puberty, with a bunch of students who have, and and that kid is going to go through hell, both in gym class and out. They aren’t going to just “get over the embarrasment”. You don’t put them in that situation, they don’t have to go through that. The schools in my area were smart enough to figure that one out.
Not so.
One of the latest ahm shall we say bloomers in my class was one of the smartest and one of the most popular with the ladies.
I hated gym class. I hated it so much that I wouldn’t even buy Anne Murray records because I read that she had once been a gym teacher. The usual story; small, younger than everyone, extremely uncoordinated and clumsy. I thought it absurd that I could easily get an A+ in English class but the kids who couldn’t write poetry got graded on it anyway; meanwhile I couldn’t hit any sort of a ball but got graded on it anyway, while talented athletes got the A’s. Gym class should never be graded.
I loathed fitness, and I never saw the inside of a gym again until I was fifty. I still despise sports, but at least I am willing to exercise my own body. Incidentally, I learned nothing whatever about the rules of sports, so I ended up despising those who WATCH sports too, since I couldn’t understand what the point was. When I read George Plimpton’s “Paper Lion” I began to watch football for the first time, after forty years of loathing.
That’s what gym class does to the untalented.
I’m going to try and be polite when responding to this–as someone with his own ideas of what education should be, gym is a hotter topic with me–but forgive me if I lean toward almost becoming vulgar.
Gym is a damned joke as a class. It teaches nothing of any real substance that a kid can’t learn in a playground with their peers, an equally competetive environment, but one that is certainly less judgemental. Of the five or so gym teachers I had to endure during my early education, only one of them was sane–and he had the common sense to recognize that not every child needs or wants to participate in organized sports, and the common sense to leave me alone. This nonsense that educational systems try to propose about gym fostering a sense of self-confidence is also a sham. About the only good that comes of gym is that teachers have a sixty minute block to prepare for other classes, which some will do if they’re worth their titles.
If gym in early education is bad, imagine having to take a damned gym course to complete your Bachelor’s degree. I run a 4.0 GPA as an undergrad, am on a track that will let me complete my Doctorate in two years, and I find out that I have to take a freaking GYM course before I can begin grad studies! (It’s more than insulting. The system is saying, “Never mind that you’re intelligent. You have to endure an idiot in a sweatsuit for five months before you can get anywhere in life.”)My bottom line beef is this–not everyone is a damned athlete, and it’s high time that the antiquated educational system we’ve adopted in this country do away with this ridiculous notion completely. Gym is fine as a course if you get something out of it, but to assume that everyone will attain some universal sense of “self-confidence” because a few have in the past is just plain wrong.
Let me also put in a good word for poor Jeff, who was the subject of the opening thread. Not every kid is the model of a perfect physical form–in Jeff’s case, his experience in the shower will likely effect him for the rest of his life. Could he have told the teacher what his condition was? Certainly. Should he have been made to endure that in the first place? Not at all.