Lip service. Bullies are as protected now as ever. Now, anti-bullying means you can’t fight back. Bullies have always been sneaky and master manipulators, and that hasn’t changed. Now, it’s “Let cut write ups” so you don’t write up bullies as often, parents protect their kids and will throw a fit to keep their kids out of trouble, and admin buckles. The parents are bullies, and don’t understand that their kids wouldn’t be in trouble for being assholes if the parents hadn’t taught them to be assholes in the first place.
A lot of kids really hate “learning” to do Maths (whatever those scare quotes mean). So schools shouldn’t force *them *to try, right?
Or maybe kids don’t know what’s best for them, or what they might be capable of, until made to try.
Wait, I take it you mean your art teachers weren’t actually educated art teachers? That’s a big part of the problem, right there.
Heh, I can see your points but I guess my view has been baked in pretty well. As an undergrad in college I hated being required to take courses outside my science-heavy major. Instead of an easy A in Sociology, I took an upper level physics class, “Physics In Science Fiction” where I worked my ass off for an A-.
If you ever find yourself in western PA, I’ll show you around the Warhol, a very cool art place.
/hijack
I only remember one particularly horrible PE teacher, for a brief time in 7th and 8th grade. He was your prototypical “enforcer” type who enjoyed belittling kids for minor imperfections. He also once took it upon himself to punish each of his classes with sprint drills because of something that had happened at a dance the previous weekend that he didn’t like (I don’t remember what it is/was).
For high school, PE was an afterthought. Teachers half-assedly sent some students to volleyball here, pickleball there, sit-around-and-talk over there. I remember my instruction in the weight room beginning and ending with “figure it out.”
Other than the semester when I took swimming, there were no showers – we all just thoroughly hosed ourselves down with deodorant and went on with our lives.
It depended on the year. For example, my ninth grade gym teacher was extremely encouraging to me personally despite my extreme lack of athleticism. of the four gym teachers I had between seventh & 12th grade (we were not required to take it every year), he is the only one I remember, and in fact is one of only three junior high school teachers I can still visualize. Great guy.
In elementary and middle school? Good. Great even.
In high school? Just an obligation. The activity I always signed up for was “walking laps,” in which you went down out the gym, checked in with the “instructor,” and then you were supposed to go out to the track and walk laps for 40 minutes, but nobody was ever watching or checking up on you, so I would check in and just leave. As long as you just checked in every day, you got an “A.” 
Horrible. Bullying-awareness wasn’t really a thing then and our PE classes mixed 9th through 12th grades.
Like most of us, I was not a very athletic teen. Last year of compulsory PE was junior year. We were able to choose between basketball and weight room, or ballroom dancing.
Nearly all the boys took basketball, as well as the jock-type girls. That left me with the majority of the girls, plus two rather ugly guys.
Ballroom dancing means you have to learn how to lead, or to follow.
The girls wanted to learn how to follow. Some girls had to dance with other girls and lead, which would ruin their future as dancing partners. So the three boys were in demand. Not only were the other two ugly, but they got erections when dancing with girls.
So for the first time in my life, I was the Prime Objective. I proposed a dance to my dancing partner, and carefully, like a gentleman, chose between the gorgeous, the attractive, and the unattractive. With them all, I gusted witty repartee.
The long legged busty partner was a giggling idiot. The slim brunette smelled like fresh popcorn (?) and was charming. The blonde cheerleader with the almond eyes fit my body best, and was the one I dated throughout senior year.
Yeah, gym was okay.
She was also Homecoming Queen and Prom Queen, and I was her squire.
Doesn’t say that much for me, except I was slappin’ that.
Moderator Note
This thread is about PE class. This is completely off topic, and is a good example of the boy’s locker room type posts that we don’t want around here. Do not post something like this again unless it is absolutely relevant to the thread being discussed.
As for the post previous to that, it’s ok in this thread to mention that you took ballroom dancing instead of regular PE, since that was your PE experience. But again, the “long legged busty partner”, “slim brunette smelled like fresh popcorn”, and “blonde cheerleader” comments are completely off-topic and inappropriate for the thread.
If you want to discuss your high school fantasies and who you were “slappin’”, I would suggest finding another site to do so.
As an athletic child/teen with WAY too much energy, I loved PE. Another chance to run around? Sign me up, forever and always. None of my PE teachers were notably bad, but my high school teachers (taught as a pair) were fantastic. For junior/senior year, you had a choice of two tracks, each made up of three and six week modules. For instance, one track would have six weeks of basketball, then six weeks of badminton, then three weeks of “relaxation techniques”, continuing for two years. The major module both had in common, in alternating years, was dance. Everything from hip hop to ballroom, with all the fun stuff in between. It was expected that even should we have two left feet (yours truly), we could at least pull off a basic waltz and two step, which were thrown into the prom playlist at random places. They might have been on something, because those times at prom were incredibly fun, even if you could only watch due to a injury that kept you otherwise sidelined.
I knew quite a few people that weren’t such fans of PE, however. Different strokes, I guess.
I was always one of the tallest in school. I’m 6’3" now at 59.
There was one small kid that wanted to take me on in 8th grade. Wanted me to fight him for some reason. I guess he had nothing to lose. If I beat him, well yeah, what do you expect. If he beat me, well that’s weird.
I would not do nothing but ignore his taunts. Really hurt me it did. I wanted to clobber him. But was admittedly afraid. I’m not a fighter.
The kid was expelled eventually. They found a .45 in his locker. I’m glad I ignored him, I’m still alive. This was ~1972
Hate hate hated it. The whole thing was about elaborate confusing protocols to sort us into a small group of winners and a large group of losers. It tended to enforce the existing hierarchy of the popular and the bullies, and the rest of us. It taught me to equate physical activity and mistreating people.
There were three exceptions, in high school. One was when they let us opt into volunteering for an old age home as an alternative. Another was when they let us work on making sets for school plays. And the was when they let a group of us go out on our bicycles riding on the roads.
Now I like hiking, in fact it’s my hobby and favorite thing to do when I have the freedom to do it. But I think of it as antithetical to “physical education”. Maybe at one time “gym” was supposed to provide exercise, but in my experience it was about enforcing social hierarchies using body size and innate ability as the discriminating factor, and I wish I’d never had to do it.
I tolerated it. I wasn’t (and am still not) into sports, but was reasonably capable of exercise during high school, being on the swim team and later, a crew team.
Was always called last for anything related to ball sports (b-ball, volleyball, etc.) I got used to it and didn’t care.
Yes, the experience tended to improve with better instructors, who found ways to include everyone and not emphasize the goddamn sports involving manipulating a ball. So, under the better instructors, I got to do aerobics and such.
Had an “old school” type gym instructor for a couple of years who believed students who were exempt from gym class were somehow deficient and it was OK to discuss them in front of other students. I had only one unpleasant run-in with a psychopath in the locker room, thankfully just that once, my whole time in HS.
Now, my son is in high school and he does much better with the “modern” type gym instructors, but unfortunately this year he’s with an “old school” type who believes that any issues he has with the regimen are simply because my son isn’t trying hard enough. (They still have such guys around? Well, I am now living in rural Indiana…we’re not in Seattle anymore, Toto.)
So it looks like, 30 years ago and today, much of the PE experience boils down to the instructor’s training and attitude.
Ok up to about 8th grade, generally bad after. Track, volleyball, and badminton were ok, but hated basketball and (touch) football (I didn’t know the game and receive no instructions whatsoever from the teacher)
Was so glad didn’t have to take it senior year.
Did have to in college, but there were many options (I took archery and badminton)
Brian
This was one of my pet peeves about PE class. The “teacher” told us to go out and play football (or any other sport), without any instruction about the rules of the game and how to play it. Nobody taught us how to pass or catch the ball or anything else. We just sort of learned by osmosis.
I remember the first time I played baseball. I thought you had to swing at every single ball that was pitched. No wonder I never hit one.
I was usually the second-last kid picked for any team, with one kid who was even worse than I was. But then one day the teacher told us to run around the track all period. Amazingly, miraculously, I discovered that I had more stamina than most of the others, and I ran at the front of the pack. I had finally found my niche.
I had that pet peeve as well. As I said back on page 1, in middle school our PE teacher did at least instruct us on thing how to dribble, pass, shoot, etc. But no one ever taught us the actual rules of any of the sports. The other kids who were more into sports than I was just seemed to already know them. So when I got to high school and our PE “class” pretty much being told to go outside and play football*, and one kid decided to be “nice” and pass the ball to me, I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do once I had the ball. I honestly didn’t actually want the ball for that reason. I eventually learned the rules of football by being in marching band, since that required attending all the football games.
*or basketball or whatever the teacher decided to have us play that day, but in this case it was football.
Horrible. Was bullied in the 7th grade, and was a skinny kid whose only real skill was basketball. The gym teachers were sadists, for the most part; think dodgeball in a room the size of a large bedroom, with 20 balls and nobody is ever “out”. I took some real poundings in there. The only good thing to ever come out of that is that once I graduated high school, I never took shit from anyone ever again, and still don’t.
Reviving this thread because I just saw it linked elsewhere and it’s interesting.
I only had 3 years of P.E., in middle school. We didn’t have it in elementary school, and in high school you didn’t have to do it if you played any sports or were in marching band/colorguard. It was a mostly neutral experience, relative to the rest of middle school, which was generally horrible. The worst specific thing about P.E. was staying on top of the gym clothes situation. Most of us owned just one P.E. uniform and wore it all week, taking it home to wash on the weekends. (I guess we didn’t sweat much at that age.) But I did like to wear clean socks every day, so that was something I had to remember to bring if I wore sandals to school. Looking back, I wonder if I might have had some form of ADD, or if it was just being 12-14, but I had such a hard time keeping track of that stuff. I had similar problems in other areas of life; I was constantly losing or forgetting things. I was a good kid who rarely got in trouble, and it stressed me out to get scolded for my forgetfulness. One time I realized I’d forgotten both socks and sneakers on a day I was wearing chunk-heeled sandals (like these: https://www.cozzoo.com/home/155095-1476765-fanyuan-2018-fashion-women-slippers-bling-peep-toe-ladies-high-heel-slides-chunky-heel-chanclas-mujer-concise-party-wear-shoes.html) and we were supposed to run the mile. I was so grossed out at the thought of putting my bare feet into a pair of sneakers from the lost and found that I just ran the mile in heels and crossed my fingers that the teacher wouldn’t notice. She didn’t.
I usually enjoyed PE. I’ve never been very coordinated, but was usually better at sports than the jocks expected. I remember there being some bullying in Jr. High, but not in high school. I looked like a spazz running (and still do), but had very good endurance and decent hand/eye coordination. In high school one of the PE teachers had been a star lineman at the University of Tennessee and coached at the college level. However, he was a laid back guy and never gave the jocks special treatment.