The only thing I didn’t like was having it in the middle of the school day, and not at the end. I typically didn’t have time to shower and then get to my next class, where I was typically sweaty and wired and couldn’t focus very well.
A bit surprised by required uniforms thang mentioned above by several Dopers-we just brought our own shirt socks and shorts and shoes and went at it.
My Primary School in New Zealand was small, so PE was quite informal. Most of the time we played softball or some other low impact ball game. Despite our national sport being rugby, my school never made us do that. We also had an annual sports day, so had to practice athletics like long jump and relay and such. When competing against other schools we had to wear school colours, blue and yellow.
In High School it was more formal, their colours were green and yellow, and we played a wider range of sports. In winter it was a choice of rugby, soccer, field hockey, or netball. As you might imagine, there was a sharp gender divide. Also we were never told the rules of these sports, it was assumed we somehow already knew them.
We also had compulsory cross country races each year. I hated those, and harbour a resentment over having to do it ever since.
San Jose, CA. Had to take PE 6th through 10th grades, 1982 - 1987. Then, as now, I had no use for sports, so I hated PE with a passion.
Middle school was 6th - 8th grades. The uniforms were the school t-shirt and shorts. Showers were not even offered. The school had this weird rotating schedule: there were six periods, A-F, but only five periods per day. So on Day One we went A-B-C-D-E, then on Day Two we went F-A-B-C-D, and so on. So every sixth day, I had no PE class. Those were my favorite days.
On a particular day, if we really didn’t want to participate, we’d deliberately mouth off to the coaches, or otherwise get in trouble. The punishment was to spend the period running laps around the field. Of course, no one would run; we would leisurely walk.
Only two years of PE were required in high school (thank gawd). The school had a sane schedule, the standard six periods per day. So I had to go to PE every day. I don’t recall the uniform exactly, I only remember there was no shirt with the school name & logo on it, like in middle school. I think it just had to be a plain t-shirt and shorts. Showers were offered, but the only time anyone took advantage was after swimming.
Every six weeks or so, we spent a PE period signing up for whatever sport we were to be tortured with for the next six weeks. The final six weeks of my sophomore year, I managed to get into archery. The coach told us not to waste time suiting up, just come in our regular clothes. That was the only time ever in PE that I somewhat enjoyed.
Relentless bullying and general violence, with the teachers varying between indifferent to actively encouraging it. How to avoid getting hurt as much as possible was my primary focus, not the class.
I moved around a little in the junior high years, so there was some inconsistency moving from state to state. In Michigan at the time it started in the two year junior high school - 7th to 8th grade. Structured calisthenics and rotating mostly gym-only sports, split by gender. Locker rooms with a school t-shirt and shorts, no showers. No state mandated fitness testing.
In CA Middle School it was 6th-8th instead of 7th-8th and I’d say it both was a little more and a little less structured, though maybe that was just down to the instructor. No uniforms, just generic student-supplied sweats or shorts with a t-shirt. State mandated fitness testing in effect. More emphasis on running laps. No showers.
HS in CA it was required the first two years (with more state-mandated fitness testing), elective the last two. Again gender-segregated with no set uniforms (just any old sweats or shorts again). Showers required but usually only weakly enforced except during swimming season, when it was strictly enforced by teachers standing at the exit doors and sniffing hair for chlorine.
I’d say only in Michigan was there much attempt to teach PE and then only weakly with the instructor-led calisthenics. I never once saw any instructor, ever, try to coach a sport during PE. You were just told to play, say softball, and it was assumed you’d just play. No adjusting hitting stances, teaching how to field, how to throw, etc.
ETA: I take that back in Michigan - I’m now dimly recalling a PE instructor in 5th-6th grade and gym dodgeball. Non gender-segregated though. Goddamn long time ago 
.
England, 1980s, All girls private school. We did PE twice a week.
In winter it rotated between outdoor sports (field hockey, netball) and indoor (gymnastic, volleyball, badminton, trampoline, basketball, swimming/diving). In summer we switched to tennis, rounders (like mini baseball), some limited athletics. Then we had extra curricular sports for people who joined the school teams - I played hockey for the school so trained one or two evenings a week with inter-school matches on Saturday mornings.
In my junior school we did loads more athletics, which I loved, but my senior school was quite old school and stuck to the ‘girl’ sports. Most hated by me was netball - like basketball but you’re not allowed to move when you’ve caught the ball. Yawn. I think it was designed to stop nice young girls getting a sweat on.
We had sports uniforms - a very short olive-green pleated skirt, white collared t-shirt and a green sweatshirt. Green tracksuit bottoms in winter. Our whole school uniform was olive green.
I don’t really remember much about PE in middle school, except that the gym teacher was a scary Italian guy. He was negative body fat, built like a corded whip, and his paddling (back when it was legal) was the most painful of any I had taken. Gym shorts offer no padding.
One time my class was acting up, and he rocketed the basketball he was holding 20 feet up at the ceiling and put a hole through it. I then noticed about 10 other holes from his previous outbursts. We quieted down.
Broomball, played in a regular ice rink but a bigger rubber ball and no skates.
I went to school in Ottawa as well but must be (slightly) older as I was the last year of grade 13 before OACs began. '83-'88 I’m assuming you went to Glebe CI?
PE class was pretty basic and co-ed up until grade 8, and yes, I remember alot of ball sports including “Murder Ball” which has become dodge ball now LOL.
grades 9-11 was segregated, we spent about 3 weeks on each sport which included football, soccer, rugby, gynmastics, ball hockey, track, and field, etc… Grade 12 and 13 were co-ed but also more academic as there was alot of in class study such as skills development, kenetics, coaching, nutrition, etc…
I was pretty athletic and played baseball, football, and hockey as well as some competitive swimming, so I took all 5 years of PE.
No uniforms but gym clothes were a must and part of your mark.
I’ll never forget my grade 9 gym class. Our teacher was a gruff old body builder with a slight limp which made him even more frightening to a bunch of scrawny 13 year olds! Turned out he was hilarious and would join in our games. You could play hard against him but you had to keep your head up too because he would come back as well. Also, funniest Sex Ed class ever. I still remember some of the things he said to this day!
Showers were available but I don’t remember anyone using them until the later grades or maybe after practice during extracurricular teams.
North-side Chicago suburb, 1968-72. Four years of PE required for graduation, which was the main reason I ended up dropping out. Boys’ and girls’ classes were entirely separate, so mostly i’ll talk mainly about boys’ classes.The school colours were purple and gold, so boys’ “gym suits” consisted of purple shorts and reversible t-shirts, purple lined with gold (or, of course, gold lined with purple, depending which way you wore it). This meant that outdoor team sports were played purple vs gold, rather than shirts vs skins.
Guys were required to take two years of Army JROTC or three of marching band. Don’t know how band was run, but for us “normal” 
boys 11th-graders alternated weeks, one week with PE M/W/F and ROTC Tu/Th, and one the other way round. The other three years we had PE five days a week. Showers were required at the end of every class, and also at the beginning of class if we were swimming. (The showers were basically largish rooms with a dozen or so shower heads; privacy was for sissies.)
The school year was divided into six six-week grading periods, three per semester, and as I recall we did a different “sport” for each one. One ninth-grade six-week period was split between golf and tennis; other years we did touch football (American, of course), wrestling, basketball, softball, gymnastics and (the only one I liked) swimming.
The teachers were mostly okay, though one of the male teachers was rumoured to be gay (not that we ever used such a polite description). One of the female teachers had played professional baseball in the women’s league during WW II.
The major differences I was aware of between girls’ and boys’ classes were that girls got field hockey and archery for their outdoor sports, and they wore swimsuits (exceptionally ugly green ones, I heard, so nobody would try to steal them) while we boys swam nude.
Broomball! Thanks, that was bugging me, how I couldn’t remember what it was called.
Good guess about GCI. You? I was in HS from '86 to '91, but I could’ve sworn OACs were already the order of the day when I arrived (Sidebar: I just took a wild swing that some wonk would have created a wiki page on the OAC, and there it was. It says they were introduced in '84.)
Chicago suburbia during the mid-late 80s.
Junior High has required showers though you could dodge them with little effort and I usually did. We had uniforms and the classes were the usual “Five weeks of touch football, five weeks of volleyball, three weeks of gymnastics” type affair.
High school only had a couple shower stalls versus the mass walk-through affair of Jr High and no one ever used them. Again, we had uniforms. Coed classes. Each year had a health unit (sometimes Sex Ed) and sophomore year was a semester of Driver’s Ed. For our junior and senior years, we could pick units such as track sports, football, gymnastics and some more exotic choices like bowling/golf, archery and “adventure ed” which included orienteering and rappelling down the two-story gymnasium wall. We had a swimming pool at the school and a coed swimming course using school-provided swimwear.
I was an exceptionally nonathletic kid and did not look forward to gym but it wasn’t a living hell or anything either. Teachers largely didn’t care as long as you got dressed and put in minimal effort and team sports would see me shuffled off to whatever that game’s equivalent of far left field. Every now and then I’d score a point despite the odds. I was more invisible and ignored than bullied and no weirdly militant or bad-touchy PE instructors.
Western Michigan in early 1970s. Boys wore red shorts and white t shirts, girls wore what I think were blue one piece short rompers, like shorts and shirt in one. Almost always separate classes for boys and girls, though for some things like running on track we were combined. Boys started off doing calisthenics for about 10 minutes (jumping jacks, arm rotations, leg lifts, push ups, situps, and the like). Then the activities varied throughout the year- basketball, baseball, golf, dodgeball, tennis, wrestling, etc.)
High school was a small town in Iowa in the 1980s. PE was generally required every day, but if you were taking a lot of AP classes you could get it pared back to twice a week. Everything was co-ed. We usually did basketball which I didn’t like because although I am tall it’s not a sport I enjoy. But sometimes we did cooler stuff like cross country skiing or bowling (they had a bus take us to the local bowling alley). There were showers but most people, me included, didn’t bother.
Central South Carolina in the early 1970s. Boys and girls shared the gym at the same time, but at opposite ends. We had showers, but I never saw anyone take one. We used the shower room for changing into our gym shorts–which was tremendously embarrassing for me. At the time, I had only boxer shorts, which hung out of my gym shorts. I would do things to try to bunch them up and tie them, but they seldom worked. Never dawned on me to ask my parents for briefs. PE also doubled as a health class during part of the school year.
Not much of a wild guess, the “secret” pool in the basement was a giveaway.
My wife and alot of my friends went to Glebe as well but I have also worked in that building twice over my career. About 25 years ago, my lawyer and his family donated a lot of money to keep the pool up and running in memoriam for his wife Mary Thompson who was a teacher there and passed away. Sadly, they have let the pool fall into a state of disrepair again and it is not open anymore.
I don’t remember much of mine, but this is ringing some bells. Oh, I now remember being among the kids always picked last for team sports. Good times! Middle school in Reno, NV. High school in San Jose, CA was a little better with less bullying and violence, probably because I was bigger.
I never got into team sports as a kid for obvious reasons, but as an adult I love being physically active in solo sports.
I, obviously, have no idea what went on in the boys’ classes, but I don’t recall bullying or any nastiness in our classes. Maybe I was just clueless as in many other cases. I tended to gravitate towards the other girls who were not at all athletically inclined. The worst that happened was the time someone swiped my brand new sneaks. I don’t think it was directed at me - just the fact that they were new and very white and pretty.
Wisconsin, 76-80. I don’t remember the details, but variations of sports and work out regimen. We played outdoor sports (flag football,softball etc) until it got cold and then indoor (gym workouts, volleyball, basketball, and my favorite: floor hockey! With those plastic sticks that left corrugated marks on your shins.)
We were gender integrated, girls played all the sports.
And we had dancing! That probably did more for me than any amount of calisthenics.
Our uniform was short shorts (think 70s NBA) and a reversible shirt in the school colors (yellow and purple). No more shirts and skins (especially co-ed!). And white knee socks with colored bands. They were all the rage! and we all had what we called “zippies” (low topped blue sneakers with three or four stripes on the sides) or Converse all stars.
We had showers, but many didn’t use them. I don’t think average kids stunk that much after gym anyway.
In my senior year we all went to the local golf course to try it out. I think I hit a 180. Golf is not my sport!
Girls had 3 on 3 on 3 on 3 basketball years ago in many states: half the team was consigned to the offensive or defensive end (couldn’t cross midcourt) and had to wait for possession to change, thus giving these delicate ladies a rest for half the game. My mom played that c. 1950, New Hampshire. Last I checked just a few districts still had that format.
New York, late 1960s. My high school was huge, 1500 in my graduating class. Gym class had over 100 boys on our side. Uniform was shorts and T-shirt. No shower, I guess there wasn’t room and we’d never have made it to the next class in time if we had to shower.
Gym teachers did triage. They made us do the hardest part of the President’s fitness test first, when we flunked that we didn’t have to do the other parts. Most of us nerdy types (plenty of us) ran the track, which I enjoyed. Senior year we edited the school science magazine doing this.
Waste of time, but not a horrific experience.