I also remember how during so called “flag football”* the biggest, heaviest kid was always matched against me, and they ignored the rules and always tried to tackle me instead. With of course the teachers not intervening in the slightest, we smaller kids were explicitly supposed to be “taught our place”. Rather than playing I spent my time trying to evade and run away.
Where to avoid injury, instead of tackling the kids wear “flags” at their waist that the opposition team tries to rip off.
In my school district I was in junior high school for the seventh to the ninth grades, and in senior high school for the tenth to the twelfth grades.
When I was in gym class in the seventh grade the bullies could tell that I was not good at touch football, basketball, and softball. They thought I was not good at fighting. Unfortunately, they were right. I thought I could learn how to play touch football, basketball, and softball, or I could learn how to fight.
Learning how to fight seemed like a more direct way of dealing with the problem, so I began to work out with weights. Then I began to take karate lessons.
Eventually the bullies left me alone. I became better at touch football, basketball and softball too.
Ontario, Canada basically through the 1970s. Objectively, it was always well-managed and organized. We did not have to wear any specific uniforms, just whatever shorts and t-shirts we chose.
It was generally an exposure to, and practice of, different sports and activities for a few weeks per activity and I believe that it was daily. Generally classes were separated by gender/sex (LGBTQ etc was basically a non-existent concept back then). A few times each year the week or two was “health”, which included sex education. A few other times they were dancing, at which times the two genders were brought together.
As I’ve never been a confident sports guy, much of the time, gym class felt like a 20th century version of the Roman games to me.
My high school was a large urban 4-year school in Portland, Oregon, nearly 3000 students when I was there (my sister’s class, 2 years ahead of mine, was the largest they ever had, she was born in 1947). I went there from '63 to '67. PE was required daily for freshman year and half of sophomore year. The other half of sophomore year was health classes. We had to supply our own outfits, t-shirts and shorts for warm weather, sweats for colder weather, and of course the terminally embarrassing jock strap (first time I heard the term, it was supposed to give mothers the vapors if you mentioned it to them). We were supposed to take our gym clothes home once a week to be laundered; some, of course, did not do so, and there was a lot of rankness in the locker room. I remember the very strong and pervasive smell of Right Guard spray deodorant.
In the fall we had track and a little bit of field, but mostly running. In the winter we had indoor activities like wrestling and basketball. In the spring, softball (I think) and more running. Not much effort to teach actual athletic skills, pretty much just time filling and calorie burning. I have no idea what the girls did for their gym classes, nor what they wore.
We were required to shower at the end of each class. Strip off into your locker, lock your locker, walk 10 to 30 feet to the communal shower (depending on where your locker was), shower briefly, walk to the towel cubicle where someone would hand you a very scratchy towel, back to your locker to dry off and get dressed. Drop the used towel in the bin on the way out.
Suburban Cape Town, South Africa in the 90s for High School. PE was a regular period, multiple times a week (maybe every day? I can’t remember). All the typical exercise routines, climbing walls, games, etc. I think there was sometimes gymnastics style stuff. My memory is a little hazy. I do remember hating it. I also remember being collateral damage when others carrying a heavy gym mat with me goofed off and smashed a bunch of fluorescent lights. We all got lined up and collectively caned. Argh.
After hours sports participation was also mandatory, you had to pick a winter and summer sport and compete against neighboring schools on the weekend. I ended up with field hockey (it was either that or rugby) and cricket. Seriously not a fan of this. Since everyone had to do it you ended up with quite a lot of teams for each year, ranked by merit from the “A” team (i.e. people who’d do it even if they didn’t have to, I suppose like people who join the football team in the US) to the “F” and “G” teams, depending on the size of year. Needless to say I was in the latter, which consisted of a lot of players actively trying not to get close to the ball.
Apart from that, I actually had a pretty good High School experience. A fair number of above average inspirational teachers, and I don’t think I’d have pursued Computer Science so vigorously without exposure to a dedicated teacher and decent lab in High School.
I’ve softened my attitude towards sports as an adult. I had fun dragon boating and rowing as an adult, and I do like that my kids are into lacrosse and soccer. It’s a healthy, team building exercise for them. But I don’t think I’d force it on them if they were seriously reluctant.
I have no recollection of how we handled towels, but I’m certain no one handed us one. I don’t recall bringing one from home, but I also don’t recall any being provided. It had to be one or the other I suppose.
I was trying to remember how I dried off as well and I’m coming up blank. Did I bring a towel from home? Did someone give me a towel? I have no idea. Do you think we’ve stumbled onto some great towel conspiracy?
i know the school provided them, but I have no idea when/how they were handed out. I think we dropped them onto a big canvas laundry bag on the way out of the locker room.
At my HS there was a locked cage with stacks and stacks of non-absorbent, too-small towels. Either a TA or someone grabbed by the PE teacher would be in the cage handing out towels after you showered. And you had to shower - the teachers would check to see if your hair was wet. This being the early 70s, most guys were wearing their hair long-ish and so the already useless towels became even more useless when you had to dry your hair, too.
Standard bullying practice was to either throw you into the shower fully clothed or out the door starkers.
It’s possible that sometimes there was just a pile of folded towels and no-one to hand them out, but we were only allowed the one. I do remember one day when I had a note from my mother excusing me from participation in gym class (I don’t remember why) that I was recruited to hand out towels that day.
England, 1978-85. All boys (state run) school
We had a session of “gym” and a session of “games”.
Gym was in the gym (of course) and was something different each week, sometimes climbing the wall bars, sometimes doing traditional excercises, sometimes playing basketball or volleyball.
For the first three years games was Rugby from September to Easter and was usuallu cricket after easter, though occasionally we would do athletic events (track and field). If the rugby pitch was frozen or waterlogged we did a cross country run “The elastic mile” the first time this happened the teacher told us it was about a mile but it was actually about 5 with the last mile being on a sandy beach. In the 4th year you had the option of replacing rugby with (field) hockey.
Pretty much my experience at my Toronto high school in the 1970s. A few weeks of touch football, a few weeks of basketball, a few weeks of volleyball, and so on. Pretty much a lot of common sports, plus track and field in the spring. At least once a week, we’d be in the school’s pool, and for a few weeks each year, there would be health class.
In Grade 12, we were able to sign up for various things. Typical sports like those mentioned above, of course, but also things like badminton, archery, and weightlifting. Each lasted maybe three weeks, and then you went onto your next choice. One of the choices we had, that not many schools did, was ice skating at the city-owned outdoor rink right next door to the school.
Mine was in Ottawa. My HS was a late '60s, very modern building, but no pool.
I don’t think that gym class was mandatory but no male would not take it (one guy in my class didn’t and - just because - he was a subject of some ridicule.) I also don’t recall if showering was mandatory or voluntary but, to not shower, was never considered and TBH, it just seemed as normal as breathing.
Philadelphia, 1950-1954, boys only. Just wore sneakers, shorts, and a T-shirt. There were showers, but I never used them. Twice a week required and it was all calisthenics, then gym equipment like horses, parallel bars, climbing ropes, none of which I could do anything with. Also forward and backward rolls which I also couldn’t do. God I hated it. Always got a D, just for showing up. One teacher was a sadist and if I ever came on him hanging by his fingers on the edge of a cliff I would look around for a rock.
That was the required part. If you had room on your roster, you sign up for two more hours of Gym-X which consisted of games. Basketball, touch football, softball in season. I wasn’t very good (although I could hit well in softball) but I enjoyed that the one year I did it.
Where I went to HS in the NYC exurbs we had PE every day. ( as did the middle school…in the same district )
The coaches were active in their instructions and advice ( we even had written tests ), but the whole thing seemed geared toward the enthusiastically athletic, as though it were additional practice for those who on the football/basketball/wrestling/soccer/track teams. There was also volleyball and what was known in our neck of the woods as “bombardment” ( dodgeball? ). Most unenjoyable to those who were timid or weren’t athletic. The coaches did not tolerate bullying when they witnessed it and came down HARD on those that perpetrated it. Was great to see smug thugs become instantly fearful and contrite.
The last two years they introduced other activities that were more enjoyable to other than the usual team sports and I came to actually look forward to PE class.
Girls and Boys had separate classes, except during volleyball.
OMG - I had a similar thing happen to me. But being the goody-goody that I was, I didn’t fight it. Which in the end was a good thing - I was in choir and that year we were invited to participate in a competition in Rome. I guess that was worth hanging around for!
I actually have nightmares about this scenario to this day, over 40 years later. I did, in fact, have my PE credits, but my subconscious is nonetheless worried about it.
I went to three different co-ed grade schools (K-8) in the 1970s. With the exception of the school I attended for 4th grade, we didn’t have an actual gymnasium, so PE/gym class was held out on the playground / athletic field (in good weather) or indoors, in a classroom or the cafeteria (in cold or bad weather).
PE was probably once or twice a week, and was always boys and girls together.
If we were outdoors, it’d be some sort of sports or running; if we were indoors, it might be calisthenics, small-space sports, or even square dancing. The one year that I was at a school with a gym, we played sports like volleyball and basketball when we were inside.
No gym uniforms (other than maybe changing into sneakers), no locker rooms or showers.
I then attended a four-year, all-male Catholic high school (1979-83). It was a fairly small school (student body ~300 across all four grades), and while we did have a gym, it was not very big: barely big enough to have a full-size basketball court. My memory is that, again, we had gym class about twice a week during freshman through junior years, but gym wasn’t offered to seniors, for whatever reason.
In good weather, in the fall and spring, we went outside: there was a good-sized lawn to one side of the school, which served as a casual athletic field. We primarily played sports: flag football or ultimate frisbee in the fall, softball in the spring; once or twice a year, we’d do some sort of fitness stuff, like running for 10 minutes.
In cold or bad weather, we were in the gym. Again, nearly always sports, mostly basketball or dodge ball.
We had a small locker room and showers. We were expected to wear gym clothes, including a reversible shirt (green on one side, white on the other) for dividing up teams. The gym teacher encouraged guys to shower after gym class, but most guys didn’t.
Dallas Texas. White tshirts and shorts. Gym teacher was a stocky, short haired lesbian (we all assumed) who was quick swing a paddle. Yes, I was on the receiving end a time or two. Ouch!
