I don’t think the concept of PE is fundamentally flawed. Where I went to school the general purpose seemed to be to expose kids to different sports and activities and hopefully instill some desire to pursue healthy habits. That said, my teacher was openly intimidated by the (freshmen) students, would often lock herself into her office to cry, and the whole experience really informed my reading of the Lord of the Flies.
Well, I will say that the guy cleaned up his act a few years later, and stopped being such an asshat (that was his first year there). And if the kid hadn’t been disabled, he probably would have only ended up at the nurse-NOT at the hospital. But yeah, you’re right, nowadays that would be grounds for a lawsuit almost.
I disagree. There are many, many examples of geeks who are physically weak and not into sports who major in difficult subjects in college or work long hours at demanding jobs.
Another example would be all the geeks who hated PE and go on to get advanced degrees in the sciences. Most of the science majors I knew were not athletic types. And if you think getting a degree in physics or astronomy is not difficult for them, in almost all cases you’re wrong. It doesn’t come easily, at least not to the physics majors I have known.
I think “not self motivated” is code for “not motivated to do the things I think you should be motivated to do.” Geeks, like everyone else, are very motivated when pursuing their own interests, or at least all of the ones I’ve met are.
I, of course, was asthmatic, built like a brick, and exxaggerated my times. I could certainly do it in 12, maybe 11 minutes.
You yourself said that it was precisely that ("…pushing the brains out of the way…" – an attack on specific individuals, not the normal contact inherent in sports). :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Speaking of asthmatics, there is a news story in my state about a lawsuit where an asthmatic 14 year old Jr. High girl died after PE. She aparrently had asked to stop running during the class. It doesn’t say whether or not the coach made her continue.
http://www.kobtv.com/index.cfm?viewer=storyviewer&id=21101&cat=SE_NEWMEXICO
I hated PE with a passion, for many of the reasons that people have put here - I was thin, weak and uncoordinated, and I hated team sports (which was partly because I was always picked last.)
What I hated the most was in JHS, the way it was expected that everyone be enthusiastic about PE, even though a very small percentage of kids were encouraged or even looked at by the teacher. I did used to try, though…
My strongest memories, and the day I cracked, was when I had practiced hard for an inter-island swim. We had to swim from one island to another, a distance of two or three miles over deep water. There would be boats with us, and though I was sure I would not make it, I was really looking forward to seeing how far I’d get.
The swim was only loosely scheduled due to tides and weather considerations, and one day on the week of the swim, I went to a science class to find half of the class missing. I asked where they all were, and was told by the kids and the science teacher that they were all gone to the swim, but they had all been warned not to tell me it was taking place. They had left me behind.
That was the last day I ever made any effort again. What really incensed me after that was that once a year there was a sponsored cross country run that was compulsory, to raise money for school sports equipment. The run fell a few weeks later and we were all handed sponsor sheets. I told the teacher I would raise money for his department over my dead body, and handed the sheet back, to be informed that less than three sponsors would result in detentions (where you stepped on and off a chair for an hour) every day for a term.
I went home and asked my parents and my brother to sponsor me for 0.5p per three miles, which was the length of the race. On the day I ran three steps, stopped, and said “Oh, I twisted my ankle” and walked away.
I never spoke to him or looked at him again, and in every class just did the bare minimum. I failed every class resoundingly and deliberately, and was 35 before I had any inkling that sport, when not coerced, is fun.
In my opinion, the type of PE class that I grew up with (I’m 25) only discourages unatheletic children from exercising.
As an overweight kid, PE was an exercise only in enduring the cruelty and disdain of the “popular” kids. There was no instruction. If the current unit was basketball, this meant choosing two “jock” kids as team captains, letting them pick teams, and giving them a ball. I had only a passing understanding of the rules of basketball, and I never did learn any of them.
The teachers pretty much stood in a circle and talked throughout the whole period. (This is between several schools in different states.) In one case, I was verbally abused by another girl during volleyball because I wasn’t very good. She told me to get on the sidelines (along with a lot of crude names), which I couldn’t, because I needed to participate to pass gym. I ended up rolling my eyes at her and she attacked me. It wasn’t until about 30 seconds into the fight that the teachers pulled us apart. In this school, any fight meant you were suspended, even if you were attacked. I got very upset and asked them why they didn’t do anything when this girl screamed at me for ten minutes. They made the girl apologize. Nobody was punished because they didn’t report the incident.
It was only recently that I was able to muster up the nerve to join a gym because I was convinced people would make fun of me and bully me. It wasn’t until my mom convinced me that she saw people in worse physical shape than I am going and nobody ever bothered them. I still find it hard to go because of anxiety.
Forgive me if I scoff when I hear that PE is going to cure diabetes and obesity in youth.
Perhaps PE could be useful if we completely overhauled the system. It would have to be mandatory for schools to allow different choices for kids, and enforce a curriculum of actual instruction. It would be great to teach kids how to play team sports (closely supervised and divided by skill level) and grades are based on helpful teamwork and mutual respect as well as participation. I would have liked to have the opportunity to use weights and treadmills more, and learn how to apply fitness to life. As it stands, though, gym class is basically useless in most districts, and actually counterproductive in that it is a very negative experience for most people who do not naturally succeed in athletics.
I do not remember PE for grade school. Maybe there wasn’t any. I do remember Jr High, and having this military-strict bitch of a woman without a single neuron devoted to compassion or even recognition that not everybody is athletic. I - 4’10" - was shoved out of the way during volleyball, knocked down, and hurt my ankle. Not badly, but enough to get me out of volleyball. I sucked at basketball, not only because of my height, but also because I don’t care for sports and didn’t give a damn about the game anyway. Basically, I sucked at everything, and hoped when I got to high school that it would get better. It didn’t.
The HS PE teacher was a different military-strict bitch of a woman who set us to tasks that I, at least, was virtually guaranteed to suck at. Like say…races over the hurdles. Nobody taught us how to jump them, we were just expected to get over them, and the bloody things came to my waist. I will say I got over them. I will say I don’t think I fell down more than once. The only comment my teacher made was that she’d never seen anybody jump like that. I couldn’t keep up with anybody during track season. I got laughed at horribly when we were required to make up an aerobic dance routine and mine was stupid. (It really was. But I didn’t get the concept of a choreographed “dance” for exercise, and I still suck at memorizing routines like that.) I couldn’t do gymnastics to save my life, and have never in my entire life been able to touch my toes, or turn a cartwheel. Of course I got graded down for that. People didn’t otherwise ridicule me openly, but there was a constant sense of disapproval and disappointment. And, it was destroying my GPA, which was 4.0 otherwise. My brother (5’2") suffered so badly in his year that eventually my parents went to the principle and demanded he be excused from PE, which was granted. I didn’t get so lucky.
Of course we still had communal showers in those days. I don’t remember this being a problem for me.
So…yeah, I guess you can say that PE didn’t teach me to enjoy exercise, and it didn’t teach me to enjoy sports. It didn’t do anything for the fat girls (or boys) but it did plenty to further damage their self-esteem. I didn’t find an exercise I enjoyed until this last year, when I discovered that I really enjoy the workouts at Curves, which are of course noncompetitive and ungraded.
For those who had to take manditory showers, how the hell did you ever find time for them? Especially in my first two years of gym, our teacher barely allowed us two minutes before the bell rang to change back into our clothes, and when we were swimming I can’t count how many times I was late for my next class because he wouldn’t let us out of the pool in time.