I disagree. My brothers and I were members of the Boys and Girls club, and we always had influences other than school. Our parents were/are very fit and taught us that we needed to be as well.
Nothing about PE made me healthy or well-rounded. It made me frustrated and insecure, and completely colored athletics in a negative way. Fortunately I was able to overcome that frustration in other ways. Despite PE, I am a fit adult today.
Public school shouldn’t be about making well-rounded individuals, it should be about academics only (if it has to exist at all, that is). If they focused only on teaching and cut out all the extraneous crap the school day could be half the length it is now and the students would come out of it knowing more. If students want to play sports or learn musical instruments that should be done on their own time.
I think you hit it right on the head. If you have an incompentent English teacher, or you’re lousy at calculus, it’s not that hard to be a wall flower. It’s a bit easier to hide your ineptitude (unless your teacher reads everyone’s exam scores to the class, but that’s a separate rant). But an insensitive, incompetent PE teacher can make your life hell on earth unlike any other subject in school.
As for PE not being “real world”: Come on, you’ll have to do better than that. I don’t often have to recite the first sixteen lines of The Canterbury Tales at work, but I had to learn it in high school, and I don’t regret it.
I was in “organized” sports, so never had an actual PE class. I remember sitting in on a few during my lunch hour, though, and it was a lesson to me what I thought a PE class should be. The teacher was encouraging rather than belittling, and there were many types of activities, some competitive, some not. I thought the trampoline was particularly cool, watching them turn somersaults. I was actually a little jealous at all the stuff they got to do.
Granted, I don’t know what it was like in the dressing room. That’s something else that makes PE different from most other classes; I never had to get naked in front of my biology class. For all I know, it was like a junior prison yard, but my friends in gym never complained.
So that means you’re against programs that might possibly promote better exercise (non-team sports)? Huh say what?
I am NOT saying we should get rid of gym “class.” All I’m saying is that it should be ungraded and mostly unmoderated, except insofar as the teacher makes sure that all kids are doing some sort of physical activity.
I’ve wondered that as well. Especially for girls, martial arts or self-defense skills would be much more useful than learning how to dodge elbows in basketball.
Either that, or change it to a Health Awareness class, where the students are educated about the different types of exercise and how they relate to fitness, weight loss, etc… Then they would be required to pick one and graded on their improvement througout the term (they could spend the hour lifting weights, running, or whatever).
When I was in 6th grade, the PE teacher had us all run a mile in the fall. I [del]ran[/del] [del]jogged[/del] trotted the mile with a friend. We had a marvelous time talking and enjoying the workout. Took us eleven minutes and ten seconds. Fast forward to spring, I decide to go all out and blaze through this. THIRTEEN MINUTES! I couldn’t believe it! I still can’t figure out how that happened.
In my high school, you only needed one year of gym. The teacher was rather laid-back about the whole thing. Each day you got five points. You could lose one for not being in uniform, one for not participating, etc. Also he would intersperce sports(volleyball, basketball, football, etc.) with games(elimination, trench, pinguard, etc.) So despite my lack of athletic skills, I managed to have a very enjoyable PE experience.
Of course, my gym teacher was also my english teacher, so I could have nice long talks about grammar or language, which I dearly do love.Almost as much as commas.
I didn’t love or hate PE. I was reasonably athletic, but the same games I loved to play in an organized team or league were kind of dull in PE.
There is a difference between PE and other subjects. At least in my high school, everyone was in either Freshman or Sophmore PE (we didn’t have it for juniors or seniors). So, in PE, you’d have someone who’d never played baseball before (and didn’t know whether to throw to first or second or just throw up) in the same class as someone who’d been a little league star for years. With academic subjects, you were in various classes depending on your abilities and your level. You didn’t have someone who’d never seen an algebra equation in the same class as someone who’d mastered calculus.
In my college (I know it’s rare that you have to take PE in college, but my school required at least 2 classes for graduation), you could select any number of PE courses: aerobics, beginning fencing, beginning soccer, intermediate track, etc. That was much more fun because you were with people of a similar level.
I know you can’t offer as many options to high school kids (since there aren’t enough of them to offer such a wide range), but I think the idea of offering up options so at least you don’t end up the one person in class who doesn’t know why they got called for an over and back foul.
I had a great gym teacher during my one semester of required gym class in high school. Apparently he was really fat and out of shape until he started working out in his teens, and he hated gym class then… so he still had a lot of compassion for unathletic people, because he remembered how much it sucked. He also shouted at the kids who were being jerks – and he was the football coach, too, so it was LOUD. Plus he had a thick lower-class Boston accent and frequently referred to behaviors he didn’t like as “GAAAAHBAGE!” It was great.
We did some running, lifted some weights, learned various exercises… the emphasis was on learning useful exercises and how to do them without getting hurt, learning how to stretch properly, and becoming marginally more in-shape than at the beginning of the semester. We also had tests on rules/the proper ways to do exercises and some basic health concepts that I forget about now.
The rest of them sucked, though.
Agh. Here we go again.
Just because I don’t endorse your plan doesn’t mean I’m against the idea.
I am in favor of mandatory exercise for kids.
I am also in favor of it being structured to include a variety of activities, including team sports.
Allowing “unstructured play” is not going to motivate the unmotivated or provide positive reinforcement for a kid who might need that push.
And I gladly accept the flames that are sure to come when I say that there is some benefit to negative reinforcement.
My college had the same requirements, along with a number of activities to choose from, which was great. Clearly my hgh school was in the minority because we had a set up that was similar to college, although there was no segregation by skill level. Students had to take one gym class per year.
There were four units per class, and you could choose a different activity for each unit. Along with all the normal sports, we could choose from bowling, snow shoeing, a ropes course, golf, aerobics, weight training, swimming and tennis.
Now obviously, you couldn’t choose snowshoeing in the spring, so all of the classes weren’t available all the time, but I think it was a pretty good system. Lots of variety, no uniforms, and no forced showers.
Now, my school system was lucky enough to have enough land to set up ropes courses, and snowshoeing trails, and to have a pool, tennis court and weight room, but they bussed students to the bowling alley and the golf course. It seems to me that a lot of schools that don’t have as many on campus activity areas could do the same thing and take the kids to the local YMCA or something. People might dread gym a little less that way, and maybe even pick up a lifetime hobby or two.
That’s the exact point. If everyone is encouraged, and taught, physical activity that may likely be carried over into real adult life, PE would we less ridiculous.
What if it’s structured, but you receive absolutely no positive reinforcement whatsoever? Not even a “hey, good job!” on the rare occasion you do something right? Seriously, I never got a single positive word from either my classmates or the teacher for my entire four years in high school. All I got was negative. You really think that would motivate me to do a god damn thing? I would have been far more motivated if I could have gone off to do my own thing. I enjoy sports when I’m not being forced to put up with snide comments about my athletic ability.
The deal with PE teachers is that administrators don’t really take the class very seriously so they don’t bother hiring a good teacher. Over the years I moved around a lot and I saw PE teachers who ran from sadist all the way through incompetent and one or two decent ones.
That’s kind of silly though. You should be tested on the things you learned in PE as well as the effort you put into it. As for performance, we grade other classes based on performance so why not PE? There should at least be some minimum standards.
If you can’t get 1 mile in 10 minutes you’re not just a little slow you must be disabled or geriatric. You can improve in gym class if they’d actually made the effort to help you improve and you made an effort to improve. How do you increase the speed of your mile? The same way you improve math scores, you practice.
Yes, we don’t just send kids to school for academic reasons. Otherwise you’ll have to explain band, orchestra, and drama. Sports are a part of our culture, you can learn about strategy and team work, and it’s important to teach people the proper ways to exercise.
Marc
Your experience is not the only possible outcome of such a situation.
Did you see how I even italicized “some” as a way of calling attention to the fact that I was making a nonexclusive statement?
Those with a certain brand of fortitude overcome negativity, and some wallow in it.
“Encouraging” a perfectionist is just as wrong as berating a milquetoast.
And, to be honest, I would rather have a unilaterally demanding atmosphere rather than an indiscriminate application of the “good job!!!” policy.
Indiscriminate application? Who mentioned that? All I’m saying is that if, once in a while, when I actually hit the ball, if someone had said, “good job!” maybe I would have thought, “gee, sports aren’t so bad,” and I don’t think that’s unreasonable. I’m certainly not saying that negative reinforcement is bad in general, but when it starts getting into abusive territory, then it’s wrong.
If a “milquetoast” :rolleyes: is interested enough and driven enough in learning a sport and playing it well, they’re going to, despite the negativity. Someone like me, however, who wasn’t all that interested and would rather be off doing the things I find worthwhile, isn’t going to respond well to abuse. They’re just going to do what they can to get by, and possibly be put off by sports altogether.
When I was in grade school, a kid with muscular dystrophy was knocked down on purpose because his athletic ability sucked-and he ended up in the hospital. To be fair, though, the kid who knocked him down was suspended and basically hated by the rest of us for doing it.
Grade school sucked because I was really shitty at sports and such, so sometimes all the boys in my class would just slam me all at once during dogeball. I’d purposely get out so I could sit on the sidelines with my friends and chat. Forget about being last picked-when I was the only one left, both sides would ARGUE over who had to take me. “You get her!” “No, you do!” I started purposely not dressing for gym and wrote essays instead.
High school PE was a mixed bag for me. Sometimes it was fun, sometimes it wasn’t. It helped that when I got to high school, I was in so-called “Jerry Gym” (gym for kids who aren’t good at gym), and so since we all sucked, we had fun with it. And we didn’t have to shower-we only did after swimming to warm up and wash our hair, and we stayed in our bathing suits.
Mostly the teachers made it worse:
-The jock who replied, “Are you retarded?” when someone asked a question. Who ridiculed us for not being able to tell the difference between various types of golf clubs. Who wanted me to stay after school because I sucked at handball-even though I told her I worked and couldn’t. My mother ended up calling her and said that as long as I tried and made an effort, my athletic ability shouldn’t matter.
-The pervert who used to wear white swimming trunks. Who would come into the girl’s locker room, and who once came in the showers to yell at us for taking too long. (To be fair, we were still in our bathing suits-but he shouldn’t have been in there). He’d keep us far too long in the pool, even after the warning bells rang, and as a result we’d be late for our next class. Then he’d refuse to write a late pass. Fortunately, most of our other teachers realized this and were understanding.
The swimming pool was absolutely disgusting-they didn’t use chlorine, I think they used bromine or something like that. It was oily, sludgy, and it reeked.
I have to call this stinking, fetid argument what it is. If it were important for kids to learn teamwork then everybody would be graded on it. If it were important to learn the proper ways to exercise we would be taught them.
Nobody ever explained the rules of baseball to me in gym class. Or the positions. Or what to do if by some miracle I got on base (which I could do often, despite the taunts of “hit the ball with your big brain!”). I was not taught these things by any of my gym teachers.
I was never graded on my ability to work in a team, nor taught what to do that would encourage good teamwork. No jock to my knowledge in any PE class for ten years was ever encouraged to “let somebody else have a go at that,” or “let the whole team play.” No, the jocks were encouraged to do what they did best — win.
We weren’t taught anything about why certain exercises were good, or what a calorie was, or what muscle groups were. The gym instructor mumbled Latin names at us in the assumption that we all knew them by heart from the Health class we’d be required to take the following year and told us not to get our fingers crushed in the weight sets.
The classes were more often used to cull out likely athletes for whatever that coach … er, gym teacher was presently trying out for. School spirit came first — our teams must win, go Blazers! — and actual education could and did go hang.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t terribly bad at PE. I also continue to support the idea that kids should be taught constructive ways to burn off their energy, how to eat well and properly, and how to enjoy and appreciate physical activity. I don’t think any of the present weak and lame justifications come close to what’s actually happening in those classes today.
Good heavens! There is quite a spectrum here.
I live in IL-if memory serves, it is the only state that requires PE K-12.
We need more PE–child obesity is epidemic.
But I think we need to change the approach.
At my daughter’s HS (where I also went), they are taught to figure out their BMI, they are taught appropriate and correct methods for weight lifiting etc. They are graded (computer scored tests) on game rules and things like that. The only way you fail is if you don’t suit up, don’t participate and/or fail the tests.
In HS, I took (and enjoyed) archery, fencing, swimming, floor hockey, badminton, wallyball, volley-tennis, canoeing, soccer, ice skating, and I don’t know what all else.
Of course, I went to a well supported school in an economically advantaged community. Depsite the impressive list above, my HS PE was peanuts compared to my daughter’s. We never did weights, or learned about muscles and metabolism etc. I think the Health Awareness mentioned upthread is a great idea.
I really don’t remember any hazing–at any grade level. Dodge ball was dodge ball and a hell of alot of fun. I’m sure that bullying does go on, but I wouldn’t abolish PE on that basis.
I could never figure out PE teachers, though. They were always bitchy (if women) and frankly, stupid, if male…
A few PE teachers I had were okay but most of them were crazy or unreasonable.
I once asked if we could exercise indoors instead of outdoors since it was blazing hot that day. I was told “It’s NEVER too hot to play!”
Another time, we were compelled to run around the field when there was a smog alert. I wound up out sick for a week with bronchitis.
Otherwise, there were some fun dance routines that we learned as part of the exercise regimen.In HS, I got to take Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps class instead of gym.
DAMN!
That was great!
No pointless time wasting, but a really worthwhile class.
I learned:
[list=A]
[li]Red Cross First Aid/CPR[/li][li]Map reading & use of a magnetic compass.[/li][li]How to use a rifle.[/li][li]Military history[/li][li]How to teach a class.[/li][li]And a whole lot more.[/li][/list]
I also met my instructors, Sergeant-Major Allen & Colonel Niedermeyer, both retired US Army Artillerymen. Fine men, who were a positive influence on me.
Gym was an uttter bore–and compared to JROTC, a complete waste of time.