I just cannot believe that there is a parallel being drawn between the slow kids in dodge ball and rape victims.
This thread is headed in no good direction.
Not the parallel I was drawing - just pointing out the jack-assery of a “blame the victim” mentality.
I made no such statement. I said that you get more out of a class then just what they grade on. Algebra helps to teach students how to think logically but you’re not actually graded on using logic. PE can help teach students teamwork without teamwork being part of the grading. I said nothing about testing.
Marc
I am an English teacher, and when kids don’t know the basics when they come into my class, yeah, I’m frustrated… but not with the kid. With the teachers who came before me who didn’t do their jobs. Then it becomes my job to remediate, even though there are other kids who already know this stuff. It’s called individualized instruction, and it’s my obligation to find a way to do it, even though I have 25 students in a class. Why aren’t PE teachers held to this standard? Where does any teacher get off being angry at a kid who hasn’t learned something yet?
This is just not fair. Would you expect a kid who didn’t get algebra to read up on it on his own? Who doesn’t understand Shakespearean English to read it by himself to catch up? No, and you know why? Because that stuff is difficult, which is why they have teachers. If people could just read books and teach themselves everything, there would be no need for school. Ditto the rules of sports. I still don’t understand football. It makes my head hurt, and I’m not a stupid person. But if someone sat down and taught me, I’d know it, I guarantee, just like I know the rules of baseball because my dad taught me.
The onus in school to impart new material is on the teacher, not the student. Please place the blame where it belongs, not on the child.
See, I don’t think you’ve ever been the smallest, shortest, fattest, dorkiest, skinniest, or most uncoordianted person, ever. Some of us have been, and it’s hard, just as it’s hard for people who have a reading delay to catch up to their peers. Such people deserve compassion and remediation, not scorn and ridicule.
I was always, always the shortest girl in my class, and until college, the lightest. By a lot-- I was very small, slight, and consequently, weak. Nothing that involved strength was ever going to be easy for me, and a shocking amount of gym class requires strength. I sucked at that, and no amount of training would change that, because my strongest was still weak by comparison. I did well at what I was good at, like running, gymnastics, climbing, soccer, etc. But I do not think it makes me mentally weak that I hated and sucked at dodgeball, volleyball, basketball (which I now love, probably because I can now hit the basket from the foul line), and other strength-based sports. I think it takes some brains to know your limitations, no?
And it’s the teacher’s responsibility to accommodate different learning styles, so that everyone can participate and enjoy. If I did an activity in my class, and the “stupid” kids couldn’t do it, I’d be roundly chastised for it, and rightly so. Ditto gym teachers who create activities that exclude the “weak” kids. That’s poor instruction.
The teacher’s responsibility is to create a safe environment for learning. In that sense, she is supposed to “control the behavior of others.” When I hear mockery, teasing, or bullying, I put a stop to it with extreme prejudice. It is not allowed in my classroom. Sometimes the victim has played into the bullying, but sometimes, kids are just plain mean. Either way, it has to be stopped, and stop it I do, with a lesson about why it’s better to be compassionate.
I was never bullied or teased, but I have witnessed such things, and this is not a fair statement. Often, it’s not one rude kid. It’s an atmosphere of rudeness and hostility, and that’s enough to turn people off on the whole situation. If you were 10 years old and knew that 80% of the other kids involved in an activity thought you sucked, you might be intimidated enough to avoid the activity. I think that’s actually a fairly rational response, myself. Who would deliberately put himself in harm’s way just to play a stupid game?
brickbacon, I think you’ve experienced a different PE than many other people because of your natural ability. That does not invalidate others’ experience. Consider that, please.
I’m not saying anything about you personally because I don’t know you. I’m making a generalization based on my experiences.
No it would not, and I’ve never suggested it would.
It’s not slacking that I feel is the major crime, it’s blaming others for your shortcoming. It seems like most of you that come it to these threads complaining about PE and bullying were/are social outcasts and perpetual victims. My problem with this is that many of you seem to be under the impression that it’s society’s fault for not accepting you, rather than taking personal responsibility.
You are learning in PE. That’s what you are missing. When most people play sports, they learn a lot.
I’m tired of you acting like a victim, and being outraged by everything you don’t agree with. I’m tired of you misquoting me, and saying I’ve made comments I haven’t made.
[Dodgeball does not teach any positive life lessons](www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/ editorials/2004-05-04-edit-lipsyte_x.htm).
On the contrary, dodgeball is life, all else is commentary.
No problem here with mens sano in corpore sane - finding a physical activity you enjoy and can participate in for a lifetime is certainly a good thing. But you probably won’t get that from a PE teacher who is only putting in some required hours before getting to his *real * work of coaching the championship football team.
(bolding mine)
Um, the hell? Did you just say that a strong self-definition and a healthy dose of self-esteem is going to stop someone from being raped? I hope to God you never have female children.
I don’t think I’m a victim, nor did PE have a profound effect on my life. And it has nothing to do with letting a bad experience affect the way I feel about sports-I was never all that into sports to begin with. And you know what? There’s NOTHING wrong with that. I’m not big on science or math, either. So what?
Not liking PE and having a problem with the way it was taught (and I do believe I can recognize poor teaching when I encounter it!), is not whining about always being a victim.
Tell me, what exactly do people learn when they play sports, brickbacon if they, as you say, “learn a lot?”
Sounds like good advice, but when your rapists beat you into unconsciousness, it’s really hard to stand up. Or at least that was my experience. Maybe I’m just a wuss. :rolleyes:
Did you go to the police? Paper the neighborhood with flyers featuring his picture with “RAPIST” underneath (assuming it was someone you know)? Do you let the experience turn you into a bitter and angry person for rest of your life?
There is a difference between being a victim and being victimized.
It might make you think twice before drinking that entire bottle of SoCo and dancing around some frat house in your underwear until you pass out.
I didn’t say it would stop bad things from happening to you. But it sure helps. It also helps make for a quicker emotional recovery.
Guinastasia - I certainly didn’t learn anything from the big parachute thing in gym.
If nothing else, I think sports teaches you how to push yourself through uncomfortible situations to achieve a goal. That uncomfort can be getting smacked in the face by a dodgeball, tackled, running that extra mile or that awkwardness until you learn how to master a skill. For a lot of these “nerd” types, academics comes easy and they like it. They enjoy being told it makes them something special and superior. When all of a sudden they are faced with some physical activity they find unpleasent, they don’t know how to push themselves.
I played soccer, a little football, and ran cross country in high school. My athletic abilities were very average. Some of the gym teachers were excellent, some excremental. I stopped taking gym as soon as I had the choice, but continued to be active and play sports.
I do not think gym should be graded on any one factor. Differences in athletic ability are as real as ones in mental ability, and most schools still grade math class. The idea that one may not need to know enough math to become a physicist, but needs to know how to balance a checkbook makes sense for some people.
Is it not equally important to know how to eat properly, know the basics of sex ed, know how to lose gracefully, know basic first aid, learn social skills to play tennis and golf, learn lifelong habits for staying fit and healthy, and learn lifesaving skills like swimming? Unfortunately, I leanred almost nothing about these things in phys ed. I should have. Just as teaching the basics of credit and finance are sadly missing from math classes.
Gym should be judged on participation, effort, improvement with a minor focus on athleticism. It should be pass/fail, mandatory and be designed with no degree of sadism. It should focus on the above mentioned things. How can people say it has no role given our obese society?
Okay, first, I didn’t say that-you mixed up your quotes.
Second, you have DEFINITELY crossed the line. I hope you never have someone tell you they’ve been raped.
Are you people seriously saying that kids who get picked on in gym class don’t need to stand up for themselves, because to suggest such a thing is akin to blaming a rape victim for being raped?
That’s basically what gym was like for me, too. I think it’s interesting that people have such passionate opinions about it when all it was for most of us (a New York high school in the late 90s) was a meaningless requirement you had to fulfill. Some people hated it, but mostly it was just something you had to do and nobody would have defended it by talking about the necessity of exercise. You didn’t get any exercise in gym unless you felt like it. It’s perfectly easy to coast through with no effort. I forget how gym was graded. I know it didn’t affect your numerical grades one way or another, it may have been pass-fail.
I went to school after the era of uniforms and group showers had ended, but the idea that gym was a class in the same way English and Math were classes was laughable. If a Math teacher told kids “we’re doing quadratic equations now,” then gave them pages of quadratics to do every day for a month without telling them how to do them or improve their work, I think we know how that would turn out.
I liked gym for the most part. I was a geeky, small kid, but I’ve always loved sports, so generally the experience was tolerable. In gym, unlike elsewhere, I got a little bit of respect from the more mean-spirited jocks. Nice lesson there. “Stay quiet and do your work really well and we’ll hate you, hit a baseball okay and you’re alright.”
Whether the teacher was healthy and involved in the course, or fat and totally uninvolved, nobody actually learned anything. I had a lot of fun sometimes, other times I didn’t, and that was about it. Didn’t improve anybody’s health, didn’t get anyone hooked on exercise, it just existed because it was required by New York State.
One characteristic that MAY be worth noting is that, since many of the teachers were ex-jocks themselves, they were hands-off to the point of apathy. What they did was not exactly supervision, and as a result style got me a concussion (or close to it) during a poorly-imagined game my senior year. We were playing a basketball hybrid with tackling over thin mats in a basement room with a concrete floor, and a jock kid decided to show off by picking me up from behind, when I couldn’t see him coming, and slamming me into the ground headfirst. My inner ear is never going to be the same, and aside from one or two memories of athletic feats, that’s the only long-term effect high school gym has had on my life.
There are elements of elitism at work on both sides of this argument, but the way gym was structured where I went to school, it was of no possible benefit to anyone. It existed because of old state requirements which, if I can take a flying guess, will always exist because of tenture and teachers’ unions.
brickbacon, so far there’s been one example noted in this thread that seems to address your thesis. I’m understanding you to be saying that people who were victimized in PE (and other areas of school) were victims by design or by choice, because they could have gotten better had they not let little things get them down. If that’s a fair summation of your thesis - let’s look, again, at my experience, please.
[ul]
[li]K-6: I was in a public school, where the students were encouraged, by the example of the teachers, to mock, and emotionally abuse the students who had no knowledge of, nor aptitude for, sports. The teachers involved with PE were generally taking an additional series of duties on, in addition to teaching regular classes. [/li]
The practical effect of this regimen, for me - one of those somewhat obese, and inept students - was that I hated all sports, and would do anything in my ability to avoid them. Now, I’m not saying that PE was the only place this sort of abuse was going on, but it was more naked there than in other classes. And frankly, at least with the academic subjects I could defend myself by being adept, and quick thinking. That is, because I could expect success in these endevours, I could shield myself from the attacks that I would recieve from my teachers and peers. Since I lacked that aptitude for athletics, I took the taunts of the teachers and students as being accurate assessments of my worth and ability. Given how negative an experience this made any team sport, I don’t think it’s particularly surprising to realize that there was no incentive to improve, because even if I did become adept - the benefit would be to allow me to fit in with a society I had no desire to join.
[li] 7-9 I was in private school where athletics were an even bigger part of the cirriculum than they had been in the public school: Every student was required to go out for one of the competitive teams each season. Practices were done daily, for approximately two hours. The teachers involved with the sports were the same teachers for academic subjects, taking on additional duties. That last is the only similarity between my experiences.[/li]
At this school the attitude towards poor athletes was that what mattered was effort. So, if a student put forth a consistent effort to improve that effort was aided by the teachers, and the other students. Suddenly team sports actually became enjoyable, and I learned how satisfying it could be to be part of a team, doing one’s best by the team, and being a part of the team’s victories. Oddly enough, the sports teams at this school were consistently winning teams, so there were a lot of victories, in spite of the unusual attitude towards effort and achievement.
During this time I became so involved with sports I even ended up as co-captain of the junior football squad, not because of any great ability on my part, but because I could do three things: One, I could help other students learn how to improve their skills and abilities, having gone through it myself; Two, I understood motivation, and knew how to motivate my teammates; Three, I had the respect of my teammates, not for my accomplishments (which weren’t all that many, really.) but because of my attitude to do the best I could. I had chosen to be on the junior squad, when offered a slot on the senior squad, because that way I would actually get playing time.
[li]9-12 I was at a different private school, where the PE mode was a bit more normal: a PE class during the day, and elective sports for those who wanted to play. The PE teacher was specifically such, and was also the coach for the school’s few winning teams (Soccer and baseball, IIRC). [/li]
Here I didn’t enjoy PE, but it wasn’t the Hell I remembered. I’m not naturally athletic and never will be. I really don’t have any memories of the class. It was just there. Not very good, but not bad, either. I did go out for a sport at this school, and helped found the wrestling team, as well as being one of it’s first co-captains. Again - effort mattered, and as long as one worked at things actual accomplishments weren’t the most important thing.
[/ul]
Now, brickbacon, the question I have for you is this: If the same person exhibits such wildly different responses to sports, in some wildly varied environments, don’t those environmental factors have a large effect on the outcome?
Given my experience, I’m being completely rational when I blame the shit I had to deal with in my elementary school years for my attitude towards sports and exercise at that time. I’ve never let anyone else’s reactions stop me from doing something I enjoyed. However, it is quite possible for external factors to sap any enjoyment out of any activity. Can you explain to me just why a 10 year old boy should want to join in with a crowd that has gone to such lengths to make him feel like shit?
And, before you assume that my experience was completely unprecedented - my sister suffered through a lesser version of the same thing. She wasn’t (and isn’t) unathletic, but she wasn’t interested in team sports - instead she was a state-ranked gymnast, through a private club since the public school didn’t offer that. She suffered the same osctrazation as I did, because she wasn’t involved with the sports offered through the school.
Oh, yeah, and the same teachers who gave me crap all the time gave her crap all the time, too: Asking her why she wasn’t as smart as I was. For some reason this constant harping about this left her rather embittered towards me. :mad: 
I think, brickbacon, you’re underestimating the effects that a co-ordinated campaign, such as this, can have.
I don’t believe anyone is saying that. Of course kids need to stand up for themselves. (How successful it is depends on the situation, however, and by no means does that let the bullies off the hook for their behavior!)
I think what msmith537 is implying though is that rape victims bring it on themselves, by their actions, or because they’re weak, which is a major insult to someone who has been raped.
Then you need to broaden your experiences, because I know lots of people like me. We’re all pretty intelligent and pretty self-disciplined, we just had better things to do than play sports. Not being athletic isn’t the greatest sin, you know.
Robin
My PE class was “taught” by the basketball coach.
The boys played basketball every single day. The girls, for the first twenty minutes, had to copy pages from printed sheets about various sports. The second half the girls ran around the gym for twenty minutes every single day(he never noticed if we sat down on the bleachers or snuck off to the restroom (there were no showers!).
The only days it changed was during fitness exams, which he’d run through as quickly as possible, then it was off to play basketball again.
I hated the exams more than anything I ever experienced in school because he’d make such nasty comments towards anyone that wasn’t up to par physically.
Twenty years later he’s still a coach at that school. I wonder if anyone has ever gotten through with a complaint yet.
Really? Do you think you could cite his quote where he introduced rape into the thread? Or did he only mention it because somebody else introduced that strawman? I remember he (or somebody) gave hypothetical examples of high risk behavior (possibly caused by low self esteem) contributing to the likelihood of being raped. Is this such a controversial view? (I tend to agree that high risk behaviors entail more, you know, risk.)
On a separate note, a lot of people took offense to whomever it was that claimed that physical weakness correlated to mental weakness. Many refuted this notion by citing smart people (themselves) who aren’t athletically inclined.
Mental toughness and smarts have nothing to do with each other, and are not related in any way whatsoever, either by correlation or causation. Intelligence is what all the geeks like to brag about. Mental toughness is more akin to self esteem, determination, having a “thick skin”, and not giving up in the face of adversity. Why people think mental toughness equates to intelligence confuses me, but it does, IMO, refute the claim of being the latter.
Well, I have no issue to take with your anecdotes. You seem sincere, and I have no doubt you are.
But I know lots of people who didn’t think PE was one of the seven circles of hell; in fact I know plenty who kinda enjoyed it.
So do both of our anecdotes cancel each other out, or did they never count as data in the first place? If it’s an anecdote battle that will decide this debate, I’m afraid the PE supporters won’t have a chance here. Not being The Pit, I’ll refrain from stating why. (It’s not like we don’t all know the reaso, anyway.)