Why did (do) some students refuse to participate in gym class?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I graduated high school in 1979. From middle school-upwards there was always a sector of students (usually male, but some girls too) that would refuse to participate in gym class. They wouldn’t dress for it nor participate in any of the assigned activities. They usually sat in the bleachers while the rest of us ran around, played volleyball/basket ball/soft ball/with our balls, etc…

These weren’t handicapped kids, or girls on their periods. These were kids that, at that time of history, we called "fries’ “burn outs” “dirt balls”, and even, rarely, “greasers”.

Both my younger siblings and my own children (the youngest of which is now over 25) have made statements about such people. I remember a couple of guys that couldn’t graduate because they did not have the physical education credits.

WTF?

These were not kids I or any of my friends would have anything to do with, so at the time we never got a straight answer as to why participating for an hour 3 days a week in gym was such a huge sacrifice for them to make.

Is this kind of thing still going on? Are YOU one of those kids that refused to dress for gym? Do you know of someone like this?

31 years after graduation I ask:

WHY?

It was an easy A or B if you participated! Even if you sucked as an athlete it was a good grade if you just took part. WTF?

2

Those who can, do.

Those who can’t, teach.

Those who can’t teach, teach gym.

3

I have been wondering this myself. Recently, my boyfriend’s 14-year-old son, who is in 9th grade, was failing PE. My BF asked the son’s mother what was happening, and she said he “wasn’t dressing out for PE.” She explained further: “Now that he has a friend in sports he got over it. It’s hard as you know to transition from middle school to high school. I talked with his coach and he said that it’s not an isolated issue and that it’s common.”

I don’t really buy this explanation (I think the mom is just making excuses), because when I was in high school (graduated 1993), it was not an option not to participate in PE – you would just be failed. As much as I hated PE, I had to do it.

I don’t understand why my boyfriend’s son would be reticent to participate in PE. I mean, he’s not active in sports but he’s not fat and has always seemed to enjoy physical activities we’ve done in the past, so I don’t get it.

My boyfriend theorizes it’s a self-esteem issue. He remembered that he himself was a “late bloomer” and that it is embarrassing for a teen is isn’t fully matured “down there” to change in front of other boys. Anyone else heard of this?

And yes, my BF did ask his son what the problem was and he just got a typical teen answer of “I don’t know…”

4

Don’t know. We had to start undressing and showering in 5th grade, so the development issue was noticeable but not spoken of. There were 2 boys in 5th grade that already needed to shave. And that was in the very early 1970’s.

Overall I was a C+ athlete in most sports. Good in baseball, hockey, and football, but I sucked something insanely fierce in basketball and volleyball. The commies hadn’t gotten soccer embedded into the American thought process yet (at least not where I grew up) so we rarely played it at that time. I found “gym” to be an easy grade and a replacement for what we called “recess” in earlier grades. Even the sissy kids that whined about gym participated.

What was the deal with those that refused?

5

I would not have been allowed to do such a thing “just because” (if you had forgotten to bring your gym clothes, you did gymnastics in your regular clothes, which for grades 4-8 involved a woollen pleated skirt and loafers), but I had several medical problems which at one point even got me “medic’ed” out of gym - that same problem didn’t medic me out sooner because it wasn’t recognized sooner, the other problems were never recognized. The majority of these problems would not have been visible to a casual observer, although they should have been recognizable to anybody who actually thought about it: equilibrium problems and joint problems linked to an extremely rapid change from thin kid to woman-shaped; glasses with the wrong prescription (I was shortsighted and someone had used a longsighted lens by mistake); once that lens got fixed, glass frames that came apart any time I moved at more than a snail’s pace, and I got horribly dizzy without them…

The one that got me medic’ed out was ingrown warts on my foot, also not visible to a casual observer. I did a show’n’tell that grossed all my classmates out when one of them angrily asked why was I allowed to skip gym. I have a scar about 2 inches long and more than half an inch wide in spots, at the height where the gym shoes ended (other shoes didn’t usually hurt, since they were higher, but wearing gym shoes hurt a lot), from a row of warts; there was another one in the middle of the heel (on the sole) but that one didn’t hurt much and didn’t leave a scar. Still, it took over a year and a half of treatment to get rid of the warts and they’d been hurting for about two years by the time a dermatologist saw my foot by chance and gave my mother an appointment for that same afternoon.

6

1977 here. I don’t know about your HS, but ours had the most GODAWFUL, humiliating, UNFLATTERING mandatory gym uniforms. Unless a girl was a stick, or wealthy enough to have them well-tailored, those things made a girl look like the SIDE of the gym.

Thank goodness they stopped requiring them after about a year into HS, but I’ll tell you, there were a lot of girls “surfin’ the crimson wave” for a good bit of the month back then.

7

I refused to do gym classes in Junior High.

Why?

It had nothing to do with physical exercise - I was fit enough.

It had nothing to do with being naked - I had spent my summers in a nudist camp.

It had nothing to do with development (see above, I knew where I ranked).

It had everything to do with being an a locker room without teacher supervision with a pack of bullies.

Why the FUCK would I want to do that? Why make it any easier for them? Not being in the locker room was one less opportunity to be bullied.

8

I’m 25 and nobody ever showered or otherwise got naked after any off my gym classes. Even having both your t-shirt & gym shorts off at the same time was considered “gay”. Once in a blue moon some jock would shower after a morning PE class.

I hated PE, especially in high school. I’ve never been atheletic, or had any kind of interest in sports (even as a spectator). The boys’ PE teachers at my HS were horrible (at least as teachers, apparently they were very good at coaching). They did not teach. Depending on the weather their idea of an activity was to either; go outside and play football, or stay inside and play basketball. There was never any actual intruction (I was once told “It’s not my job to teach you anything” :rolleyes:), and mostly they’d just do paperwork or go over gameplans without their students played. If it was early in the season sometimes they’d scout new students for talent.

The girls’ PE teacher was different. She’d constantly be changing activities, would actually explain things, and could motivate male students without mocking them or attacking their masculinity. Every single time we were allowed to pick which teacher’s activity I chose her. My favorites were when just allowed to life weights or use the excersise room instead of playing a sport, but the district “frowned upon that” so it was rare. I also enjoyed aerobics.

I never refused to dress out, or completely refuse participate though. I did skip class alot. Right before class I’d give myself a nosebleed (I was prone to them anyway), have to go to the nurse, and spend the period on a cot in her office. Junior year (when I got to take Health instead of PE) I had my nose cauterized so I couldn’t really do that senior year. I lucked out and had PE first period. I managed to convince the secretary I had a sinus problem that caused occasional vomiting in the morning. This enabled me to come in late and miss PE. I probally actually showed up for maybe half of my gym classes that year.

We didn’t get real grades in PE. You either got an “S” for Satisfactory or a “U” for Unsatisfactory. It was really hard to get a U. You had to refuse to dress out, skip class (without an excuse), and/or mouth off to the teacher. And you had to do it repeadedly. And nobody ever failed PE for the year. The district simply didn’t allow it. I got always got an S. I did curse one of the boys’ PE teachers out once, but I managed to get away with it in the end. :wink:

9

I don’t get this option of sitting it out – when I went to school (left in 88), it wasn’t optional – if you forgot your gym kit, you had to use some horrible, pre-war stuff out of a bucket in the changing room. That there was a GREAT incentive to remember your kit. This was an all girls’ school, and there were certainly girls who hated it (generally the fat girl, to be honest), but even having your period wasn’t going to help, unless it was a swimming lesson. We didn’t get graded for it either, it was just compulsory.

This was in the UK, BTW.

10

What were the teachers going to do with a student that absolutely refused? Whip them until they begged for kickball? Remember, per my OP, some of these students didn’t even graduate because they didn’t do gym.

I don’t care what a schools policy was/is.

I want to know WHY these students didn’t want to participate.

You were in a nudest camp when you were a pre/early teenager? Do tell.

What grade did you get in gym then? F?

11

Sitting out our phys ed classes wasn’t permitted without a physician’s note. Nor was it an easy grade; it was entirely possible to fail gym class in our school.

I will venture this though: some would want to sit out because thay were involved in non-school activities that could easily have taken the place of gym class. In my area, hockey and baseball leagues were popular for boys, and gymnastics was offered to girls through places like the Y. Heck, I myself was a figure skater, practicing three hours a day weekdays and six a day on weekends. But these activities got us no credit at school. So, I was klutzy at basketball and volleyball in gym class, and received a corresponding grade, while I was winning trophies in figure skating outside of the school. What did that C from a high-school gym teacher really mean, when I was getting the equivalent of As in recognized and national-governing-body-sanctioned competition?

It didn’t seem fair, and because sitting out wasn’t allowed, I dealt with it. Still, I would have liked to sit out and would rather have used the time to study. I wasn’t going to miss out on exercise by forgoing forty minutes of chasing a basketball around the gym when I had three hours of figure skating ahead of me after school.

12

It’s pretty off-topic this early in the thread. We had a summer cabin in a very isolated area outside of Lawrence, Kansas. Very family oriented place, we’d pick Morel mushrooms in the woods, raspberries in the patch on the hill, swim in the lake, swing on tire swings…all the normal stuff one would do at a summer camp. We just did it without clothing (we did wear shoes).

I, for “incomplete”. And the dumbshit of a principal punished me for it by not allowing me to learn to program the school’s IBM 360 computer.

13

I refused to participate in gym class. It was stupid and puerile and I already got plenty of excercise.* I loathed my classmates and I was never picked to be on any teams for ‘team building’. I hated dressing in the hideous gym clothes and walking around the gym for 20 minutes as a warmup, then to do basketball drills or some other stupid shit. I’m sure you’ll be surprised to learn I hated (and still do) competitive sports.

Nowadays I say it’s just not my thing, but back then I really had no use for it, and was offended that I was forced to participate in something I found useless and boring. The teachers eventually just said “If you dress in your clothes and sit on the sidelines you’ll get a C” and I took to sleeping in the bleachers while everyone else paced the gym. Wooo. I actually failed gym one quarter due to me not being there the entire quarter, and I had to make it up. That’s when I started showing up and sleeping.

*I rode my bike pretty much every day, and went skiing all the time in the winter. I was also in all the bands in school, which if you’ve ever set up a band for a gig should know it’s a lot of lugging heavy things around. I knew how to be fit.

14

Regarding the “how do you fail gym” question. IIRC gym also had an optional health class that could be taken instead of an actual workout type gym class. And/or if you failed gym you had to take summer school, which ended up being a health class. Now that I think about it, I’ll bet the volume of girls “forgetting their suit” or “having cramps” and then not participating was the reason those awful things were discontinued.

FTR, when I went to HS, it was what was referred to as a “Secondary School” where 7th through 12th grade students all attended classes in the same building and many of the same classes. So even though I was only in 7th, 8th or 9th grade at the time, the HS girls in my classes were also forced to wear the horrible outfits.

Here’s a description of one: http://open.salon.com/blog/robin_eileen_bernstein/2010/04/02/its_chic_its_retro_its_the_1970s_gym_uniform_1

I tried to find a pic, but strangely not one was found (I’m pretty sure I burned mine once they dropped the mandatory gym suit requirement :D). Ours were like the ones mentioned above, except they had a horizontal striped top and were this thin clingy jersey material. And they were not clingy in a good way either, they somehow managed to be oddly baggy where you would have liked them to have clung, and too clingy where it was the ULTIMATE in unflattering to your body.

…and (memory is coming back to me now :D), we also had different sorts of gym classes like X-country skiiing, hockey and ice-skating, obviously for those we got to wear normal (nice warm COVERING) clothes. So a lot of girls who didn’t want to wear the dreaded gym suit would take those classes as their gym credit.

15

I went to high school in Australia and it just didn’t happen here. You participated unless you were sick or injured.

I started a thread years ago about whether the dumb jock cliché is true in the US because it wasn’t here. Most of the jocks were the smarter guys. Mind you I was at a safe middle class school.

So no-one lorded it over the non-athletic guys and everyone seemed to have fun and got as involved as they felt comfortable with. Except when we did gymnastics where only one guy had fun. Also no-one showered. There simply wasn’t time. Just change back into regular uniform and off to the next class.

Oh I should add there was no grade involved. You just had to do it.

16

In my experience in the US (Kansas City to be precise) the male gym teachers were King of the Bullies, and dedicated to preserving the vicious traditions of their Bully forefathers. The ones who did not meet their standards should, by tradition, be thrown into the wolf pit.

Frankly, the experience left me with a profound distaste for all organized sports, and a deep-down belief that anyone who claims to have enjoyed gym class must have been a bully.

17

East Bound and Down episode 2.

18

Ha! Any boy who taunts another boy with “You have a small dick!” will instantly get asked “Why were you looking?” by everyone else. Trust me, this isn’t the problem.

I’ve honestly never heard of this as the rule at my school was that if you forgot your gym clothes more than twice, you failed. And no one wanted to take gym in summer school because all you did was walk around the track.

Of course, I never understood “Gym is full of bullies!” either as our locker rooms had attendants and the gym teachers were good people. The football coach was a walking macho cliche, but if he saw someone bullying another kid he was quick with the punishment.

19

Pretty much this, plus the teachers were bullies. They were hard-core Christians who could not understand why some people chose not to accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. They had no problems using the dressing-room hallway to post their propaganda and class time to advertise their organizations. Those of us who weren’t Christian would generally dress out for roll call, then sneak away for the rest of class. Why expose ourselves to these assholes any more than necessary? I got my passing grades and moved on.

The girls also had to share the locker room with the cheerleaders, drill team, band, and athletes. It’s very difficult to have any sort of confidence in yourself when you’re surrounded by girls who are thinner and perceived as prettier than you are. Believe me, some of those girls demonstrated their “superiority” over us mortals. I’m surprised I was able to dress out, although I remember doing it in a bathroom stall on occasion.

20

I was an uncoordinated klutz in school. Frankly, I’m still not the best but I’ve improved a lot. They always had very boring or hard exercises; I was awesome at dodging in dodgeball (not so much at the throwing part), but sucked at a lot of other stuff, especially anything involving upper-body strength. Forget pushups, or climbing the rope or pole to the top of the gym.

At least in grade school, we only had satisfactory/unsatisfactory grades. When I got to middle school, it was a letter grade, and our first gym teacher wouldn’t give you a C if you just suited up. No, I regularly got a C for trying my hardest (but sucking). This did not make me a happy camper about phys ed, because it was really screwing up my GPA. By the last year of middle school, at least we had a new teacher, and I would get a B+ or so for effort; I think I might have even gotten an A- when she taught an aerobics and weight training class, which I did pretty decent at.

Plus middle school locker rooms, as mentioned, were great opportunities for bullies. I had one popular girl go on and on about how she wanted my autograph because of how ‘awesome’ I was at doing gymnastics, with her group of friends cackling behind her. The first teacher was a very tough and unsympathetic woman who never seemed to be in the locker room except to make sure we took a shower. It was also a time where the mean girls could scope out who had ugly underwear, who was wearing bulky menstrual pads, etc., and use that for ammunition/mention in the halls/whispering to the cute guy that one of the dorkier girls might have a crush on.

High school at least had more of a variety, but was much the same - I will credit them for grading more on effort, too.

I didn’t sit out, except for injury, but I did stop taking them in high school as soon as I was done with the required classes (by senior year).

I actually went out of my way and took elective phys ed in college and grad school, because I got to pick neater stuff. Nautilus training, tai chi, yoga, kendo, fencing. I loved it.