This was exactly my experience, right down to the skipped grade. It was a vicious cycle, too…I would try to get a note excusing me from sports (it wasn’t gym class, it was team sports always), which basically ensured that I would never improve,
In my high school, they eventually did cave to the requests of students to allow subbing in dance classes or fitness club memberships for the sports requirement. I took 3 hours of dance every day, so I was covered.
I went to high school in the 70s and I rarely participated in gym class. Back then in Florida we had phys ed every day, although you didn’t have to take it your senior year, maybe even junior year. If we “dressed out” (put on our horrid one-piece knit gym uniforms), we could get a B. If we “dressed out” and actually played the game, we would get an A. Because I thought I wasn’t athletic and because anyone who made an error in a game was tormented, I chose to put on the gym suit and sit on the sidelines with the burnouts and get a B. I wasn’t a burnout myself–I went on to become a class officer, I got good grades, I was in the “in” crowd–but hanging out with them on the sidelines was far more pleasant than being bullied by those who participated.
After high school I went to college, where I started running and realized that I was actually fairly athletic as long as I wasn’t forced to play team sports. I exercise more now than I ever did back then, and I have fun doing it.
Same here. I love running. The issue in grade school/jr high/high school was that they never instructed us in learning to run—i.e., to build up to it. I was “go and run 6 laps”
Reading through this thread has been interesting for me - and has me straining to remember back almost forty years to my own high school gym experience.
I could have been interested in various gym programs, but I was absolutely terrified at the idea of showering with the rest of the class. I remember going into the locker rooms the first day, unlocking and locking back up the basket assigned to me, but I don’t recall ever going in there again. I never even bought a gym suit.
I didn’t have much of a problem with bullies. I was by far the tallest kid in my grade, and, while I was not particularly outgoing or aggressive, bullies did not find me a soft target. I was, however, a very private and introverted kid, and the idea of being naked in a group was very foreign.
The main gym teacher was old school, but my teacher was new, a young guy, and somehow (I really don’t remember how) we came to some sort of agreement. I never went to class, but he kept passing me through. I don’t know what he thought – perhaps he figured I was gay or something (I’m not), but, in any case, he was understanding. The old coach didn’t like it much, but it wasn’t his call.
We had to have four semesters of gym to graduate, and my teacher left after my third semester. I actually didn’t even know we had a new teacher, and wound up failing the fourth semester. Eventually, in my senior year, I went back to the new guy and arranged to get credit for outside exercise (I lived and worked on a farm, and got plenty!)
The 70s were a time when school programs underwent a lot of change. Class requirements were changed - dumbed down in a lot of cases. One year survey courses (like Biology) were split up into a variety of one-quarter specialty courses, from which the student could pick subjects which struck their interest. Homework was made optional. Perhaps a similar attitude was taking hold in the PE department.
So I kinda lucked my way through it. It might have been better if I had wound up with the old-school teacher and I was forced to break out of my shell – but it would not have been comfortable.
I only had one year of PE in high school. The major thing I hated about it was that we didn’t have much choice in what we did. We did get to try out a lot of different sports, though: softball, basketball, even badminton. I liked badminton. I also really, really liked flag football and was disappointed when that unit was over.
I was never a super athletic kid – I was a slow runner, easily exhausted, and physically uncoordinated, and neither PE nor cross country nor track and field improved that. I tried hard. Only the coaches and I knew how hard I tried. During track season, we had practice two or three afternoons a week. I was painfully sore every minute of every day from start to finish. I finally begged my dad to let me quit the team two weeks before the season ended. He went down to talk to the coach who told him “LPN is not a natural runner. But she tries harder than anyone else on this field; I’ll be sorry to lose her, but I understand why she wants to quit.”
I do wish we’d had more opportunities to try new stuff, though – better yet, to have classes around them like in college. I’d have loved archery or fencing or martial arts or even swimming, but my school was too poor.
I really believe the PE system in high schools needs to be totally reformed. They need to eliminate the emphasis on sports and games (basketball, soccer, whatever.) Instead it should be replaced by a system of exercises and drills similar to the PT part of military recruit training.
When games like basketball and soccer are played in gym class, students can often just stand around doing nothing and get away with it. As long as a small group of athletic students is doing all the work, everyone else can just half-ass it.
Gym class needs to be first and foremost about making the students physically fit. That should be the only purpose for it, not to give them an opportunity to have “fun” playing games and sports. Gym should just emphasize drills, endurance, and strength.
I agree—and this from someone who tried mightily to get out of gym a lot of the time AND from someone who has 2 grade-school kids who she doesn’t want to end up hating gym.
You’re lucky you were a girl. Boys who rebel have to back it up with physical toughness or they get shit from their fellow students and the administration.
Boners and cramps.
That sounds like an English pub, actually.
“Say, mate, fancy a pint at the Boners and Cramps?”
out of all the numerous topics here, oddly this was the thread that got me intrigued. I wonder how it is overseas, i vaguely recalled seeing an Asian gym class where nobody dressed out, exercises were done in their uniforms…
The only thing I recall in middle school gym was that I lucked out and got it last class meaning on Fridays where I had to get my uniform washed weekend, I wouldn’t dress back in my regular clothes and would just go to my bus in my gym shirt (I’d go back to wearing my pants however). It was a tad uneventful except for 8th grade where somehow we would get whopping down time (for “showertime”) and hang out til the class bell. I didn’t have friends in that class, but hung out with 3 girls where I would just listen as they chattered away. One accused me of being a loner, and I guess it was a reflection upon her; the next year, freshman year, she got sullen and became really withdrawn away from folks! That was how unmemorable the actual gym portion was.
In high school, in the 90s for me, we were required to take two years of gym. I finished the first year in 10th grade, but somehow didn’t get around for the second year until my senior year. I was shocked to hear how easy some of the gyms described were, I recall having actual exams about rules of each sport! And I dunno if they did this now, but higher ups thought gym was too easy and changed it to where 3 days a week , you ran laps all hour. We would get sticks for each lap we did, I could never do more than 3 laps which equated to a B. (where I did good on exams to pull it to an A) I didn’t mind doing the sports, but the running just killed me. It was also rotten I had gym in the mornings and didn’t shower and did the best I could not to stink, but one day someone said they smelled dirt and looked around me.
I hated school so much, just everything about it. I was also an honors student. I was bored to death doing things I didn’t want to do (and that even meant having to work hard to get accepted to university in subjects i hated).
I used to have to get physical with other kids all the time. I’m small, but I’m quick and I fight dirty. They learned not to mess with my friends, either.
Though I suppose the reason no one tattled on me to the adults in charge was that it was embarrassing to not only lose to a girl, but a shrimpy girl at that.
I always dressed, acted and looked like a boy, particularly in high school after I buzzed my hair. Everyone thought I was a lesbian, few people from high school even recognize me these days (I am pretty and femme now - which comes with tons of advantages).
For example, having to sommersault over four of your classmates who were curled down on the fetal position on the floor. Those who managed it would then have to do it over five classmates, and then over six. In theory, if you managed it you then had to jump over seven, but at that point the only one who’d managed it was me, so that’s when Mz Bully decided that particular test wasn’t valid (this is the teacher who wanted to make me retake 8th grade by flunking me 7th and 8th - she had a baby when I was in 8th, her position was filled in by her sister… who was the only PhysEd teacher I’ve had who actually taught). There were bruises all over every girl in the class but me… I still wish I knew what the fuck kind of drugs did that bitch slip the nuns, that they’d let her get away with anything.
This was my experience in South Africa: gym class was mandatory but not graded. In addition, joining the school’s sports teams was also mandatory (I think you chose between rugby and field hockey in the winter and cricket in the summer). For each age group and sport there would be different teams, ordered by merit. The jocks would be in the A team (I guess this is the equivalent of being on the football team in the US?) and the sports avoiding students such as myself would be all the way down in the F or G team, depending on how many students there were. Competition against other schools was also mandatory, although when you got down to my level of G versus G I think the common playing strategy was to mope around and stay as far away from the ball as possible!
Sitting out of either of these things was not an option, but if it were I suspect I would have been one of the kids sitting out. At the time I hated team sports and the sort of athletics that we did in gym. That really is all there is to it: it just wasn’t my thing. I’ve never been that interested in the standard gym or school sports (rugby, cricket, American football, athletics, etc), but my attitude towards exercise has improved dramatically. After high school I was extensively involved in karate, dragon boating and rowing.
Despite hating it at the time, I think it was probably good for me: I didn’t get a whole lot of other exercise at the time. As a parent of the equivalent of me I’d probably tell the hypothetical me to suck it up.
I wasn’t given an option to refuse to participate, but on the occasions where I could manage to avoid gym class, I would. One of the high schools I went to gave an option for either gym or modern dance; I took one semester of gym right after transferring, before I found out that “modern dance” was code for “non-jock”. That’s why they had so many modern dance classes. Most of it was pretty weak stuff - waving around cloth, unenthusiastic line dancing, et cetera.
Before that time, I suffered through it. The classes were so large – yeah, you had 30 kids to a teacher, but realistically the 4 gym teachers would all do the same thing, then stand around and talk to each other – so it was relatively easy to try to hang back. When I was forced to participate, it blew. They never actually taught us how to play, or what the rules were, so I didn’t know how to play basketball or flag football or whatever. Of course, this meant ridicule and anger.
The one fight I got into as a kid was in middle school, and it was in gym. One of the kids flipped their lid because I missed the ball in volleyball. I told her to shut up (she was pretty stunned to get a response), and wouldn’t back down when she got in my face about it. She started pulling my hair and I fought back hard. After that, I didn’t get any aggression, though of course the insults and mockery didn’t stop. Gym was one of the few times in the day that I wasn’t in gifted/honors classes, so it was one of the few times I was exposed to the bulk of the bully population.
Frankly, gym class gave me a great disdain for team sports and anything athletic. It wasn’t until well into adulthood that I even had the nerve to join a gym, because I honestly figured that people would do things like make fun of me or laugh if I messed up. I guess it’s pretty irrational, but I had learned that working out = stress, anxiety, and humiliation. I wish that I had had better influences in my young life about fitness. It would have been really cool to have gym teachers who actually taught things to the kids that didn’t know, and who wouldn’t tolerate bullying. Or, hell, remedial gym or something. Teaching us real-world skills that we could use as adults, like how to use gym equipment, and less of a focus on team sports would have been especially good. As it was, it was a Lord of the Flies situation most definitely.
My German experience (mainly in the 1970s) is pretty much different from much of what I read here on US experiences:
So, basically, unathlethic students always struggled but did not refuse because they could not.
I had to do it for two years, and skipped senior year.
It was pointless and silly, of course. But then again, 90% of high school is pointless and silly. But
[ul][li]If you showed up and your gym suit was reasonably clean, you were guaranteed at least a C, and [*]it did not count towards your GPA.[/ul]Upon having this explained to me, I responded (mentally) 'Thank you very much - I have all the information needed to determine my future course of action towards PE class." [/li]
I think the key in my case was basically that I did not give a hoot in hell. The football and basketball teams, both of whom sucked badly, were excused. I was in training for a national tournament, and still had to do it. Does that make sense? No, but who cares? Was I going to go all out in flag football, and possibly get injured enough to knock me out of a tournament? Not hardly, but who cares?
I did actually have one teacher who made us run laps if we weren’t trying hard enough. It is amazing how slowly I can run laps, thus missing most of class, so that didn’t work too well. We had a wrestling segment. All I ever did in matches was pull guard and practice my sweeps. Therefore I lost a lot of points in folkstyle wrestling. Again, who cares?
The nervousness about getting naked in front of other people never affected me, for what ever reason. And the bullying I encountered happened outside of gym class.
Regards,
Shodan
I hated gym. Parts of it may have been ok, and I didn’t suffer with severe bullying like others here, but I still quit gym as soon as it was optional which I think was in the second year of high school. I was never very athletic, and not very good at sports and moved schools enough that I was never really sure what was going on. I never really learned the rules to any team sports - seems that every time I changed schools they were playing a different sport and I just tried to figure out what was going on and not mess up too badly.
Those who can, do.
Those who can’t, teach.
Those who can’t teach, administrate.
Oh, I have another reason. One school I went to was on the Block system. Two subjects a day for something like 4-6 weeks and then switch. That meant gym class from 12:30pm-3:00pm every day, with one 10 minute break.
Once I had decided to switch schools, I dropped gym class (you were only required to take one class sometime in Grades 10-12) knowing I’d be going to a normal schedule the next grade. Gym teacher stopped me in the hallway one day and asked me why I had dropped his class. “You’re a jerk and 2 and a half hour long gym classes suck” was, unfortunately, not an option.