Gym in SchoolFollow

There are no federal requirements for public schools to provide for Gym. State law varies considerably. Some states only require it up through elementary school, some up through HS but with reduced frequency, others require PE courses for graduation completion etc.

With our ever increasing sedentary lives some will argue that daily gym class is more important than ever. But with schools it's just one more non-academic offering to juggle into the schedule and budget.

Is physical education even education?

Should we 'teach' gym in schools?

Should the feds mandate minimum levels of PE offerings in public schools?

I always felt gym was a waste of time after elementary school.

I went to a private Catholic school from kindergarten on, but I took PE every year. When I got to high school we had a schedule where we did religion classes half the year and PE clases the other half. However, instead of alernating semesters, we alternated days. So the least we got was two days of PE class in a week. At the end of the year, we also did the President's Physical Fitness Test and our final grade was determined by how well we did.

I think the way PE is taught needs to be changed. When kids get to high school, they need to be taught how to exercise, not just given 45 minutes in a day when they are forced to take part in some form of physical activity. PE class should go back to the whole Health and Physical Education it used to be. The health portion can teach kids about healthy eating and how to put together a balanced diet.

I don't think the federal government needs to get any more involved in education than it already is, but I do think the states or the local school districts need to step up and make some changes to the type of health and physical education kids are getting today.

You never watched Amy D. playing softball in her gym uniform during junior year.

Gym provided an easy way to ditch out of school long enough to go get stoned.

The purpose of our gym class in HS seemed to be to introduce us to many different types of sports and recreational activity. We canoed and cross-country skied, danced, did all the normal ball type sports etc etc. That was too much. Too much time and money in equipment and logistics etc. Yet very little interest from the kids.

However, I could easily support 20mins to 1/2hour a day to simply doing calisthenics of some sort as part of the whole healthy kids learn better paradigm.

Gym (or "physical education" as it was called in my schools) alternated between the useless activities (like the "Mile Run" which all but a dozen kids usually walked) to the fun ones (like dodgeball or "Watusi," which was a fun alternative involving pins, a jail pit, and walls to hide from fire). It seems like by the time we got to high school we had gym only in the first two years; then it was replaced with health education or taken as an elective. Those who took is as an election usually just used the time to goof off.

I think the entire thing needs to be redefined. As others have said, many of the classes were "here's the activity, there's the equipment, see you in 40 minutes." I think it would be much more useful if we had group activities that demanded participation; say, dance classes, or yoga, or something. And I remember very little from my health classes except learning how to make crack. Which, in hindsight, was an odd thing to learn. I'm sure we also went over the food pyramid, but I think it was the burnt-out teachers who hardly cared for their positions that really made the classes pointless.

I don't know if the federal government should enforce gym, but individual schools offering gym classes should take the instructors to task over setting up a comprehensive program.

We actually had a good amount of variety in our high school gym classes thinking back. Lots of different non-contact sports and what not. You were required to take it for something like 4 semesters. I don't remember it being all that strenuous. The only requirement for getting a decent grade was pretty much showing up, acting like you were participating, and being able to do something like 6 laps around the parking lot on the last day of the semester (something that was about a mile and a half or so, and they gave you the better part of an hour to do it).

Also, bowling. Bowling class was awesome. Almost 2 hours, and we went to the alley, ate our lunch there and had fun. Good stuff.

Anyway there were questions no?



Not really. In my case I like to think I did better in my classes when I got a break to get up and move around during the day, can't say that was the case for everyone though.



I like the idea of having a "gym" class be part of some fitness/health education. Leaning how to take care of yourself and stuff; physical activity being part of that. I'm not sure there's not necessarily a bunch of "learning" all the time. But people into adulthood will take fitness classes at a gym, get exercise, learn yoga, or something. Not necessarily a subject that needs to be graded harshly, or required every semester or anything.



I have no problem with different states having their own required levels of "gym" for their schools. Though I might have to prod some people to exercise more if national health care ever becomes a reality and I'm having to pay for some lazy slob's triple-bypass.

The other way to go on that is take the government out of healthcare and make people fund their own. Let them die if they can't plan far enough ahead.

Given the per credit cost of university classes, this would annoy me mightily. Plus the wasted time for six separate classes.

Edited, May 21st 2012 11:16am by Jophiel

It was very annoying. But mostly because the campus was on the side of a very large hill (small mountain?) and it was a 1 mile hike up hill to the Student Development Complex where all the courses were offered. Trekking up that hill in the middle of winter sucked. (I didn't bring a vehicle with me when I was in college, I found not having a vehicle made it much easier to save money).

Edit:
The cost per class was kept low. They did not have set instructors for the courses, they were run by students. So they didn't have to pay instructor wages, they just paid part time wages to a student who needed work.

Edited, May 21st 2012 12:22pm by TirithRR

When I was in school, until I was in grade 8, we had an hour of "gym" 3 times per week, plus 15 mins of recess in the morning and afternoon, and half an hour during lunch. When I was in grade 9, Phys Ed was a mandatory course, but it wasn't after that, though I took a Phys Ed class in grade 12 that I had to pay for that went and did things like Scuba diving, Canoeing, rock climbing, etc.

Really, there should be some mandatory Phys Ed. in schools, but most of the job of keeping children in shape needs to fall on the parents. Mine never sat us down in front of the tv or video games unless it was raining. The rule was, could play video games for an hour at a time, and wouldn't be able to play more unless we went outside and played for an hour or two until high school.

If parents refuse to keep their child active, they shouldn't complain that the schools aren't doing a good enough job of it.

I had gym up until I graduated. And, honestly, I'm ambivalent. I was overweight in high school. Not ridiculously fat, but far from athletic. The biggest problem with gym class? It's taught by people who are athletic, and generally have been much of their lives, primarily for the sake of those who are not. This leads to a pretty big disconnect that makes the current system more or less useless.

Most sports are competitive. This isn't the fault of gym teachers, it's just an anthropological part of why athletic activities evolved. Thing is, gym is required to be provided (in NJ) for the sake of the sedentary students.

Sedentary students are, generally speaking, the ones who won't be winning any of those competitions. They'll be at the bottom of the ladder every time. It's not a good feeling, and it makes you completely disconnect from the activities at hand. You end up doing everything you can to stay out of the actual action, for fear of having to prove how useless you are.

Instead of trying and foster a completely non-competitive atmosphere, most gym teachers end up encouraging one. Not because they're @#%^s or bad teachers, but because that's what their concept of a gym class is, and it's what makes use of the activities they have learned. They've probably never been the kid who wants anything but getting passed the ball. And if they were, they're probably proud enough of leaving that past behind that they've ended up more competitive. In general, male teachers have been consistently worse than female teachers my entire school career, by a large margin, which isn't surprising.

I'm not saying gym teachers need to be fatties. But unless the teaching philosophy of gym classes changes to actually match the philosophy for why their classes are mandatory, then that time is just completely wasted. Actually, I'd be highly willing to suggest that it's downright damaging in nearly all cases. Because you end up correlating your dislike of the class with a dislike for physical activity. I've only recently begun to lose this impression, to be honest. I've had access to a gym for four years at college, and didn't start going at all until my last year. And it's because I saw the gym the same way I saw gym class, which is really sad.

[EDIT]

In NJ, you need 4 years of English and, I think, 4 years of Math. 3 years of lab science and History. You need PE every year you are in school, though you can opt out if you participate in other extra-curricular athletics (subject to your school's restrictions). The only classes I had to take my senior year were English and PE, because I had taken Statistics and AP Biology earlier. Had they offered AP Lit before my senior year, it would have been very easy for me to graduate early.

Edited, May 21st 2012 5:41pm by idiggory

I'm certain that I had to take four years of English in high school and fairly sure we had at least three years of both math and science. I think they recommended four of each for college but let you stop with three. I graduated in 1991 though so maybe things have changed.

While I had four years of supposed PE, they counted driver's ed and health classes into that so it was more like 2.5 years of gym and 1.5 years of miscellaneous. And one of those years of gym was spent on archery, bowling and twacking practice golf balls off a hill and onto the football practice field.

In NM, we had to take 4 years of English or English-equivalent classes(Speech, Creative Writing, etc). They decided during my junior year that this meant that despite completing English 4 my junior year, I still had to take another year of English in my senior year. I said eff it and took Speech and Creative Writing because the reading list they gave me for English 4-2 sounded like it would bore me to tears. The four years of math thing was worded as a specific number of credits, so I didn't have to take math my senior year, which gave me a lot of time to goof off.

I have to be honest, I feel exactly opposite of your post there. Despite being overweight and fairly sedentary, I had no problem with the competitive sports portions of PE. It was calisthenics days, run the track days and other non-competitive days where I hated that class. Could have been the coach, since he wasn't all up in our faces about doing well at the sports, just wanted to make sure we participated. Even when I was the weakest link on a team, at least the game felt purposeful. Doing jumping jacks, situps or *shudder* mountain climbers(I think that's what they called that one thing I hated) felt like a waste of time. It also helps that the games were diverse enough that while some emphasized my weaknesses(endurance and agility), others emphasized strength or short burst speed, which I was good and alright at, respectively.

Oh yeah, French is the other class I took.

We took religion all 4 years, we just didn't have religion class every day. We had A semesters and B semesters. During the A semesters, we had religion 3 days a week and PE 2 days. During the B semesters we had PE 3 days and religion 2. Our religion classes were actually very interesting and weren't just about discussing Catholicism and Christianity.

One of our religion teachers was even a former brother of the religious order that ran the school who left the order because met a woman and wanted to marry her. I thought it was pretty cool that the order (the Brothers of the Sacred Heart) hired him to teach at the school after leaving the order. Another of the religion teachers was the head soccer coach and he was barely older than the students he was teaching, so he was pretty cool too.

Edit: And yes, 25 credits sounds about right. It's been 17 years since I graduated now, so I really can't remember. I do remember that we had 8 periods in a day and I had 2 of them off every year. Would have 3 off senior year but I took physics AP and biology 2 AP. I also went to the school for 8th grade and got an early start on some of my credits by taking Algebra I in 8th grade, which allowed me to take calculus AP as a senior.

So yeah, 6 classes per year x 4 years plus algebra I as an 8th grader = 25 credits.

Edited, May 22nd 2012 11:32am by Bigdaddyjug

Elementary school: Running around a lot, and being embarrassed in the gym because I could not stretch as far as the other kids. Failure.

Middle school: Not bad, actually. Our school got a grant from the local Army base (since we were the school those kids were bused to) and the soldiers, for some community service project thing, built us a series of stations. We had a full 1 mile loop around the school, and in our gym class you were supposed to jog between each station and then do the exercises listed on the station. 10 jumping jacks, 20 pushups, etc. Every school should have this sort of thing built in. We also actually learned the rules of sports like basketball, volleyball, and baseball; I don't know why our elementary teachers expected us to be magically imbued with that knowledge as children. I think I was at my healthiest in 8th grade.

High school #1: Back to the terrible practices of elementary school, only worse. I don't think I ever did anything in gym class at my first high school except watch the guys lift weights.

High school #2: There was no gym class, only "aerobic dance" which we were expected to take at least one time for one semester. It was taught by one of the ballet instructors, and she did her best to vary the exercises - we used steps, resistance bands, ribbons, and other props on a regular basis. After that, if you were a dancer, you got a full hour workout each day. Otherwise, nope.

I do think that gym class, aka "physical education" is an important part of school. But I also agree that the way it is taught needs to be changed a lot. If someone had given my bookworm childhood self a treadmill and said I could read all I wanted as long as I was walking during gym class, I would have been a lot better off.

For some kids, it's the only exercise they get, so yeah I think we should keep it. Besides, when else is a kid going to get the chance to sit under a parachute dome? I loved that damn thing.

Nexa

That's why you have to jump on top of them. Unless they've made spiky ones.

I too am from Illinois. Our P.E. Classes were usually split into 2 classes: An easier one (Archery, Walking, etc.) and one that was a bit "harder" (weight lifting, indoor/outdoor soccer, run/walking the track for set miles). I'm a big guy and in High School I was around 350lbs. I always took the "harder" one because I got to work out and actually get some exercise.

I don't know about you 2, but around here one does not have to take PE all 8 semesters of H.School. If you played a sport or was in the marching band (no joke) you get out of P.E.

One should definitely knock marching band, if not necessarily for those reasons (I gather that it gets kinda sweaty in those outfits).

Sand, I thought you lived in England? Am I mistaken, or are you an expat?

Nah, I must have imagined it.

We had gym all through high school in RI. I know some schools have different requirements. We had PE or Health 2x a week. Some schools had it every day. It was pretty well-done at my school. During indoor months, we usually had volleyball, floor hockey, and table tennis available, or you could use the exercise equipment in the weight room. Students who didn't want to do any of those could walk laps around the gym (basketball court). Outdoor months, we had softball and soccer, plus walking/running the track, or you could stay at the school and use the exercise equipment in the weight room. I think the presentation of several non-competitive options was beneficial.

We had PE for 3 quarters out of the year, and health for the one remaining.

Edited, May 29th 2012 1:22pm by Spoonless

Most memorable week of middle school gym class for me: Richard Simmons.




Ugh, I took marching band to get out of PE. After two years, I concluded that this was a terrible idea, because several hours of marching practice in a parking lot during your average Texas August is absolute hell. Thankfully, you practice in shirts and shorts.

PE it was.

Edited, May 30th 2012 6:58am by Sweetums