Writer's Block: Sweat it out

[jim_p]

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If it's going to be mandatory, then we're going to have to seriously rethink how it's taught. I see a lot of posts to this subject basically saying "Yes! Childhood Obseity! OMGWTFBBQ!". Well, I'm an overweight adult, and I got this way BECAUSE of mandatory gym class, not despite it. Whether it's the sadism of dodgeball, the humiliation of being picked last for the team, or the frustration of being too clumsy to enjoy myself, gym class has pretty much RUINED my experience of physical activity. To this day bicycling is the only exercise I enjoy and I'm pretty sure it's because it's one of the few that was NOT tainted by my gym class experience.

I have a friend who does a lot of work in educating gifted students, and he's constantly pointing out the difficulties getting schools to attend to the needs of the gifted. My experience of gym class has been that it's primarily geared FOR the physically gifted. In my regular classes things would be repeated slowly multiple times to make sure most students got it. In gym class there'd be a quick rundown of the rules of the sport, then an immediate launch right into play. Great fun for those who "got it" right away, sheer hell for folks like me who didn't...

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this. A further problem is that lack of aptitude for physical activity becomes a self-perpetuating cycle: if you're bad at a sport, you get benched, or get put in a position on the field or in the batting order or whatever where you get very little playing time, and so you never get the opportunity to improve.

Also out of a fifty-minute, hour-long gym class, in my experience, you spend over 20 minutes changing clothes, taking attendance, handing out equipment, etc., etc., and the kids are lucky if they get 20-25 minutes of real activity in.

[bedfull-o-books.livejournal.com]

Every once in awhile my gym teacher would have "sub-units" where a small number of students could take things like fencing or boxing or whatever for a few weeks instead of being tossed into dodgeball and such with the hoi polloi. It was wonderful.

Sadly, one was not able to take more than one sub-unit in a term. Fencing was awesome.

I, too, credit gym class as the beginnings of my avoidance of team sports and my preference for reading rather than running.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

The gym classes I had in elementary and junior high school were horrid, especially in junior high. In elementary school we had the usual sadistic picking of sides for games like dodge ball and kickball, and in junior high we were segregated into "squads" based upon how well (or poorly) we did on the President's Physical Fitness Test. If you wound up in the lowest squad (as I always did), it was nearly impossible to get better than a "C" in gym. Phys Ed singlehandedly kept me out of the National Junior Honor Society.

In high school, however, things were more sensible. Instead of the emphasis being on sitting in neat little rows for inspection, you'd check in with the teacher when you'd changed, and after that the teacher would tell you what the activity was for the day. Sometimes you'd even get a choice(!). If there were teams, the teachers would usually pick them, thus eliminating the "last picked" syndrome. I went from being a fat teen to a normal-weight teen and improved my speed on the 50 yard dash to the low end of normal.

Granted, my high school was a private school, and there were only 32 kids in my graduating class, but still, it was great to be in a situation in which I could actually participate and not be left on the sidelines or picked on.

These days I've seen where Phys Ed programs emphasize things kids can do on their own, like nautilus machines or swimming. IMHO that's a better way to go all around because the kids are only competing with themselves.

[spinrabbit.livejournal.com]

I think that gym classes serve the goal of providing the school sports teams with recruits who know the basic skills and rules of those sports a lot better than they serve goals to do with the health and fitness of the population. And I wouldn't be surprised if the teacher/coaches are unaware that those are fundamentally different goals.