Kids protest new exercise requirement

[Flyinghi]

There are so many things that kids need to be learning - oh so desperately. How to play various sports shouldn't be one of them. Hell, if it were up to me, there wouldn't be athletics in school, PERIOD. Why? Because schools waste ridiculous amounts of money on the equipment, fields/gyms/stadiums, and coaching staff that could be put to much better use - say on hiring competent teachers and maintaining classrooms.

By the time a kid is 15, the school should not be responsible for their physical health.

no offense but I couldn't possibly disagree more !! I would even argue that on some level organized sports teaches children things that are as important or in some cases more important then those thought in the class room

Now for the record I've played sports ( badly ) for most of my life and I used to coach little kids in hockey. If done right, sports teaches a child how to set goals and achieve them, social skills, critical thinking, teamwork, self-discipline, self-awareness. leadership, planning and improvisation among others

all these things are invaluable in all aspects of life not to mention the physical benefits

I do agree that sports are not a catch all answer Many people don't care for sports or simply are not interested in participating for their own reasons and that's perfectly fine but please don't dismiss Physical Education so readily For a great many kids it is exactly what they need

[DesignFox]

Maybe I'm weird, but when we had a good teacher, I actually liked gym class. My gym teacher senior year let me play with all the guys because I actually wanted to participate and work up a sweat (and the guys actually LET me play on their teams). The girls in my class were not the type to participate and I hated being forced to work with them.

I think PE IS important because it forces kids to get up off their asses and blow off steam for a little while. Everyone needs a mental break in their day whether they admit it or not. I think if the programs were better planned and TAUGHT kids different sports, it would be much more enjoyable. I know I got a choice of what sports I could take each marking period...I could choose something suitable to my interests and physical limitations.

I agree that if walking around the gym is all your teacher makes you do, you're going to resent it. That's NOT the way to run a PE class, and certainly doesn't teach you anything. I hated "walk around the gym" days, and the teachers that made us do shit like that. I wanted to PLAY.

I don't think the kids are being lazy, I think they are protesting the sudden upheaval of their schedules. When I was in school, most of my shit was carefully planned out because I had a FULL to the brim list of classes and activities. I'd be pissed if someone fucked around with it at the last minute, too.

[anriana]

High schoolers need PE and health classes. But they need to be learning how to do it for themselves. Getting the kids to run around the gym will keep them healthy for a day, but teaching them how to exercise will keep them healthy for a lifetime. It seems to me that too many of our high school classes simply do the planning for the kids instead of teaching them how to plan, and when the students can't do the work on their own, they are called lazy and unmotivated.

Exactly.

Learning how to lift weights or do cardio effectively? That's a class, and information one can use later in life.

Playing hackeysack and basketball? Not so much.

[ThePhoneGoddess]

If done right, sports teaches a child how to set goals and achieve them, social skills, critical thinking, teamwork, self-discipline, self-awareness. leadership, planning and improvisation among others

I was forced to play sports both in school and outside of it and I did not learn a single one of those things from it.

The problem is that a lot of western cultures emphasize sports so strongly that it distorts the positive values that COULD come from it. It is encoded in modern culture. Everyone knows the stereotype of the jock: the dumb meathead whose teachers let him slide without working because he's an asset to their football team, and who likes to pick on weaker kids. It is a stereotype precisely because it is so common; nearly everyone has known one. The winning football team is more important than the jock's education, more important than the geek's self-esteem, more important than teachers actually doing their jobs and trying to discipline or make the jock learn something.

In a lot of western culture the emphasis on sports is not teamwork, or self-discipline, or anything else that you listed. The emphasis is on winning NO MATTER WHAT. And if you're not good enough to help win, you're simply worthless. The reason so many people hate sports is because this is the one thing they learned from it growing up.

Kids need physical education, especially now that obesity is such a big problem among the young. But there is a reason why it is the most hated class among teenagers. Our cultural emphasis on sports is so twisted that any kid who is not interested in it, or---god forbid!---uncoordinated, is made to feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with them.

You are lucky that you learned those things from your sports experiences. There are millions of us who did not.

[AdminAssistant]

If done right, sports teaches a child how to set goals and achieve them, social skills, critical thinking, teamwork, self-discipline, self-awareness. leadership, planning and improvisation among others

I learned all of those things....doing theatre.

Look, I'm not saying that all PE is bad. I'm saying that a lot of it is pointless. I'd rather the kids be in class actually learning something - like history or math or science or literature.

[Seshat]

I think children need to learn all the following stuff SOMEWHERE. School is supposed to be life prep, so let's teach them this stuff in school.


* Basic health, nutrition, and exercise. How to maintain your body.
The fact that you can maintain your body's exercise requirements by gardening, housecleaning (vigorously), throwing frisbees or flying kites as easily as you can by going to the gym. How to know whether you're maintaining your body's exercise requirements.
How to know when to go to the doctor, when to go to a pharmacist, or when you can handle a problem at home. How to handle problems at home. How to make and maintain a fully stocked first aid kit. How to give first aid.
Nutrition, food safety, and enough cooking to make a variety of meals if provided with raw veggies, raw meat (or tofu or whatever), and raw grains and/or bread and/or pasta. They don't have to be fancy meals, but enough to keep a person fed, healthy, and not feeling deprived.

* Basic political participation, including how to write an effective letter to your local member - and how to find out who that is. How to determine which candidates you have available to vote for, how to determine what those candidates' policies are (or at least, claim to be), and how to vote. What your political rights are in your country. (Note that this class varies considerably depending on country!)

* Basic law. Enough to cope in society without actually getting into trouble out of ignorance. Also, how to find out other legal stuff given the resources of a typical public library.

* How to use your typical public library!

* Basic finance. The fact that you have to repay credit cards! How to pay bills, how to live within your means, how to extend your means, how to get help when you need it.

* Basic housekeeping. How to maintain a tidy and hygenic home. Not Home Beautiful, but home -safe-. Basic cleaning, basic mending, when to call in an expert, when to go hit your library for a DIY book. When it's not safe to DIY -ever- unless you happen to be a plumber/electrician/etc.

* Basic social skills. Sure, lots of people do this easily, but some don't.
How to make and maintain friendships.
How to deal with workplace politics without drowning.
How to effectively and politely complain when something goes wrong (at work, with a product you bought from a store, whatever).
How to get a job.
How to KEEP a job.
What the heck jobs are all about (lots of folks think of them backwards - that jobs are about them getting money, not about trading money for results).
How to think about things from the other guy's POV, and how to use that to improve your social effectiveness.

* How to actually have fun in life.
How to live your life for NOW, not for 'later, when I'm rich/ married/ thin/ pretty/ out of school/ out of uni/ retired'.
How to accept life's downs (disability, illness, poverty, sheer bad luck) and get on with living anyway.
Basics on appreciating art, music, film, walks in the park, walks in the forest, etc.

* Basic emotional management.
Most especially, dealing with the negative emotions. But also enjoying and appreciating the positive.

* Respecting other cultures and religions.
(Preferably with some comparative religion and comparative anthropology.)

[Greenday]

I learned all of those things....doing theatre.

Look, I'm not saying that all PE is bad. I'm saying that a lot of it is pointless. I'd rather the kids be in class actually learning something - like history or math or science or literature.

What exactly is pointless? It all depends on what you want to do with life. For instance, I'm going to be working in a crime lab some day. So theoretically, for what I'm going to do in life, most literature (such as novels, poems, etc.) is pointless for me. Most sociology type things are pointless for me. Any and all art is pointless for me. I only REALLY need science, math, and criminology. So just because only those few things are relevant to what I want to do with my life doesn't mean available classes should be based on that.

[the_std]

I think children need to learn all the following stuff SOMEWHERE. School is supposed to be life prep, so let's teach them this stuff in school.

(awesome list here)

That list depresses me. I doubt I learned even a quarter of that in school. Although, I did learn most of it, either on my own or through my family/friends.

[Sylvia727]

I still haven't learned some of the things on Seshat's list, but instead learned coping mechanisms on how to deal with the knowledge's absence. Why can't school curriculums be written with an eye to what their students will really need to know?