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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Kids and PE
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
It seems to me PE would be better taught as how to keep yourself fit & healthy, with the option to play team games as a leisure pursuit.
Originally it was just preparation for combat, and I would be OK with kids being routinely taught self-defence skills in school as well.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
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Posted
I deliberately failed my hockey test - there was no way I was going out on the field against a team that would have given St Trinian's a run for their money! They were brutal!
And I would have been more interested in PE if the ones who were rubbish at it had been able to do things like discus or javelin. But only the girls who were good at sport got to do that, while we were left to run round the track. Which was boring.
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Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
Posts: 3710 | From: Hay-on-Wye, town of books | Registered: Aug 2003
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
Just a reminder of what physical education was like before competitive sports entered LEA schools.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
It seems to me PE would be better taught as how to keep yourself fit & healthy, with the option to play team games as a leisure pursuit.
It seems to me Maths would be better taught as how to manage personal finances, with the option to solve differential equations as a leisure pursuit.
Both statements have some truth.
But for many people, and many children in particular, playing team games is a good way to stay fit and healthy. "Keeping fit" for the sake of keeping fit is boring. It's like eating vegetables - another thing that is good for you, but who wants to sit down and eat their way through a plate of veg out of some kind of obligation?
Make tasty, healthy veg-laden meals, on the other hand, and people (even short ones) might want to eat them.
You don't serve the kids who enjoy kicking a football about by making them spend their PE lessons on yoga. Equally, you don't serve people like Karl by handing them some kind of a stick and a ball and watch the sporty kids on his team park them in some remote corner of the field where they can't do too much damage.
Different kids, in fact, have different needs. Why do we expect one-size-fits-all to work for PE?
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Keep fit as a lesson and team sports as an after school optional activity for the keenies, like Chess Drama club, orchestra, Wargaming, etc.?
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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TonyK
Host Emeritus
# 35
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Posted
Oh dear God - what a horrible reminder of my (long ago) youth.
Age 11 at grammar school rugby was compulsory in winter and spring terms. Without my spectacles I couldn't see the ball: with them I wasn't going to get anywhere near the action in case they got knocked off or broken.
2nd year on we could choose cross country running as an alternative. Fairly relaxed - we ran to a defined place where a teacher (who'd driven there!)would check us in. An easy jog sufficed for this. Then a relatively leisurely return to school (fast walk/slow jog) where nobody checked us. Did this until I reached the age where it was no longer compulsory.
Summer term was cricket (see objections to rugby!) or field sports. Those who were no good could go to a far corner of the field and mess around with putting the shot or throwing a discus. Nobody seemed to bother with those who had no aptitude - though we weren't allowed to try the javelin!
Also PE in the gym once a week - as you would expect, I couldn't climb more than two pulls (on a good day!) up the rope; couldn't safely vault the horse; couldn't toss a medicine ball more than a couple of feet - useless at everything.
I didn't have many friends at school, but those I did have were of a similar disposition. We usually managed to do as little as possible - which worked most times.
I agree that I was probably a terribly unfit teenager - but nothing was offered that my clumsy, uncoordinated body could actually do.
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Yours aye ... TonyK
Posts: 2717 | From: Gloucestershire | Registered: May 2001
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Activity is important. Competition is not. Liturgical exercise? Does this exist?
Did Jesus and the 12 play anything? I get the sense that they may have walked alot. Did they get get a ball and throw it around? Did they pay tag, wrestle? What were the sports other than gladiating back then? Hide and seek with Jesus would have been a hoot.
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Heh. Story is told that Jesus and Moses had a round of golf. Moses teed off, knocked the ball straight onto the green. Jesus set his ball up, then knocked it totally in the wrong direction. It hit a tree, and went down a rabbit hole. The rabbit kicked it out, it landed in a bunker where a sudden tornado picked it up and dropped it in a lake; it was then passed from fish to fish and finally spat onto the shore by a salmon where a squirrel picked it up, ran onto the green and dropped it in the hole. Moses turned to Jesus and said "look - are you playing properly or just fannying around?"
[ 03. February 2018, 23:43: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Lothlorien
Ship's Grandma
# 4927
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Posted
Like Tony K, my vision was poor. So called gymnastics on bar and springboard was ok. Ballroom dancing was appalling as I hated it. Being made to sit and pass umpire’s exams for softball was bad. Perhaps other sports but softball would never be chosen by me.
Despite wearing glasses, I had to play hockey. I quite like the game, but putting someone on the field with glasses playing wing and running up and down most of the time was madness. OHS considerations anyone?
What I say now is a general observation, not aimed at anyone in particular. When I started teaching I discovered PE teachers were at the bottom of the staff pecking order. I wonder just how much it f what they enforced was a perhaps unconscious attempt to rise in that order or to at least make their presence felt. Swimming and athletics carnivals gave them another chance to be noticed.
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Buy a bale. Help our Aussie rural communities and farmers. Another great cause needing support The High Country Patrol.
Posts: 9745 | From: girt by sea | Registered: Aug 2003
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
quote:
Hide and seek with Jesus would have been a hoot.
As would Blind Man's Bluff.
[ 04. February 2018, 01:24: Message edited by: Amanda B. Reckondwythe ]
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Japes
Shipmate
# 5358
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Posted
I so wanted to be good at sports, but wasn't. I was in a category all of my own in PE!
It was generally acknowledged I tried hard, attempted everything asked of me enough times to prove it was lack of ability not lack of effort, (which seemed to go down well with my teachers) so when, on the rare occasion, I exceeded expectations, it was acknowledged. The one and only rounder of my entire life was mentioned in assembly!
I was also allowed, unlike others, to take a discus, shot put and even a javelin to a far corner of the field, and as long as I was seen to be either throwing or walking to collect things, I wasn't bothered. Occasionally, being a boring, sensible teenager paid off...
As an adult, I've discovered long distance walking works for me. The sports staff where I work were the ones to encourage me to keep going when they realised what I was doing at the beginning, are now in awe at my distances, agree they'd struggle to keep up with me, and were the ones who lent me a pedometer until I bought one of my own when I remembered what I'd discovered as a teenager - I compete best with myself, not others. Which is where PE failed spectacularly for me - that sense of having to compete with other people all the time. It just isn't part of my make-up.
[ 04. February 2018, 05:35: Message edited by: Japes ]
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Blog may or may not be of any interest.
Posts: 2013 | From: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: Dec 2003
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Arabella Purity Winterbottom
Trumpeting hope
# 3434
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Posted
I think I must have had unusual PE teachers. One had been a funeral director and the other had an amazingly sweet soprano voice that she enjoyed sharing with the school choir. Like Curious Kitten, I was not easily able to do many activities due to the regular dislocation of both knees, but these teachers dreamed up all sorts of things I could do. I played cricket for the school team (with a runner), did orienteering until I dislocated a knee while doing it, lifted weights, and they were always happy for me to demonstrate whatever exercises I was doing for physio at the time and got the class to try them (which proved that while I might have wonky joints, my muscles were top notch). I was also allowed to go on whole-period bike rides unsupervised, which probably isn't an option these days. Cycling was a physio approved exercise.
Vale, Miss Ackerman and Mr Ormerod. Looking back, I appreciate your kindness and thoughtfulness to a girl who had no expectation of inclusion.
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Hell is full of the talented and Heaven is full of the energetic. St Jane Frances de Chantal
Posts: 3702 | From: Aotearoa, New Zealand | Registered: Oct 2002
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Keep fit as a lesson and team sports as an after school optional activity for the keenies, like Chess Drama club, orchestra, Wargaming, etc.?
But my point is that "keep fit" is shit. It is completely boring. I wasn't very good at sports at all (and am still not) but had far more fun playing indoor soccer badly than I would have had doing "keep fit", and got just as much exercise.
For me, attempting to play sports was a much better way of keeping fit than "keep fit".
I understand that from your point of view, team sports are shit, and that "keep fit" would be preferable. But we're back to different needs for different people.
If we must have one-size-fits-all PE classes (which perhaps is inevitable: if you want all the PE classes to be taught by the PE teacher(s), the fact that PE is a small part of the school week means that you can't run multiple simultaneous PE classes, and so inevitably end up with both sporty people and sport-haters in the same class.
If you want to argue that keep-fit should be part of the PE rotation, so that you play basketball one week, and do some kind of keep-fit activity the next, I'd agree that that would be reasonable. You could do "keep-fit" once or twice a month in PE lessons, and track the performance of each child so they could see how they were improving or something. That doesn't seem like an unreasonable compromise.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Isn't it odd how many of the people here are of the anti-Pe persuasion? I'm one, too.
A number of things have come to mind while reading this.
1. Being forced to do long fly in Swedish gym and utterly failing because I could not pick my hands up off the other end of the box.
2. Losing consciousness while being "taught" to swing myself upside down on the ribstalls and falling on the floor.
3. Being mocked for not being able to climb the rope. (There's a brilliant description of this situation in the early pages of Diana Wynne Jones' "Witch Week.) I was released from this shame by a colleague who had trained at Dartford PE training college, founded by the redoubtable Madame Osterberg - she of the Swedish gym, and netball, who scoffed at anyone expecting most girls to have the upper body strength.
4. Never being able to remember the rules for netball, after they changed the positions and which bits of the court one could go in.
5. Hockey on days like today with the wind fresh of the Urals, and legs all blue and purple. Strange how often I had left my boots in the next town and had to walk round the field. There was a corner out of sight, where one could climb over to the bramble patch in the curiously named Golden Valley.
6. Getting away with looking keen in hockey by playing left back in a team with a very strong forward line. Always placed myself correctly between the ball and the goal, but never had to engage with the idiotic bit of leather.
7. Pulling a muscle in a race I shouldn't have been in. We were told we could choose which to enter. I went for obstacle (need brains) and egg and spoon (need good balance), but the teacher, who did not like me, put me in for the flat race as well. I came last, in agony, and she told me I could not possible have hurt myself as I had not exerted myself to win! As if I wasn't exerting myself not to be last... The thing troubled me half my life. And the egg and spoon was won by a cheat who threw the egg ahead when it fell and ran on from where it landed.
8. Failing in the hurdles, which I had practiced successfully, because on sports day they put the things up 3 inches.
9. Failing in the (later) obstacle race because after all the balancing and crawling, we had to thread a needle! That is not, repeat not, sport.
My friend came up with a joke about the Olympics. Imagining a threat message to sabotage them, the police reported that they had narrowed down the range of suspects, since it was obviously someone who hated their PE teacher.
OTOH, I loved the stuff we did at college, went home and enthused to my mother, who told me that was what she had been taught in her training college, from the 1933 syllabus, and found her copy of it for me. Why the dickens I sent through school in utter ignorance of this, I know not. My pupils did that sort of thing, and all our in service training was on the sort of lines that each child should develop at their own pace in a creative way.
And I was good at the game of pirates - all the apparatus out, and a game of chase, because of the balance and the brains advantage. Then they banned pirates. So, in teaching, last lesson of term, I got all the apparatus out and told the pupils to visit every bit of it without touching the floor - no chase. Almost as good.
Quite fancy a game of pirates.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Better is activity built into life. Not a special activity you prepare for. Like doing the stairs at work. Use transport part way to where you go daily and walk the rest.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Pigwidgeon
Ship's Owl
# 10192
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Posted
Do any other Americans "of a certain age" remember JFK's Physical Fitness Program in the early 60s? I dreaded PE even more than usual.
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"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf
Posts: 9835 | From: Hogwarts | Registered: Aug 2005
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Climbing a rope? File that with hitting balls with a rounders bat, ice skating and getting the ball through the hole in basketball - it must be possible, because I've seen people do it, but it seems like witchcraft to me.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
My recollection of PE is that it involved little actual education. There was an assumption that as Liverpudlians we were genetically programmed to understand football, and if we didn't then we were a lost cause. Other games were slightly better but even so the approach was still a.) tell us the rules and b.) leave us to get on with it. Coaching on specific skills or techniques or tactics was a rarity.
To drag the thread back to the OP, I suppose a possible line of approach on parents' evening would be to ask, in true Ofsted fashion: What are your objectives as a teacher for this class, and how do you measure your progress towards those objectives?
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
These days teachers, even PE teachers, have to have learning objectives for every lesson, and the planning should also include differentiation. The original lesson objectives that caused the issue will have been teaching certain strokes in table tennis, because the middle group of the class are at that stage. The more able students will be able to extend themselves by including those strokes into a game. The problem is that the PE teacher will have 30 odd students in the class, and nobody spare to help the 5 who really can't keep up with the schemes of work.
Those 30 odd students will include several who will regard a table tennis bat as a helpful weapon to use in various unsafe ways, and those who are so uncoordinated as to be dangerous. If I was that PE teacher, it would be a higher priority ensuring that that no-one is damaged by anyone else, rather than someone struggling and not succeeding, as you're more likely to deal with a complaint from a parent whose child was hit around the head by a table tennis bat, accidentally or otherwise.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Walk around the room balancing the ball on the bat, and keeping it on the bat all the time.
Stay in one place, bouncing the ball a little on the bat, aiming for a specific number of bounces without dropping it. Build up the height of bounces until at eye level.
Bounce the ball between the table surface and the bat a set number of times.
I'd want next to be bouncing on a vertical surface, but not sure how the gym could accommodate that. Perhaps sitting, as in the next one, to prevent running around after the flipping thing.
In pairs, sitting on the floor with legs apart, bounce the ball between the bats, with a bounce on the floor in between hits.
Hey, I can still do this sort of thing!!!
Perhaps there could be special special needs pingpong balls which are thicker and heavier and slower?
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
But that's teaching ball handling skills at primary school. Karl's son is at secondary school where these skills are assumed to have been learned at primary school.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
But that's teaching ball handling skills at primary school. Karl's son is at secondary school where these skills are assumed to have been learned at primary school.
But, like literacy beyond the alphabet and the ability to understand fractions, it often isn't grasped at that stage, and some practical provision is required for those who have fallen through the net.
I am tempted to go back to my point that we all have bodies and we all have to relate to the physical world, preferably pleasurably, and at least in a way that doesn't cause anyone pain. Thus, the ability to deal predictably and confidently with balls (at least of a sporting nature) seems to me a lifeskill, because other things can come flying towards one, and the ability to manage them would be very advantageous.
Being musical, I do appreciate by analogy at least that it is equally important for those with a real talent in this area to be inspired to develop it, and indeed helped to do so. They can't be entirely frustrated in this by those of us to whom a ball flying towards us represents, in our mind at least, a mortal threat.
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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".
Foolish, potentially deranged witterings
Posts: 2208 | From: Norwich | Registered: Apr 2010
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Bob Two-Owls
Shipmate
# 9680
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Posted
I really liked sport but hated PE, the two things became entirely separate entities to this young Bob. My problem was that I could punt an egg between two posts, drop a little hard ball down a small hole from miles away, crack a sly six off the leg-side or slide a biscuit through the netminders knees but I can't dribble a football. This meant long hours trying to keep a football on the same field as my feet while others were playing games that I could actually do. Five years of this destroyed my interest in any kind of sport and I haven't played competitively since.
Schools should stick to basic exercise for the compulsory part, getting the blood pumping and allowing the brain to change down a gear (or up, depending on your school experience). No one should be forced to play a sport they can't do, they should be encouraged to find the best sport they can do.
Posts: 1262 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Schools these days give young people 6 week blocks of a range of different sports. I bet none of you over 30s learned table tennis in school, or Zumba, which one of my Guides is currently doing. Things on offer as part of GCSE PE include climbing, archery, boxing, weights, as well as the expected rugby, football, hockey, netball and cross country running. Lots of chances to try a range of sports to find one they like.
Also, whole school initiatives can include everyone completing a fitness test at the beginning of the year, identification of those with low fitness levels and supporting them with a lunchtime club to improve their general fitness - that's part of Healthy Schools
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Polly Plummer
Shipmate
# 13354
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Posted
I was useless at games (no hand-eye coordination) but liked them, liked dancing, but absolutely terrified of gym: I hate not having my feet firmly on the ground.
We had at one time a particularly sadistic teacher (we always thought the school appointed her because she played hockey for England, not for teaching ability) who declared that anybody could do a handstand and didn't believe me when I said I couldn't: it ended up with me with my hands on the floor, with everyone watching, while she got two of the biggest girls to lift my legs up and over, and she said that was a handstand. My friends and I all knew it wasn't, so there was a certain moral satisfaction, but it was one of my most embarrassing and least pleasant moments at school.
Posts: 577 | Registered: Jan 2008
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Schools these days give young people 6 week blocks of a range of different sports. I bet none of you over 30s learned table tennis in school, or Zumba, which one of my Guides is currently doing. Things on offer as part of GCSE PE include climbing, archery, boxing, weights, as well as the expected rugby, football, hockey, netball and cross country running. Lots of chances to try a range of sports to find one they like.
Also, whole school initiatives can include everyone completing a fitness test at the beginning of the year, identification of those with low fitness levels and supporting them with a lunchtime club to improve their general fitness - that's part of Healthy Schools
He has few enough GCSE slots for important subject without wasting one on PE; I doubt they'd let him anyway. Schools vary; his (nearing retirement) previous PE teacher tended to abandon whatever he was meant to be doing in favour of More Bloody F**tb*ll. The current one's a bit better but the menu is still repetitive.
[ 04. February 2018, 22:04: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Another who hated hated HATED PE, and got bullied. etc. I have hypermobile joints and asthma to boot, so was never able to do freaking ANYTHING without mucking it up. And of course PE was every freaking day...
They actually put me in remedial PE for a while, which meant taking me out of archery (the one thing on the curriculum I might have had a fighting chance to do) and making me run laps on asphalt instead. Did I mention one of my legs is not straight?
Feh.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Japes
Shipmate
# 5358
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Posted
You lose your bet, CK.
I'm well over 30, and definitely learned table tennis at school. In fact, occasionally, I was very good at it, just not consistently so and it stood me in very good stead in later years in residential schools work.
We did the rotate round several indoor activities in the winter (think we did four weeks) in the late 70s and could choose which one we'd prefer once we'd had a go at the lot. From memory, badminton, volleyball, trampolining, table tennis and fencing. Also traditional gym stuff, which again, we had to have a go at, but could get out of fast!!
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Blog may or may not be of any interest.
Posts: 2013 | From: Somewhere in the middle | Registered: Dec 2003
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
To be honest, I suspect that table tennis was an option when I took canoeing on Wednesday afternoons in the fifth form, but it would have been the choice of the popular kids, whereas I actually wanted to learn canoeing, which had nothing to do with not wanting to humiliate myself by missing a small moving ball - another one wearing hefty glasses from primary school.
The school I attended for sixth form (in a different part of the country) let us pretty much choose what we wanted to do in PE sessions. It had a swimming pool and let us set up gym equipment between us, so I wouldn't have looked for a ball game to lose. There were canoes, but no-one to canoe with, so that wasn't possible. Someone used his PE sessions to practise his golf swing.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Another PE hater here. My low point was rounders, one of the few things I was actually good at because I bat left-handed and tended to take the fielders by surprise. My PE teacher told me that I had to bat right-handed (left-handed was "cheating" apparently) and that was that. I still enjoyed playing rounders at Guides, where there was no right-handed rule, but school rounders was miserable.
Originally posted by Curiosity killed:
quote:
Also, whole school initiatives can include everyone completing a fitness test at the beginning of the year, identification of those with low fitness levels and supporting them with a lunchtime club to improve their general fitness - that's part of Healthy Schools
This happened at my kids' school. Both my kids have a minor issue with their hips. Fortunately it was picked up when they were little, they both had physio exercises and good advice from the NHS which we followed, and the impact on them has been minimal. The school knew their issues and were open to adapting. The exception was the bloody fitness bleep tests which fell under a different heading than "P.E." Both my kids wobble when doing a 180 degree turn, they will always do badly on bleep tests. They were always identified as having a low fitness level, though fortunately their PE teachers knew that neither of them was unfit, so didn't make an issue of it. It really annoyed me if my kids came limping home because of the fitness bleep tests. I wonder if it was some Scottish equivalent of Healthy Schools?
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
I am tempted to go back to my point that we all have bodies and we all have to relate to the physical world, preferably pleasurably, and at least in a way that doesn't cause anyone pain. Thus, the ability to deal predictably and confidently with balls (at least of a sporting nature) seems to me a lifeskill, because other things can come flying towards one, and the ability to manage them would be very advantageous.
This is where I’m not convinced. My brain is just completely and utterly lacking the circuit that calculates the trajectory of missiles. I suck at throwing and catching. This has next to no impact on my daily life as an adult. It is a highly overrated skill.
I really don’t think the point of PE is to get fit, or if it is, in my case it was spectacularly counterproductive. Pretty much all the activities that I was forced to do at school involved throwing and catching, and I sucked at all of them. I left school convinced that exercise was nothing but misery and was determined never to do it again. It was only in my late twenties that I discovered types of exercise that I was actually ok at and enjoyed (running and hiking) and got fit for the first time in my life. Neither of the above was ever offered to me at school. I was never more pleased with myself than when I managed to game the timetable in the sixth form so that I had only one period of PE per week, by which time all the equipment was already taken and I could sit around on the floor in the gym doing the odd sit-up and nothing else.
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Rent my holiday home in the South of France
Posts: 3696 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
Thus, the ability to deal predictably and confidently with balls (at least of a sporting nature) seems to me a lifeskill, because other things can come flying towards one, and the ability to manage them would be very advantageous.
I don't buy this in the slightest. When on earth in your normal life do you encounter objects flying at you where the proper response is to trap in on your chest and volley it into the corner of the net, or to hit it over the roof of a nearby building with the stick you happen to be carrying, or anything like that?
When, in fact, in your normal life, do things come flying at you at all?
If I could go back to my mathematical analogy for a moment, I think we'd all agree that there are a set of things (budgeting, being able to write a check, read a credit card statement, understand a payslip, file a tax return) that are life skills that everyone should have. I think we'd all also agree that solving differential equations is a useful skill for some people, and will always remain beyond the ken of some other people.
I think it's also obviously true that to best serve both the people who solve differential equations and the people who can't add fractions, you need to teach them budgeting and financial life skills in different ways.
Isn't there a PE parallel? Being sufficiently fit and active to support ones health is the universal desirable goal; this looks different for sporty kids and ball-avoiders.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Pigwidgeon
Ship's Owl
# 10192
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Posted
When I started college we were still required to take PE (I think it was for our first two years). At the end of my first year -- field hockey mostly -- they did away with the requirement. I'm glad they got rid of it, but couldn't they have done it a year or so earlier?
![[Mad]](angryfire.gif)
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"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf
Posts: 9835 | From: Hogwarts | Registered: Aug 2005
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Nicolemr
Shipmate
# 28
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Posted
PE was one of the banes of my young existence. I was bullied mercilessly in general, and in gym it was worse. I remember with particular horror trying to make a basket in basketball, and trying to learn how to climb a rope. In retrospect, I don't remember anyone trying to actively teach me these things, just being expected to know how, and failing.
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On pilgrimage in the endless realms of Cyberia, currently traveling by ship. Now with live journal!
Posts: 11803 | From: New York City "The City Carries On" | Registered: May 2001
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
If we're reminiscing about our childhood experiences, I suspect my Anglican boarding school wins for the most extreme. There's a film about it from 1974. Watchable online: The New Boys by the National Film Board of Canada. Basics: canoe trips in June and in the fall, of somewhere in the vicinity of 1000 miles, snowshoe training and racing for a 50 mile race. (They did not make a man of me) Anglicans were right crazy for a spell in Canada.
[ 06. February 2018, 21:01: Message edited by: no prophet's flag is set so... ]
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Any time as an adult when missiles of any kind have come flying at me, being able to hit them with any kind of wooden stick would not have been a useful skill, and I never had such a stick on me at the time anyway. Usually it's moths. ThunderBunk, I don't now what you think you were saying, but what you said is inane.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pigwidgeon:
When I started college we were still required to take PE (I think it was for our first two years). At the end of my first year -- field hockey mostly -- they did away with the requirement. I'm glad they got rid of it, but couldn't they have done it a year or so earlier?
That's pretty much the attitude I have to being forced to take GCSE French, a requirement that disappeared 2 years later.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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Pigwidgeon
Ship's Owl
# 10192
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:
Originally posted by Pigwidgeon:
When I started college we were still required to take PE (I think it was for our first two years). At the end of my first year -- field hockey mostly -- they did away with the requirement. I'm glad they got rid of it, but couldn't they have done it a year or so earlier?
That's pretty much the attitude I have to being forced to take GCSE French, a requirement that disappeared 2 years later.
They dumped a lot of general requirements that year. I suffered through many courses (Western Civilization ![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif) ) just to get my requirements out of the way, all for nothing.
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"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf
Posts: 9835 | From: Hogwarts | Registered: Aug 2005
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Spike
Mostly Harmless
# 36
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
A GCSE language is a requirement of the EBacc.
OK, so imagine a child has genuine problems getting to grips with a language. What does the teacher do to address that? Then think about how the Slideret's teacher addresses his problem with hitting a ball. Notice a difference?
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"May you get to heaven before the devil knows you're dead" - Irish blessing
Posts: 12860 | From: The Valley of Crocuses | Registered: May 2001
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
The kids that are not going to achieve an EBacc are being excluded into alternative provision across the country. Alternative provision placements are being judged on the same OFSTED criteria as main stream schools and being labelled as failing as a result.
This situation was entirely predictable and why the Head Teachers' Round Table suggested a tiered qualifications framework that allowed students who were not coping with foreign languages and other esoteric subjects to follow a different curriculum. Gove did not agree so we've got the current delight of his National Curriculum which is "more academically rigorous" (ie impossible for a significant number of students), harder subject levels for all, Progress 8 and the EBacc.
Fortunately for the Backslideret, PE is not an EBacc required subject, but an optional extra.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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luvanddaisies
the'fun'in'fundie'™
# 5761
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Posted
In my primary school PE was taught to us on the understanding that the point was to WIN! Coming second was just the loser who came closest.
This approach pervaded everything from hockey to athletics. At 7 we were being taught techniques for getting off starting blocks, and in swimming classes even the non-swimmers and poor swimmers group (these are my people!) had lessons on efficient technique, streamlined body shape, optimal hand shaping and so on - stuff more appropriate to the top group who had a chance of making school teams some day.
I hated PE, which is a pity because I was actually really quite good at netball, but unfortunately wasalso a popular target for bullying, so if I did happen to miss a goal during a game I knew I’d be getting some level of punishment in the changing rooms after (our PE teachers would turn a blind eye to ‘deserved’ retribution such as that for missing a shot). This was exacerbated by us having fixed teams. In hockey, for example, after the first week’s lessons where we went through drills, testing and so on we were given positions and put into teams. These positions would be the ones we would play and train in from when we were 8 throughout school (I left before the secondary school part of that school, so have no idea if it continued into secondary school. It’s likely). Defenders did some different drills from attackers, and we never practised with goalkeepers as it supposedly made the defence lazy.
In my secondary school I didn’t mind PE. We had to do it every day after academic lessons were done, sometimes just a walk, sometimes team games or whatever activity they came up with, but it wasn’t a thing that was a big deal to be good at, being academic and a bit odd was more highly valued generally (it was an unusual school!). I enjoyed it more then.
It’s not everybody’s thing, and not everybody should be forced into sports, but at the same time exercise is a necessary thing, and finding ways to keep one’s body healthy and ticking over should be the aim. Sadly though PE teachers seem to buy into the societal idea that sport is a thing that everybody should enjoy - there’s never a special daily music section at the end of every single paper, the achievements of scientists aren’t a fixture in a special dedicated section at the end of every news broadcast, and international chess tournaments don’t take up millions of column centimetres for weeks beforehand and after.
If the focus wasn’t on being good at it, but just at finding a way to move about a bit, maybe have some sort of fun, but at least not being miserable, then people like most of us on this thread wouldn’t have spent those years so pissed off about the whole thing. If people want to play team games they should have to fit it into their lunchtimes and after schools, like the chess club or the orchestra or the warhammer society. It might also mean people realise that hobbies shouldn’t have a hierarchy. People mock Cosplayers going to cons and memorising the minutiae of their favourite things, but people yelling at a football match and knowing players and stats going back decades are admired. Fuck That.
TLDR - society is rotten in how it views sport and exercise and I’m overtired and rambling.
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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." (Mark Twain)
Posts: 3711 | From: all at sea. | Registered: Apr 2004
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
The kids that are not going to achieve an EBacc are being excluded into alternative provision across the country. Alternative provision placements are being judged on the same OFSTED criteria as main stream schools and being labelled as failing as a result.
This situation was entirely predictable and why the Head Teachers' Round Table suggested a tiered qualifications framework that allowed students who were not coping with foreign languages and other esoteric subjects to follow a different curriculum. Gove did not agree so we've got the current delight of his National Curriculum which is "more academically rigorous" (ie impossible for a significant number of students), harder subject levels for all, Progress 8 and the EBacc.
Fortunately for the Backslideret, PE is not an EBacc required subject, but an optional extra.
Interestingly a foreign language isn't compulsory at Boy #1's school. He eagerly awaits giving up Spanish at the end of the year. I love languages but like him am bloody useless at learning them so I can't really blame him.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by luvanddaisies:
In my primary school PE was taught to us on the understanding that the point was to WIN! Coming second was just the loser who came closest.
This approach pervaded everything from hockey to athletics. At 7 we were being taught techniques for getting off starting blocks, and in swimming classes even the non-swimmers and poor swimmers group (these are my people!) had lessons on efficient technique, streamlined body shape, optimal hand shaping and so on - stuff more appropriate to the top group who had a chance of making school teams some day.
I hated PE, which is a pity because I was actually really quite good at netball, but unfortunately wasalso a popular target for bullying, so if I did happen to miss a goal during a game I knew I’d be getting some level of punishment in the changing rooms after (our PE teachers would turn a blind eye to ‘deserved’ retribution such as that for missing a shot). This was exacerbated by us having fixed teams. In hockey, for example, after the first week’s lessons where we went through drills, testing and so on we were given positions and put into teams. These positions would be the ones we would play and train in from when we were 8 throughout school (I left before the secondary school part of that school, so have no idea if it continued into secondary school. It’s likely). Defenders did some different drills from attackers, and we never practised with goalkeepers as it supposedly made the defence lazy.
In my secondary school I didn’t mind PE. We had to do it every day after academic lessons were done, sometimes just a walk, sometimes team games or whatever activity they came up with, but it wasn’t a thing that was a big deal to be good at, being academic and a bit odd was more highly valued generally (it was an unusual school!). I enjoyed it more then.
It’s not everybody’s thing, and not everybody should be forced into sports, but at the same time exercise is a necessary thing, and finding ways to keep one’s body healthy and ticking over should be the aim. Sadly though PE teachers seem to buy into the societal idea that sport is a thing that everybody should enjoy - there’s never a special daily music section at the end of every single paper, the achievements of scientists aren’t a fixture in a special dedicated section at the end of every news broadcast, and international chess tournaments don’t take up millions of column centimetres for weeks beforehand and after.
If the focus wasn’t on being good at it, but just at finding a way to move about a bit, maybe have some sort of fun, but at least not being miserable, then people like most of us on this thread wouldn’t have spent those years so pissed off about the whole thing. If people want to play team games they should have to fit it into their lunchtimes and after schools, like the chess club or the orchestra or the warhammer society. It might also mean people realise that hobbies shouldn’t have a hierarchy. People mock Cosplayers going to cons and memorising the minutiae of their favourite things, but people yelling at a football match and knowing players and stats going back decades are admired. Fuck That.
TLDR - society is rotten in how it views sport and exercise and I’m overtired and rambling.
All this. Why are sports so privileged over other hobbies and pastimes? Spend eight hours a week playing D&D and you're a nerd; spend it in the swimming pool and you're a dedicated inspiring young athlete.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
Yea and amen to what Luv and Daisies said - what excellent sense!
PE was compulsory twice a week the whole way through my secondary schooling, and even when I did my secretarial certificate, we had at least an hour of it a week - although at least at that stage we got rather more fun things to do like archery, trampolining and volleyball.
I can see the point of physical activity being good for you, but honestly, if they wanted to encourage me to carry on with it into adulthood, they could have made it a lot more enjoyable than it was.
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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Gill H
Shipmate
# 68
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Posted
I’ve been listening to ‘Brave New World’ on Radio 4 lately (a book I first read aged 11, along with 1984 - now that was a depressing summer...)
The mention of ‘heretical views on sport’ reminded me of this thread. Evidently there are plenty of us heretics.
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*sigh* We can’t all be Alan Cresswell.
- Lyda Rose
Posts: 9313 | From: London | Registered: May 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Why are sports so privileged over other hobbies and pastimes? Spend eight hours a week playing D&D and you're a nerd; spend it in the swimming pool and you're a dedicated inspiring young athlete.
Not all sports ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Spend eight hours a week fencing, and you're still a nerd.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
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Posted
I didn't realise it when I was younger, but what I actually couldn't do was team sports. Any sort of activity that I could do on my own to try to improve my technique, particularly timing myself against the clock and comparing my previous score, well that was very motivating and just perfect.
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Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.
Posts: 34626 | From: Cream Tealand | Registered: Jun 2001
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Being the last one picked. Whoever thought that was a good idea?
There are other ways of getting children into teams.
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