6 ms·

Gym Class Is So Bad, Kids Are Skipping School to Avoid It

67 points by dorkwood 8y ago

mfoy_ 8y ago
If it were more about physical education (literally) and had less emphasis on actually doing intense exercises I think it would be a lot more beneficial. Leave the crazy intense physical activities to extracurriculars. No personal trainer would create a one-size-fits-all training routine, but for some young students that's literally the entirety of what "gym class" entails. By Physical Education, I mean learn about basic health issues, commons diseases and symptoms to look out for, learn the importance of diet and exercise, standard first aid, that kind of thing.
- satokema 8y ago
  Even the physical activity isn't bad - but it's completely unfocused. One week you're running laps, the next you're playing random ball games. You learn a little about stuff in the weight room, but not enough where you can run a good routine after the fact. At no point is there any option of "hey, let's tailor a fitness goal and plan for you to stick to for the majority of your life". But then again, the goal of schools isn't to maximize pleb fitness, right?
  - mfoy_ 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure the purpose of the modern gym curriculum is to create more meat for the college-football grinder.
    - chrsstrm 8y ago
      No. Athletes aren’t discovered in gym class, they are recruited to play in middle school. Unless you transferred in from some other school, the coaches already know who you are and what position they want you to play. [edit] and to clarify, I’m talking about high school coaches, not college.
    - arkitaip 8y ago
      Modern P.E. (and many sports) goes back to at least antiquity where the need for militarization in society was greater. Military training has set the standard for exercise and sports because it provided an established system of collective activities and clear outcomes to promote strength, discipline and collaboration. Qualities that any military force needs.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > Modern P.E. (and many sports) goes back to at least antiquity where the need for militarization in society was greater. Honestly, even without the need, it would probably be better if modern PE was structured with the intent of preparing students as much as individually practical for participation in the universal militia, even if we know to a relative high degree of certaintt that those who don't volunteer are unlikely to be called to serve, with a curriculum cooperatively designed by experts in child physical development, child intellectual and social development, and modern military operations and civil emergency operations. As it is, it seems to be an unfocussed and poorly directed afterthought that remains around because eliminating it would offend people, but without a strong purpose or any concern from policy makers except firefighting reacting to problems that emerge as the unmaintained structure clashes with evolving social values.
bittermang 8y ago
I think the worst thing about gym is that I didn't learn anything there. I didn't learn about calories, or healthy eating. I didn't learn about basic cardio, why it's good for you, or how often to do it. I didn't learn about how to build muscle, what reps or sets were. Gym amounts to mindless busywork. Do stuff or you get an F. It could serve as a foundation of knowledge to set yourself up for healthy habits for the rest of your life. Instead, it has the opposite effect of training you to hate fitness.
- coryrc 8y ago
  I have a lot of complaints about the rural Michigan school I went to, but we learned all those things in middle school PE.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    Yeah, same here in WI.
    - jgys 8y ago
      Same in rural (or “exurban,” really, especially by the time I finished high school in 2005) Minnesota.
  - borkt 8y ago
    I went to school in the north bay area, slightly rural. PE taught all of those things, the teachers were great at teaching proper form in weightlifting, the mile "times" required were easy for anyone who didn't walk. I really am not understanding why every comment but yours seems to think PE is possibly the worst experience of their entire education.
- sethammons 8y ago
  It seems to be getting worse. At least it used to be "do something with physical activity." You might do half-assed basketball or running or something. Now, at least in the part of California I was formerly in, they were not able to require kids to actually do anything. Kid wants to stand around? Ok, go for it. Then you toss in required testing and metrics, and now gym (aka P.E.) has written tests on stuff. Not sure what stuff as I stopped paying attention.
kerrsclyde 8y ago
When I was at school you were sneered at by teachers for anything less than upper average performance - imagine that happening in maths or English classes. It took me years to recover, I never did any more structured exercise until I was in my late 30's, now I love it.
- davros 8y ago
  Ahhh - bad memories of humiliation and bullying. Took me 2 decades to realise I can actually love sport, sad to see that happening to the current generation.
  - ChristianGeek 8y ago
    Yep. I’m 57 and I still hate all forms of exercise thanks to my experience in gym class.
Animats 8y ago
Ah, the days when the US had Government-ordered fat shaming.[1] "Give that chicken fat back to the chicken and don't be chicken again." "Nuts to the flabby guys." [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFofqe26t-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFofqe26t-4
- starpilot 8y ago
  Ah.
desc 8y ago
It's the same problem everything suffers from: meeting targets rather than doing a good job.
yoz-y 8y ago
Before I moved to France I hated P.E. classes. But I think they did something right here. The year is divided into three sports that you do for three months each. There is always an individual sport (track, swimming) a team sport (rugby, handball) and a one on one (e.g.: badminton). Emphasis is on knowledge of oneself, for example for track you have to predict your time for 3x500m run and you get 1/3 of points this way. If you predict too low or high, you will lose on grade. This means that you actually have to get to know your limits. The only issue I had was for team sports where the individual differences are just way too high to construct a game interesting for everybody.
- GuiA 8y ago
  Yeah, I didn't particularly care for PE as a French kid growing up, but in hindsight I can play pretty much any common sport decently because of it. One unexpected side effect is that it makes socializing quite easy - I can accept when someone invites me to play tennis, volleyball, etc. because I have some basic grasp of the sport from school. In fact, when I moved to California, I saw that everyone was really into climbing, and started doing it too because I had done it in school, even though I had never been into it at the time.
- dangerbird2 8y ago
  I went to a private school in the US that had a similar setup. For each 3 month season, everyone was required to either join an interscholastic team or participate in an intramural sport with daily practice. Aside from certain high-popularity sports like basketball and lacrosse, pretty much everyone got to play whatever sport they wanted to. If you didn't like team sports you could join the running/weight lifting individual fitness group. The fact we had some agency in how we structured our excercise made athletics way more enjoyable minimized the bullying and unhelpful busywork inherrent in traditional P.E.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
e40 8y ago
My son did crew to avoid gym class. Turns out he really liked it, but the motivation was a hatred of gym class.
Mirioron 8y ago
I hated gym class the most out of all the classes in school. It felt like torture. But then again, I have asthma and nobody had explained to me back then what asthma meant for gym class. Outside of that, I have to agree that gym class didn't really teach me anything.
b0bby_tabl3s 8y ago
Welcome to the emasculation of America.
0xFACEFEED 8y ago
That's sad. In my high school days (2000s) gym class was just as bad. I skipped it every time, flunked it, and took a health night class to make it up. I liked going to school at night and health class was awesome so it was worth it :) The worst part of gym class was the bullying. The aggressors usually got energized through gym class and started messing with other students right after. Gym classes were pretty big and we often had "do what you want" days so idle/bored bullies went into action some more.
BucketSort 8y ago
Am I wrong in thinking that technology amplifies how we gauge the energy required for physical activity? With just a few moves of my finger I can watch a video, read a paper, talk to people, etc. Contrast that with running, lifting, etc. The effort required for the comparatively minute results we achieve seem dramatic across this contrast. I wonder if having computers with an internet connection in their pocket at all times is making kids lazy... which may be an additional factor in this reported situation.
pkaye 8y ago
They need to have less competitive sports where everyone focuses on themselves. Team sports like football and softball causes lots of bullying of weaker and non-athletic kids because everyone else is drive to make their team win.
mrob 8y ago
I'm convinced that gym class results in millions of lost disability-adjusted life years for every generation. Kids are either naturally athletic, in which case they'll exercise whether you want them to or not, or they are naturally nonathletic, in which case gym class just teaches them that exercise is the officially sanctioned method adults use to bully kids. It took me about ten years to figure out that exercise could be enjoyable when it's not forced on you by the psychopaths who end up as gym teachers. Gym class should be banned, or if that's politically impossible, the job should be assigned by sortition like jury duty. Nobody who wants to be a gym teacher should be allowed to do it.
logfromblammo 8y ago
Three words: Shirts. Versus. Skins.
- taude 8y ago
  Haa...I remember those days. Actually, I saw some kids playing pond hockey yesterday who were playing shirts vs skins in the 40 degree (f) temperatures.
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
A counter opinion: I wasn't that great. But I found out that, if I got open in the end zone, they'd throw me the ball, and I could catch it. This led to me going out for the football team. I wasn't that great there, either. I was like fifth or sixth on the depth chart. But it led to a lifetime of being in fairly decent shape. (Note well: Gym class itself did not lead to a lifetime of being in fairly decent shape. But the exposure to various sports, and finding one that I liked and did all right at, was still a big deal. Also note that this was in the 1970s; things may well be worse now.)
mti27 8y ago
We had an odd thing in elementary school gym class - parachutes! We sat around a parachute on the floor, and the teacher would play a record (it was the 80s) that would tell us when to raise/lower our arms then swap places by running under it when it was above us.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  I think this was really common in the 80s/90s in the US.
aaron695 8y ago
Two things predict success, which correlates to health and happiness, in life well, IQ and Conscientiousness. Schools can't teach IQ. Does gym teach conscientiousness? I don't know, but for smart kids academic high school classes certainly don't. School should not be easy for anyone including smart kids, it needs to challenge. “These adolescents were not enjoying the daily P.E. requirements and would’ve rather skipped school,” Swap that with work and you get life. At what stage do you teach children to be adults?
sliken 8y ago
I have to say Gym for my 14 year old has turned from one of her favorite classes to one of the worst. It seems like a pretty rigid curriculum that's centered around various easy to quantify things (like time to run a mile) and not anything to do with being healthy, exercising, or having fun. So they keep them on the asphalt for an hour when it's 110F. They teach them dancing and changing partners every 30 seconds during flu season. They have then run through muddy grass when it's raining. More like a boot camp than anything fun/healthy.
- riskneutral 8y ago
  > run through muddy grass when it's raining Will the horrors never end?
  - sliken 8y ago
    Try spending 8 hours working productively with cold soaking wet feet the squish when you walk.
DigiMortal 8y ago
My high school removed dodgeballs and gave us these foam bullshit things that didn't even work. So that was the end of PE, at least for me...
glangdale 8y ago
It seems to be terrible in both Australia and the USA, over a long period. My son's Judo instructors had much more fond memories of European style instruction, which sounded considerably more demanding, but more structured and educational. Part of the problem to my way of thinking was that PE class, by high school, has just become a way of glorifying those who already have physical prowess at the expense of everyone else. This is not helped by the fact that most PE teachers, in my experience, were the most avid disciplinarians and the least intelligent teachers of anyone I encountered. It's a pity. It could be done way better. They would have to start earlier, set higher standards for the kids (while practicing positivity and focusing on how much they can improve everyone), and VASTLY increase the quality of the teachers. It also wouldn't hurt to reemphasize the offering of a wide variety of sports for everyone (rather than focusing all resources on a few chosen teams, or, like most schools I know about in Australia now, just not really having sport anymore).
johnohara 8y ago
The problem with gym class lesson plans is they gradually become "laminated" so all you have to do is wipe them with a paper towel when you spill your coffee on them.
preommr 8y ago
Kind of funny how so many people here (myself included) hated gym class because of being bullied or being physically awkward. I wonder if this is a widespread issue or if it's just that hackernews is full of nerds.
whatsAgym 8y ago
In gym class, I learned how to show up, have a locker in a locker room, register a combination lock, change into a different set of clothes for some reason, sit on benches, amble aimlessly around a basketball court, meander listlessly across a soccer field, get yelled at for anything baseball, and run in circles if we were supposed to be playing two-hand-touch football, trying not to get tackled by the kids with a size advantage who wanted to beat the fuck out of everyone else. The coaches basically did not give a fuck about gym as a class, and only used it as additional opportunities to fraternize with the picks for the sports teams, if present. Gym was a study hall, where you got a B if you changed into your gym outfit, and an A if you were on a sports team. Inevitably, the slow kids and the combative kids filled out the rest of the curve, with the kids who cut class supplying the average number of D and F grades. There were also the large varsity senior predation upon wimpy, nerdy freshman hazing incidents, but by the end of the 1990's it was less common. Wives tales from the 70's and 80's with direct witnesses and evidence, but still, a thing of the past. Kids cared more about getting laid, and going out to lunch in status symbol cars, than making other people miserable.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
The comments here are really confusing me. I went to a New England public school. Gym was mostly a fun team sport game that rotated every month or so. I was very athletic. Most of my friends were the opposite. I believe we all had a good time regardless.
dangerbird2 8y ago
In lieu of gym class, my school required us to participate in a club sport or school team every season. We actually got much more exercise having gym every few days, and the fact that we got to choose what sport to play made it something we could get personally invested in, even people who were not naturally athletic.
fromthestart 8y ago
I don't understand all of these complaints. Is the solution to difficult coursework to do away with lessons? Why are physical challenges treated so differently from mental difficulties? Sure, not everyone is athletic, but the fact that not everyone is studious and intelligent is not a reason to avoid encouraging people to be so by sending them to school. I think what we really need is a serious, rigid, disciplined curriculum in PE. That probably doesn't involve team sports so much as learning to exercise for fitness and self improvement, totally different from the half-assed gym classes that we have in the US now. Bullying is a symptom of other problems and is not an argument against good physical education. Perhaps if ours hadn't turned into such a sensitive, coddling culture, we wouldn't have a 40% obesity rate[1]. 1.https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
paulpauper 8y ago
During gym we did running, sit-ups, volleyball and kickball. Wish we done weights instead. no one on YouTube is making money with jogging and sit-up videos. it's all weight lifting.
2bitencryption 8y ago
things i remember from gym class in middle school/high school: * gym class was every single day, 5th grade until 12th grade. * mile run every Friday (I hated it, but it did help me get to sub-7 mins by high school, for someone who was never athletic) * heart-rate monitors we wore that strapped across our chests. every day we had to get our monitor and apply this gross conductive gel to the device and strap it around our bare skin at chest level. you got credit for the gym period if you got >15mins of HR above 120. * Badminton! * Those scooters with wheels on them. * Step-aerobics. Holy cow. Exercising with plastic stools. * A locker room with showers, which showers I have never seen anyone use once. * line dancing for some reason?
jmpman 8y ago
My school district required gym for everyone from jr high through high school. Did I enjoy it? No. Has it been useful for the rest of my life? Absolutely. If it weren’t for those PE classes, I wouldn’t feel comfortable at the gym with free weights, and wouldn’t know how fast I can be at running. It changed my life despite being my least favorite class. I’d recommend daily gym be required for my children.
supermw 8y ago
I was fortunate that my highschool offered a choice between PE and weightlifting classes. PE has clearly always been for suckers, I remember seeing kids playing volleyball or soccer or running 3 times a week in the hot sun with no sunscreen, half of them not really even giving a fuck, and thinking how I had NO desire to be a part of that mess. Weightlifting by contrast, was not only an easier class but also much more educational. It was like going to the gym and having a personal trainer plan your workout and give you advice. The coaches wrote up an exercise plan on the whiteboard and you just went and did it on your own, occasionally they walked around making sure people weren't goofing off. If you wanted to slack off it was easy to just do light weights and go through the motions but most people actually did put in effort to see physical change in their bodies (and of course there's always peer pressure to be strong and fit, especially with girls watching). And because weightlifting has natural downtime in between reps you could socialize freely. The stuff I learned in that class helped me to not be clueless when I went to an actual gym by myself. In fact, I've been going to the gym regularly ever since that class ended.
smittywerben 8y ago
I didn't want to have PE at 7am and be sweaty and stinky for the next 5 hours. On sport teams we showered but that's the people wanted to be there. > why this particular P.E. program was counterproductive... points to bullying... it facilitates the teasing of overweight or unathletic kids. Making PE more strict on _everyone_ because of the _few_ promotes the exact opposite of the desired result. It's fallacious to believe the obese are that way because they are bullied. We divert dumb kids, yes? Why is it insensitive for the obese? Mixing these groups destroys morale. Varsity kids workout together, junior-varsity work out together, etc, because it works. The administration babysits warm bodies for cash. The PE teachers will end up taking the blame for giving kids their recess back.
starpilot 8y ago
I loved gym class. It was easy and a relief. Some of the sports I really enjoyed, like floor hockey and soccer. There were some lame ones too, and also some creepy behavior from the male gym teachers toward certain female students. But other than that it was the easiest part of the school day. I could turn off my brain and work up a sweat.
closeparen 8y ago
My two most excruciating memories of physical unpleasantness: having strep throat, and cooling down after “the mile” in middle school gym class. Gym class taught me that a healthy lifestyle is about extreme discipline and regular self-torture. It took me a decade to discover that you could ramp up into exercise in a way that didn’t make you want to die, and to make sense of the way other people talked about having any kind of positive experiences with it.
Tomminn 8y ago
People don't like to be in situations where they are stack-ranked according to a skill they are bad at. Stereotypical jocks lose when you stack-rank them in a random math class, so the second they can drop maths they do. And before that, they might wag it. Stereotypical nerds lose when you stack-rank them in a random p.e. class, so the second they can drop p.e. they do. And before that, they might wag it. When you force people in the bottom end of skill distribution into a stack rank system, it does real damage to their self esteem. And this will essentially traumatize them from actually achieving growth in the subject. And that growth is actually important. Stereotypical jocks are much better off for not being afraid of maths. Stereotypical nerds are much better off for not being afraid of exercise. One solution is pretty simple. Isolate the top, say, 10-20% of performers in each skill, and stack-rank away if you want. They'll have enough self esteem with respect to the skill to be motivated by the open competition. But most of all, just isolate them from the rest. With the rest, you'll probably have more luck with a growth mindset type philosophy. Do whatever you can to take focus away from absolute performance metrics, and get them to focus on their own growth. And keep them the hell away from that top 10-20%. Ideally, you follow this principle through all the way through the skill distribution and organize classes into quintiles of ability. Just remember, if you're going to rank people, then isolate them from people they can't compete with. It takes a very unusual kid/teenager to come away motivated by the experience of being totally dominated in some area.
Simulacra 8y ago
Gym was awful. The teachers were awful, the bullies were awful, we learned absolutely nothing and felt like they were just trying to make us expend energy. What time would’ve better been spent in a class talking about cooking and nutrition, and how to prepare healthy meals

67 points by dorkwood 8y ago

If it were more about physical education (literally) and had less emphasis on actually doing intense exercises I think it would be a lot more beneficial. Leave the crazy intense physical activities to extracurriculars. No personal trainer would create a one-size-fits-all training routine, but for some young students that's literally the entirety of what "gym class" entails. By Physical Education, I mean learn about basic health issues, commons diseases and symptoms to look out for, learn the importance of diet and exercise, standard first aid, that kind of thing.

satokema 8y ago
Even the physical activity isn't bad - but it's completely unfocused. One week you're running laps, the next you're playing random ball games. You learn a little about stuff in the weight room, but not enough where you can run a good routine after the fact. At no point is there any option of "hey, let's tailor a fitness goal and plan for you to stick to for the majority of your life". But then again, the goal of schools isn't to maximize pleb fitness, right?
- mfoy_ 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure the purpose of the modern gym curriculum is to create more meat for the college-football grinder.
  - chrsstrm 8y ago
    No. Athletes aren’t discovered in gym class, they are recruited to play in middle school. Unless you transferred in from some other school, the coaches already know who you are and what position they want you to play. [edit] and to clarify, I’m talking about high school coaches, not college.
  - arkitaip 8y ago
    Modern P.E. (and many sports) goes back to at least antiquity where the need for militarization in society was greater. Military training has set the standard for exercise and sports because it provided an established system of collective activities and clear outcomes to promote strength, discipline and collaboration. Qualities that any military force needs.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Modern P.E. (and many sports) goes back to at least antiquity where the need for militarization in society was greater. Honestly, even without the need, it would probably be better if modern PE was structured with the intent of preparing students as much as individually practical for participation in the universal militia, even if we know to a relative high degree of certaintt that those who don't volunteer are unlikely to be called to serve, with a curriculum cooperatively designed by experts in child physical development, child intellectual and social development, and modern military operations and civil emergency operations. As it is, it seems to be an unfocussed and poorly directed afterthought that remains around because eliminating it would offend people, but without a strong purpose or any concern from policy makers except firefighting reacting to problems that emerge as the unmaintained structure clashes with evolving social values.

bittermang 8y ago

I think the worst thing about gym is that I didn't learn anything there. I didn't learn about calories, or healthy eating. I didn't learn about basic cardio, why it's good for you, or how often to do it. I didn't learn about how to build muscle, what reps or sets were. Gym amounts to mindless busywork. Do stuff or you get an F. It could serve as a foundation of knowledge to set yourself up for healthy habits for the rest of your life. Instead, it has the opposite effect of training you to hate fitness.

coryrc 8y ago
I have a lot of complaints about the rural Michigan school I went to, but we learned all those things in middle school PE.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  Yeah, same here in WI.
  - jgys 8y ago
    Same in rural (or “exurban,” really, especially by the time I finished high school in 2005) Minnesota.
- borkt 8y ago
  I went to school in the north bay area, slightly rural. PE taught all of those things, the teachers were great at teaching proper form in weightlifting, the mile "times" required were easy for anyone who didn't walk. I really am not understanding why every comment but yours seems to think PE is possibly the worst experience of their entire education.
sethammons 8y ago
It seems to be getting worse. At least it used to be "do something with physical activity." You might do half-assed basketball or running or something. Now, at least in the part of California I was formerly in, they were not able to require kids to actually do anything. Kid wants to stand around? Ok, go for it. Then you toss in required testing and metrics, and now gym (aka P.E.) has written tests on stuff. Not sure what stuff as I stopped paying attention.

kerrsclyde 8y ago

When I was at school you were sneered at by teachers for anything less than upper average performance - imagine that happening in maths or English classes. It took me years to recover, I never did any more structured exercise until I was in my late 30's, now I love it.

davros 8y ago
Ahhh - bad memories of humiliation and bullying. Took me 2 decades to realise I can actually love sport, sad to see that happening to the current generation.
- ChristianGeek 8y ago
  Yep. I’m 57 and I still hate all forms of exercise thanks to my experience in gym class.

Animats 8y ago

Ah, the days when the US had Government-ordered fat shaming.[1] "Give that chicken fat back to the chicken and don't be chicken again." "Nuts to the flabby guys." [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFofqe26t-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFofqe26t-4

starpilot 8y ago
Ah.

desc 8y ago

It's the same problem everything suffers from: meeting targets rather than doing a good job.

yoz-y 8y ago

Before I moved to France I hated P.E. classes. But I think they did something right here. The year is divided into three sports that you do for three months each. There is always an individual sport (track, swimming) a team sport (rugby, handball) and a one on one (e.g.: badminton). Emphasis is on knowledge of oneself, for example for track you have to predict your time for 3x500m run and you get 1/3 of points this way. If you predict too low or high, you will lose on grade. This means that you actually have to get to know your limits. The only issue I had was for team sports where the individual differences are just way too high to construct a game interesting for everybody.

GuiA 8y ago
Yeah, I didn't particularly care for PE as a French kid growing up, but in hindsight I can play pretty much any common sport decently because of it. One unexpected side effect is that it makes socializing quite easy - I can accept when someone invites me to play tennis, volleyball, etc. because I have some basic grasp of the sport from school. In fact, when I moved to California, I saw that everyone was really into climbing, and started doing it too because I had done it in school, even though I had never been into it at the time.
dangerbird2 8y ago
I went to a private school in the US that had a similar setup. For each 3 month season, everyone was required to either join an interscholastic team or participate in an intramural sport with daily practice. Aside from certain high-popularity sports like basketball and lacrosse, pretty much everyone got to play whatever sport they wanted to. If you didn't like team sports you could join the running/weight lifting individual fitness group. The fact we had some agency in how we structured our excercise made athletics way more enjoyable minimized the bullying and unhelpful busywork inherrent in traditional P.E.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

e40 8y ago

My son did crew to avoid gym class. Turns out he really liked it, but the motivation was a hatred of gym class.

Mirioron 8y ago

I hated gym class the most out of all the classes in school. It felt like torture. But then again, I have asthma and nobody had explained to me back then what asthma meant for gym class. Outside of that, I have to agree that gym class didn't really teach me anything.

b0bby_tabl3s 8y ago

Welcome to the emasculation of America.

0xFACEFEED 8y ago

That's sad. In my high school days (2000s) gym class was just as bad. I skipped it every time, flunked it, and took a health night class to make it up. I liked going to school at night and health class was awesome so it was worth it :) The worst part of gym class was the bullying. The aggressors usually got energized through gym class and started messing with other students right after. Gym classes were pretty big and we often had "do what you want" days so idle/bored bullies went into action some more.

BucketSort 8y ago

Am I wrong in thinking that technology amplifies how we gauge the energy required for physical activity? With just a few moves of my finger I can watch a video, read a paper, talk to people, etc. Contrast that with running, lifting, etc. The effort required for the comparatively minute results we achieve seem dramatic across this contrast. I wonder if having computers with an internet connection in their pocket at all times is making kids lazy... which may be an additional factor in this reported situation.

pkaye 8y ago

They need to have less competitive sports where everyone focuses on themselves. Team sports like football and softball causes lots of bullying of weaker and non-athletic kids because everyone else is drive to make their team win.

mrob 8y ago

I'm convinced that gym class results in millions of lost disability-adjusted life years for every generation. Kids are either naturally athletic, in which case they'll exercise whether you want them to or not, or they are naturally nonathletic, in which case gym class just teaches them that exercise is the officially sanctioned method adults use to bully kids. It took me about ten years to figure out that exercise could be enjoyable when it's not forced on you by the psychopaths who end up as gym teachers. Gym class should be banned, or if that's politically impossible, the job should be assigned by sortition like jury duty. Nobody who wants to be a gym teacher should be allowed to do it.

logfromblammo 8y ago

Three words: Shirts. Versus. Skins.

taude 8y ago
Haa...I remember those days. Actually, I saw some kids playing pond hockey yesterday who were playing shirts vs skins in the 40 degree (f) temperatures.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

A counter opinion: I wasn't that great. But I found out that, if I got open in the end zone, they'd throw me the ball, and I could catch it. This led to me going out for the football team. I wasn't that great there, either. I was like fifth or sixth on the depth chart. But it led to a lifetime of being in fairly decent shape. (Note well: Gym class itself did not lead to a lifetime of being in fairly decent shape. But the exposure to various sports, and finding one that I liked and did all right at, was still a big deal. Also note that this was in the 1970s; things may well be worse now.)

mti27 8y ago

We had an odd thing in elementary school gym class - parachutes! We sat around a parachute on the floor, and the teacher would play a record (it was the 80s) that would tell us when to raise/lower our arms then swap places by running under it when it was above us.

partiallypro 8y ago
I think this was really common in the 80s/90s in the US.

aaron695 8y ago

Two things predict success, which correlates to health and happiness, in life well, IQ and Conscientiousness. Schools can't teach IQ. Does gym teach conscientiousness? I don't know, but for smart kids academic high school classes certainly don't. School should not be easy for anyone including smart kids, it needs to challenge. “These adolescents were not enjoying the daily P.E. requirements and would’ve rather skipped school,” Swap that with work and you get life. At what stage do you teach children to be adults?

sliken 8y ago

I have to say Gym for my 14 year old has turned from one of her favorite classes to one of the worst. It seems like a pretty rigid curriculum that's centered around various easy to quantify things (like time to run a mile) and not anything to do with being healthy, exercising, or having fun. So they keep them on the asphalt for an hour when it's 110F. They teach them dancing and changing partners every 30 seconds during flu season. They have then run through muddy grass when it's raining. More like a boot camp than anything fun/healthy.

riskneutral 8y ago
> run through muddy grass when it's raining Will the horrors never end?
- sliken 8y ago
  Try spending 8 hours working productively with cold soaking wet feet the squish when you walk.

DigiMortal 8y ago

My high school removed dodgeballs and gave us these foam bullshit things that didn't even work. So that was the end of PE, at least for me...

glangdale 8y ago

It seems to be terrible in both Australia and the USA, over a long period. My son's Judo instructors had much more fond memories of European style instruction, which sounded considerably more demanding, but more structured and educational. Part of the problem to my way of thinking was that PE class, by high school, has just become a way of glorifying those who already have physical prowess at the expense of everyone else. This is not helped by the fact that most PE teachers, in my experience, were the most avid disciplinarians and the least intelligent teachers of anyone I encountered. It's a pity. It could be done way better. They would have to start earlier, set higher standards for the kids (while practicing positivity and focusing on how much they can improve everyone), and VASTLY increase the quality of the teachers. It also wouldn't hurt to reemphasize the offering of a wide variety of sports for everyone (rather than focusing all resources on a few chosen teams, or, like most schools I know about in Australia now, just not really having sport anymore).

johnohara 8y ago

The problem with gym class lesson plans is they gradually become "laminated" so all you have to do is wipe them with a paper towel when you spill your coffee on them.

preommr 8y ago

Kind of funny how so many people here (myself included) hated gym class because of being bullied or being physically awkward. I wonder if this is a widespread issue or if it's just that hackernews is full of nerds.

whatsAgym 8y ago

In gym class, I learned how to show up, have a locker in a locker room, register a combination lock, change into a different set of clothes for some reason, sit on benches, amble aimlessly around a basketball court, meander listlessly across a soccer field, get yelled at for anything baseball, and run in circles if we were supposed to be playing two-hand-touch football, trying not to get tackled by the kids with a size advantage who wanted to beat the fuck out of everyone else. The coaches basically did not give a fuck about gym as a class, and only used it as additional opportunities to fraternize with the picks for the sports teams, if present. Gym was a study hall, where you got a B if you changed into your gym outfit, and an A if you were on a sports team. Inevitably, the slow kids and the combative kids filled out the rest of the curve, with the kids who cut class supplying the average number of D and F grades. There were also the large varsity senior predation upon wimpy, nerdy freshman hazing incidents, but by the end of the 1990's it was less common. Wives tales from the 70's and 80's with direct witnesses and evidence, but still, a thing of the past. Kids cared more about getting laid, and going out to lunch in status symbol cars, than making other people miserable.

b_tterc_p 8y ago

The comments here are really confusing me. I went to a New England public school. Gym was mostly a fun team sport game that rotated every month or so. I was very athletic. Most of my friends were the opposite. I believe we all had a good time regardless.

dangerbird2 8y ago

In lieu of gym class, my school required us to participate in a club sport or school team every season. We actually got much more exercise having gym every few days, and the fact that we got to choose what sport to play made it something we could get personally invested in, even people who were not naturally athletic.

fromthestart 8y ago

I don't understand all of these complaints. Is the solution to difficult coursework to do away with lessons? Why are physical challenges treated so differently from mental difficulties? Sure, not everyone is athletic, but the fact that not everyone is studious and intelligent is not a reason to avoid encouraging people to be so by sending them to school. I think what we really need is a serious, rigid, disciplined curriculum in PE. That probably doesn't involve team sports so much as learning to exercise for fitness and self improvement, totally different from the half-assed gym classes that we have in the US now. Bullying is a symptom of other problems and is not an argument against good physical education. Perhaps if ours hadn't turned into such a sensitive, coddling culture, we wouldn't have a 40% obesity rate[1]. 1.https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

paulpauper 8y ago

During gym we did running, sit-ups, volleyball and kickball. Wish we done weights instead. no one on YouTube is making money with jogging and sit-up videos. it's all weight lifting.

2bitencryption 8y ago

things i remember from gym class in middle school/high school: * gym class was every single day, 5th grade until 12th grade. * mile run every Friday (I hated it, but it did help me get to sub-7 mins by high school, for someone who was never athletic) * heart-rate monitors we wore that strapped across our chests. every day we had to get our monitor and apply this gross conductive gel to the device and strap it around our bare skin at chest level. you got credit for the gym period if you got >15mins of HR above 120. * Badminton! * Those scooters with wheels on them. * Step-aerobics. Holy cow. Exercising with plastic stools. * A locker room with showers, which showers I have never seen anyone use once. * line dancing for some reason?

jmpman 8y ago

My school district required gym for everyone from jr high through high school. Did I enjoy it? No. Has it been useful for the rest of my life? Absolutely. If it weren’t for those PE classes, I wouldn’t feel comfortable at the gym with free weights, and wouldn’t know how fast I can be at running. It changed my life despite being my least favorite class. I’d recommend daily gym be required for my children.

supermw 8y ago

I was fortunate that my highschool offered a choice between PE and weightlifting classes. PE has clearly always been for suckers, I remember seeing kids playing volleyball or soccer or running 3 times a week in the hot sun with no sunscreen, half of them not really even giving a fuck, and thinking how I had NO desire to be a part of that mess. Weightlifting by contrast, was not only an easier class but also much more educational. It was like going to the gym and having a personal trainer plan your workout and give you advice. The coaches wrote up an exercise plan on the whiteboard and you just went and did it on your own, occasionally they walked around making sure people weren't goofing off. If you wanted to slack off it was easy to just do light weights and go through the motions but most people actually did put in effort to see physical change in their bodies (and of course there's always peer pressure to be strong and fit, especially with girls watching). And because weightlifting has natural downtime in between reps you could socialize freely. The stuff I learned in that class helped me to not be clueless when I went to an actual gym by myself. In fact, I've been going to the gym regularly ever since that class ended.

smittywerben 8y ago

I didn't want to have PE at 7am and be sweaty and stinky for the next 5 hours. On sport teams we showered but that's the people wanted to be there. > why this particular P.E. program was counterproductive... points to bullying... it facilitates the teasing of overweight or unathletic kids. Making PE more strict on _everyone_ because of the _few_ promotes the exact opposite of the desired result. It's fallacious to believe the obese are that way because they are bullied. We divert dumb kids, yes? Why is it insensitive for the obese? Mixing these groups destroys morale. Varsity kids workout together, junior-varsity work out together, etc, because it works. The administration babysits warm bodies for cash. The PE teachers will end up taking the blame for giving kids their recess back.

starpilot 8y ago

I loved gym class. It was easy and a relief. Some of the sports I really enjoyed, like floor hockey and soccer. There were some lame ones too, and also some creepy behavior from the male gym teachers toward certain female students. But other than that it was the easiest part of the school day. I could turn off my brain and work up a sweat.

closeparen 8y ago

My two most excruciating memories of physical unpleasantness: having strep throat, and cooling down after “the mile” in middle school gym class. Gym class taught me that a healthy lifestyle is about extreme discipline and regular self-torture. It took me a decade to discover that you could ramp up into exercise in a way that didn’t make you want to die, and to make sense of the way other people talked about having any kind of positive experiences with it.

Tomminn 8y ago

People don't like to be in situations where they are stack-ranked according to a skill they are bad at. Stereotypical jocks lose when you stack-rank them in a random math class, so the second they can drop maths they do. And before that, they might wag it. Stereotypical nerds lose when you stack-rank them in a random p.e. class, so the second they can drop p.e. they do. And before that, they might wag it. When you force people in the bottom end of skill distribution into a stack rank system, it does real damage to their self esteem. And this will essentially traumatize them from actually achieving growth in the subject. And that growth is actually important. Stereotypical jocks are much better off for not being afraid of maths. Stereotypical nerds are much better off for not being afraid of exercise. One solution is pretty simple. Isolate the top, say, 10-20% of performers in each skill, and stack-rank away if you want. They'll have enough self esteem with respect to the skill to be motivated by the open competition. But most of all, just isolate them from the rest. With the rest, you'll probably have more luck with a growth mindset type philosophy. Do whatever you can to take focus away from absolute performance metrics, and get them to focus on their own growth. And keep them the hell away from that top 10-20%. Ideally, you follow this principle through all the way through the skill distribution and organize classes into quintiles of ability. Just remember, if you're going to rank people, then isolate them from people they can't compete with. It takes a very unusual kid/teenager to come away motivated by the experience of being totally dominated in some area.

Simulacra 8y ago

Gym was awful. The teachers were awful, the bullies were awful, we learned absolutely nothing and felt like they were just trying to make us expend energy. What time would’ve better been spent in a class talking about cooking and nutrition, and how to prepare healthy meals