@fbaezer,
I appreciate that you have responded in a civil manner without resorting to personal insult, which is the ingrained habit of certain longtime members of this forum. I would ask those individuals the following question: In real life (as you are online), are you in the habit of walking up to a complete stranger and insulting him just because he has a point of view that’s different from your own? Such a childish attitude doesn’t seek to understand why individual people happen to believe the way they do.
I’m wondering, though, if you’ve read all of my comments in this post. IMHO, I’ve actually presented a rather moderate approach to the issue of phys ed. In fact, I stand by every word I’ve said because I know that I’m right. If you haven’t already read them, please read them carefully. I shouldn’t have to repeat myself in the same thread when I’ve already stated my position.
I did
not say that phys ed should not be mandatory. I strongly support P.E. programs that actually encourage non-athletic students to become physically active and achieve physical fitness. A member of another website’s forum described an excellent P.E. program at her daughter’s local high school. I’ve gone to the trouble of copying her comments so I don’t have to include the entire webpage, which has more than 20 other posts that are not relevant to the issue that we’re discussing in this topic of our own. Her comments are as follows: “Our high school offers a personal fitness class
that is an option to traditional gym class[my italics]. The activities are non-competitive and students monitor their own progress. They run, walk, do yoga, kick boxing, weight training. The students are allowed to listen to their MP3 players when they are running or walking and many of the other activities are done to music.”
This is the sort of P.E. that I strongly support. Mandatory P.E. that offers this approach for non-athletic students, as opposed to compulsory sports, is the sort of mandatory P.E. that I can in good conscience support. Did you read the article on the excellent PE4Life program which I posted a link? If you haven’t, please read it.
I know what I’m talking about because in my life I’ve been on both sides of the divide. When I started my 4th-grade year of schooling, the unsupervised recess (which I had had no problem with) was replaced with a form of P.E. -- the difference being that there was no gym, but it was compulsory sports nevertheless. Fortunately, since I was a band student in high school, I was not required to take P.E. -- which is quite fortunate, as I heard that the mandatory P.E. at my high school was even more hellish for non-athletic boys that the P.E. I took in junior high.
What I’ve not forgotten to this day is that the attitude that the P.E. teachers and coaches towards the non-athletic boys in my P.E. classes was one of either indifference or outright contempt.
There was not a single exception among them. I learned to fear and resent them, as well as the more athletic classmates who shared their attitudes. And as I’ve said before, the non-athletic boys
actually got very little exercise. I remember the school authorities saying that the purpose of mandatory P.E. was to promote physical fitness. It was nothing but a hypocritical lie. There was not even any mention of exercise programs or bodybuilding. Why should I have to repeat myself in a thread of this sort?
You say that you favor compulsory sports (instead of genuine fitness classes) because kids should be in touch with their bodies and have fun with them. Compulsory sports only allows athletes to get in touch with their bodies and teaches non-athletes to be ashamed of theirs. Do you think non-athletic boys have fun when they have to put up with neanderthals posing to be teachers, men who look down on them simply because they’re not physically strong? Do you think non-athletic boys have fun when they are humiliated and bullied? Do you think my British friend had fun when that athletic classmate of his deliberately smashed his face with a cricket bat and broke his nose? Yeah, that’s really fun.
I said that I’ve been working with a personal trainer on a bodybuilding program. I love my workout sessions! All the personal trainers at my health club have heard how hard I work in my workouts. I love the change that I’m experiencing in my body. I love the feel of physical strength that I never had when I was younger. Are you saying that I’m not in touch with my body? I most certainly am in touch with my body. I’m possibly in better shape than you.
And I’m doing it without sports. So, if I can do it as a middle-aged man, bodybuilding should be offered to non-athletic boys instead of having sports crammed down their throats.
I’m not denigrating your love of sports, but you must recognize that there are boys (and men) who have absolutely no interest in them. We may not be a majority, but there are more of us than you think.
The mandatory “sports only” P.E. was a hypocritical disgrace, the bane of existence for non-athletic students. The hypocrisy was truly amazing. Just to give an example, in one of my P.E. classes, I had to participate in a game of basketball (never mind that I didn’t even know how the game was played). You see, the assumption seems to have been made by the bright souls who set up mandatory P.E. that every boy is an athlete and already knows how all the games are played. Of course, my participation in this game turned out to be a joke.
Many years later when I was working with my first personal trainer (before he quit to go to law school), he would vary the workout routine by exposing me to a sport or two. One day he showed me how to properly shoot a basketball. I had assumed that shooting a basketball was simply thrusting the basketball towards the hoop. I was astonished to learn that shooting a basketball properly involved particular wrist and finger movements; in other words, a learned skill, a skill that is developed through repetitive practice until it can be done without having to think about it. I guess it’s like learning how to type. I’m indebted to my personal trainer for showing me that I was not a deficient person because I didn’t know how to shoot a basketball. He showed me that it was a skill that I could master with practice. Guess what.
This instruction was never provided in any of the “sports only” P.E. classes that I and all of the other non-athletic guys I knew were forced to take. As I said, there never was any education in “phys ed”!
When I commented about freedom of choice, I was referring to the undeniable fact that different students (and adults, for that matter) have different physical fitness needs. Let’s suppose that there’s a scrawny teenage boy who wants to build up his physique, and there’s an obese boy who needs to slim down. (Incidentally, the sort of exercise that an obese kid needs is constant movement. What sort of exercise is an obese boy going to receive by sitting on a bench or standing out in a baseball field?) Obviously, the two boys are not going to be placed on the same sort of exercise program because their goals are different. Anyone who denies this fact is being willfully ignorant. This is what I meant. Please don’t put words in my mouth. I favor programs that actually help those students who are the most physically unfit. You support the same old approach that subjects non-athletic boys to humiliation and bullying. Whoever came up with compulsory sports must have really hated non-athletic boys. (Well, after all, they’re regarded to be wimps and “sissies.” Well, I must keep up to date. The word that is today used to label non-athletic boys is “fags.”) Not only are they humiliated and frequently bullied in such classes, but they are discouraged from ever becoming physically active. If you took the time to do some research on this issue, you would see that this is, in fact, true.
You say that you don’t have a “live and let live” attitude to minors, but that adults may do what they wish. I’m glad that I have your permission.
