P.E. Is Hell

I could have told the author about it, and I can still remember how much I didn't want to participate fifty years later.

I would try and get out of doing tumbling in elementary school.  I had a lot of anxiety issues as a young girl, and I was always afraid I would hurt myself if I did it.  Furthermore, thanks to an untreated thyroid issue as a result of childhood surgery, I was constantly bullied by my parents about how "fat" I was.  Can you imagine the HELL I went through throughout school, from about fourth or fifth grade clear through high school?  I would feign sickness because I did not want to do field day, which back then was mostly track and field events.  I was scared I would do poorly.

In middle school I fucking hated to dress down and then shower, thus other girls staring at me.  I couldn't stand that shit. It was aggravated by my wearing a damned brace on my back for scoliosis.  By high school, I mostly refused to shower at all.  Eventually I quit dressing down entirely and got sent to the vice-principal's office.  Eventually, I received two "Fs" in P.E. in high school.  Back then P.E. was all sports-oriented rather than fitness and individual sports oriented, which is increasingly more the case today.  I quit P.E. the middle of my sophomore year and retook it the first half of my senior year.  I passed then, and the teacher was a whole lot better.

So no, I couldn't stand P.E.; however, I am heavily into exercising and fitness.  Go figure.


From the article:

Justin Cahill, a veteran P.E. educator who’s taught at an Atlanta-area private school for the past decade or so, stresses that it’s the typical application of physical education rather than the fundamental concept that results in bad outcomes. Until the past few years, P.E. classes tended to focus on kids’ acquisition of skills, such as dribbling a ball, and the fulfillment of universal benchmarks, such as the ability to run around a track three times within some specific amount of time. This approach, he says, “breeds stagnation and disinterest—the kids are like, ‘Yeah, this is ridiculous.’” It can also, as Packham’s study suggests, breed resentment: After all, in this “old school” version of P.E., certain kids are bound to struggle.

Traditionally, it was too much emphasis on team sports and not on individual activities one can do a lifetime.