More schools benching P.E.

AP ^ | Wednesday, January 19, 2005

[presidio9]

Lisa Lewis, a health professor, heard her two sons talk about how bad their high school P.E. class was, so she went to see for herself.

"It's been terrible," she said. The teacher was a basketball coach, and "that's basically all they did -- play basketball between 40 and 50 kids." Many students, especially those who weren't athletic, just stood on the sidelines of the disorganized game.

Physical education experts say there's little accountability for P.E. teachers in most schools. They say the classes are often poorly run, and students don't spend much time in them anyway -- even as American children grow fatter and more out of shape.

Nearly one-fifth of all high school P.E. teachers don't have a major and certification in physical education, according to the most recent numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Often the instructor is a coach more interested in winning games than in producing healthy students, experts say.

"That stigma that a coach cares more about the team than his physical education class does exist," said George Graham, professor of kinesiology at Penn State University.

"When a teacher or coach is doing that, it's really up to the principal to get in there and say, 'We want to win ball games, but the kids in P.E. deserve a good education too."'

P.E. gets benched The lack of respect for P.E. also appears in the number of students required to take it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that in 2003, only 28 percent of high school students nationwide attended a daily P.E. class, but 38 percent watched television for three hours or more each school night.

[Tijeras_Slim]

The highpoint of my education was having those nasty red rubber balls hurled at my head.

[Semper Paratus]

But they'll take out the vending machines to fight obesity.

[cynicom]

PE, another waste of tax dollars, down that endless rat hole.

[jalisco555]

The highpoint of my education was having those nasty red rubber balls hurled at my head.

I made the same remark a couple of years ago and was mercilessly flamed. Somehow, disliking dodgeball made me unmanly. I'm actually a very good athlete but I benefited not a bit from school PE.

[Doctor Stochastic]

One problem with supervision may be that the PE teachers are busy preparing to teach their math classes.

[ChocChipCookie]

They're cutting out P.E. and recesses and yet have all these grandiose plans of sending parents report cards on their kids BMI.

[lady lawyer]

My fondest memory of PE was feeling uncomfortable when the decidedly masculine teachers watched us girls change and shower.

[rellimpank]

---and was fifty years ago too, when I was in high school. The jocks got practise and the rest of us wasted our time.

[Oberon]

PE class to me was neither fish nor fowl. For the real athletes, gym class was pretty silly and not very challenging. The non-athletes mostly didn't want to be there in the first place.

[M 91 u2 K]

My fondest memory of PE was feeling uncomfortable when the decidedly masculine teachers watched us girls change and shower.

Are you serious?

When was this? In recent years most schools dont even have showers nowadays.

[presidio9]

[coconutt2000]

P.E.... I remember when they used to dump out a bin full of balls, and we ran out and played our own games.

Is this an example of liberal administration and management techniques? The kids are too stupid to play on their own?

[M 91 u2 K]

Gym really should be more a militaristic boot camp training for both sexes.

[dc27]

My fondest memory of PE was feeling uncomfortable when the decidedly masculine teachers watched us girls change and shower.

We could never tell whether the girls PE teachers were men or women.

[kpp_kpp]

> PE, another waste...

are you referring to "Physical Education" or "Public Education"?

:)

[cynicom]

Well, I am speaking 30s/40s...PE clown was paid same as the math and science teachers. If you were athletic, you were in, if not, PE was a continual harassment and embarrassment.

[beezdotcom]

P.E. did not help build much character for me, since as a non-athletic type, I always schemed ways to get out of P.E. After enough self-induced asthma attacks, I ultimately succeeded in getting excused from the requirement.

So the imposition of P.E. as a requirement ultimately had the opposite effect on me - I probably ended up in worse health. If it had just been open recess, I might have at least engaged in a pickup game or two among the "losers", like I did during the summers in my neighborhood.

Bottom line: if the parents aren't actively involved in motivating their children to engage in physical activity (mine weren't), a government-mandated course probably isn't going to do it, either. They should just go back to calling it recess, and stop trying to give a grade for it.

[jalisco555]

PE class to me was neither fish nor fowl. For the real athletes, gym class was pretty silly and not very challenging. The non-athletes mostly didn't want to be there in the first place.

I was actually one of those non-athletes who was either ignored or ridiculed by my PE teachers. It wasn't until I left school that I realized I had athletic potential and turned myself into a distance runner and pretty strong weight-lifter. I wonder how many other people like me there are, who's latent athletic potential is either ignored or crushed. Imagine if math teachers treated the bottom half of their classes like PE teachers treat the bottom half of theirs. They'd be fired within months.

[presidio9]