What were your PE lessons at school like?

PE was just that, physical exercise 2x45 minutes a week.

If you wanted to learn a sport, you joined a club. Schools aren't really connected to sport at all up here.

We hardly ever played football or did any skiing (the two most popular) as that wasn't the point of PE. The point was the exercise. And obviously, skiing costs money, and so was hard to arrange when school had to be free (which incidentally made school trips near impossible).

Problem is, you get put into a set, and then forced to do a certain sport. There's no choice (or at least there wasn't when I was at school). While a lot of kids might not have a problem doing rugby and football every week, they should at least offer some alternatives. Surely some physical activity/a wider set of options is better than kids skiving, faking illness, not trying at all, etc.

Father Exmas wrote:I moved secondary schools, at the first one it was very traditional - Rugby, Tennis, Track and Field, Basketball and cross country in the sleet. The second school was a bit more cushy - Swimming, rock climbing (indoor and out), kayaking, cycling, caving, and dry slope skiing.

For real? That's awesome. If I ever decide to be a teacher, I'd start a caving club.

We didn't have a school football team, or skiing team, or whatever.

People joined football clubs, handball clubs, skiing clubs, rowing clubs etc. instead. I can't imagine it any other way.

P.E in my school was pretty shite. I liked when we got to play basketball, hockey, and badminton. Playing football was gooseberry fool since there were loads of neds in my year who took it too seriously.

I seem to remember most classes being actual garbage though. Like playing rounders on the least flat peice of land around. Then there were those lessons where it just seemed like you done a few laps around the gym hall, done uninspiring stretches and not much else. It was so boring a lot of the time that the more appealing option for us was to "forget" our trainers and just do the punishment excercise for not bringing them.

Anyone can surely see that there are myriad things a child ought to do that are not mandated through the national curriculum, and from this we must conclude that school is absolutely not about creating a well-rounded child: it is the role of the parent to ensure these character-building tasks are accomplished. School is about academic learning and the subjects taught should be the modern descendents of the Greek trivium, the mediaeval quadrivium, and the Renaissance scholars' expansions of those subjects: the modern artes liberales. Mathematics, the Sciences, Art in all its forms (but perhaps most importantly Literature); these things are different to and stand necessarily apart from, well, throwing a rugby ball around.

I'm not saying it's not important for children to be fit and healthy. And I'm not saying schools cannot support that where appropriate; indeed, Human Biology should rather plainly and obviously form an essential and core part of any Science syllabus (and as I recall it already does). But sports clubs are ideal after-school and weekend activities and that's where they should reside.

Someone got bullied in PE.

My classes were just called 'games' and consisted of various sports. We would play sports and change them every season or so in order, probably to cater for the tastes of different pupils. Unless you were like me and hated them all. Still, it was good for me anyway. The one sport we never did was football on account that the boys often spent lunch break doing that anyway.

Seeing as my school was tiny we had two years (only one class in each year) in each session with no gender division. This had good and bad points. Allowing girls to compete against boys and demonstrate that they could actually beat them fairly often (although, less so over time as boys developed a physical edge) was arguably better than just relegating girls to their own lessons. The bad point was that the teams were usually divided along year so the older kids repeatedly destroyed the younger teams.

Karlprof wrote: school is absolutely not about creating a well-rounded child: it is the role of the parent to ensure these character-building tasks are accomplished.

Someone tell this to Japan. Fun fact: if a child gets in trouble with the police, the police call their teacher, not their parents.

Mentile.

Igor wrote:

Father Exmas wrote:I moved secondary schools, at the first one it was very traditional - Rugby, Tennis, Track and Field, Basketball and cross country in the sleet. The second school was a bit more cushy - Swimming, rock climbing (indoor and out), kayaking, cycling, caving, and dry slope skiing.

For real? That's awesome. If I ever decide to be a teacher, I'd start a caving club.

Yeah fo real real. Only did it a couple of times but it was pretty fun and insanely scary.

smyrrhphy wrote:Someone got bullied in PE.

Ad hominem, and unfounded at that; PE was, due to setting, reasonably inclusive at my secondary. I was fairly good at badminton and found that enjoyable, so played that whenever I could; the other sports offered I admittedly lacked any ability at. I would honestly have joined an after-school badminton club had one existed and I would have got more exercise out of that than standing around avoiding having the ball passed to me in rugby every other week (because "you can't do the same sport every week!" - sigh). I never enjoyed it enough to look into weekend clubs, though, I confess.

Aayule1 wrote:Someone tell this to Japan. Fun fact: if a child gets in trouble with the police, the police call their teacher, not their parents.

That's frightening.

Karlprof wrote:Anyone can surely see that there are myriad things a child ought to do that are not mandated through the national curriculum, and from this we must conclude that school is absolutely not about creating a well-rounded child: it is the role of the parent to ensure these character-building tasks are accomplished. School is about academic learning and the subjects taught should be the modern descendents of the Greek trivium, the mediaeval quadrivium, and the Renaissance scholars' expansions of those subjects: the modern artes liberales. Mathematics, the Sciences, Art in all its forms (but perhaps most importantly Literature); these things are different to and stand necessarily apart from, well, throwing a rugby ball around.

I'm not saying it's not important for children to be fit and healthy. And I'm not saying schools cannot support that where appropriate; indeed, Human Biology should rather plainly and obviously form an essential and core part of any Science syllabus (and as I recall it already does). But sports clubs are ideal after-school and weekend activities and that's where they should reside.

Nope. Sadly, your way of working probably means that kids will never be smarter than their parents. Some people are very bad parents, and it's up to the education system to fix this and break the cycle.

Oxford has changed you man.

Father Exmas wrote:Nope. Sadly, your way of working probably means that kids will never be smarter than their parents.

Ridiculous; an exclusive focus on the liberal arts - which, by my admittedly limited knowledge of the national curriculum, literally means taking out PE and leaving the rest unaltered - will destroy social mobility? I can't even begin to fathom why that would be the case. Surely you would agree that, in some fundamental sense, social mobility isn't created on the football pitch or the playing field; it's born in the classroom. How can spending more time in a classroom hinder it?

It is also gooseberry fool like this and ignorance that means girls don't want to do sports in the fear they will look 'mannish'.

Girls need to realise not to listen to crap like that, as it's complete bollocks. Women are their own worst enemies when it comes to stuff like that, although I'm sure they blame men for it all somewhere rather than admit it to themselves.

"Bulging biceps".

Father Exmas wrote:

Igor wrote:

Father Exmas wrote:I moved secondary schools, at the first one it was very traditional - Rugby, Tennis, Track and Field, Basketball and cross country in the sleet. The second school was a bit more cushy - Swimming, rock climbing (indoor and out), kayaking, cycling, caving, and dry slope skiing.

For real? That's awesome. If I ever decide to be a teacher, I'd start a caving club.

Yeah fo real real. Only did it a couple of times but it was pretty fun and insanely scary.

It's how I spend most of my weekends (I'm actually heading out to the Dales tomorrow morning for a few days) and it's something I'd always recommend to someone for who competitive sport isn't a forte. You need a certain mentality to make it a regular thing (a penchant for misery and discomfort, mostly) - if you're not a fan of physically challenging yourself then don't even bother. If you are, however, then it's perfect.

Outdoor pursuits > organised team sports, anyday.

I really hated PE from September until the spring it was almost always football. Occasionally we would do rugby.

Better variety during the summer, and when we did sports indoors, especially when we got to do gymnastics and circuit training sessions later on.

We used to play cricket a lot when I was at school. Me and a couple of mates were crap at it, so we'd be left to one side. Together, we invented our own version of cricket, with three wickets in a triangle. The bowler could bowl towards any of the wickets at will.

Karlprof wrote:

Father Exmas wrote:Nope. Sadly, your way of working probably means that kids will never be smarter than their parents.

Ridiculous; an exclusive focus on the liberal arts - which, by my admittedly limited knowledge of the national curriculum, literally means taking out PE and leaving the rest unaltered - will destroy social mobility? I can't even begin to fathom why that would be the case. Surely you would agree that, in some fundamental sense, social mobility isn't created on the football pitch or the playing field; it's born in the classroom. How can spending more time in a classroom hinder it?

No, what I disagreed with was that it's up to the parents to create well rounded individuals and focus on personal development. Fat parents having fat kids isn't just genetics. It isn't genetics feeding them pizza and chips every night.

I hated PE with a vengeance, in primary school when I could still (barely) walk I hated it most when we played football because the utter banana split of a PE teacher thought it was funny to knock me over by kicking the ball into the back of my legs (there was also a kid in my class with a heart condition who was equally gooseberry fool at running - he also got the ball in the back of the legs treatment).

I secondary school I wasn't really able to participate in most PE lessons so I basically just had an hour of doing strawberry float all.