Your opinion on Gym Class

[Yopaz]

I don't mind gym at all. But I do very much mind the way the grade is being set, at least here in Norway (don't know it is like in the other parts of the world).

Basically, the grade is being set based on your achievements, which is just ridiculous. I am pursuing a degree in physics, what if my gym character was just low enough that I wouldn't be accepted into the university?

In my opinion, gym shouldn't be graded unless you know you'll be working with sports after you're done with high school (which I assume is where gym is a mandatory class). I know a lot of courses in the best universities require you to have top characters in every class from high school. Why should how fast I can run have a say as to whether I am allowed to follow my dreams or not?

The way I see it gym grades were usually just randomly scattered 4 then an occasional 5 or 6 to those who were exceptional. I was better than most in all areas and better than everyone who got a 5, but I ended up with a 4. So yeah, I agree, pointless grading.

OT: I do in theory love it. I work out 6 times a week right noe and I love physical activity since it clears my mind and helps me focus on my studies. However I have had bad teachers in it. We did not cover half of what we were supposed to because the teacher only made a list of a few basic sports.

 

[iLazy]

I liked Gym class. Didn't like some of the people in it, but I liked it nonetheless.

I mean, an hour of running around, playing soccer, basketball, volleyball, floor hockey, dodgeball, badminton (okay that's up for debate), spongey-polo, etc, etc, sounds like fun to me.

Wasn't a fan of the fitness tests though.

But yeah, I get how it can be a nightmare for some kids :/

 

[Jfswift]

I always found it hard to take my gym teacher seriously when I was a kid because of how overweight they were.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

Kids in my country are getting too fat. They can't learn when their too busy monitoring their blood sugar levels. Let gym stay.

This.

You summed it up nicely.

To be honest, I myself enjoyed only bits of PE. I hated soccer, and almost all our gym teachers were soccerheads. They hated, say, basketball with a vengeance. One made us play basketball in a hundred-year-old structure with seemingly no right angles. We had to box each other with brown leather gloves that seemed to be filled with straw. We were so frustrated, at times, we went to great illegal lengths to make up excuses for not having to take part in the drill.

Looking back, we were idiots. Any - free! - physical exercise you can do with friends, buddies or just peers is not only free, it's a serious asset for your well-being. Like me, I guess, most people only cherish it once it's over and gone and things cost money, as in membership, machines to put in the workout room or - my least favourite - medical bills.

With age, the body starts to fall apart quite readily. A lot of healthcare costs could be reduced if people would get the very basic idea and purpose of PE. A lot of healthcare issues would be absolute non-issues if people would maintain their bodies like some maintain their germ-free homes, their expensive gaming rig computers or their overly complicated special diets. There's no diet that will keep you from being in pain because you're lacking the basic muscle mass to keep your body together and protect the more crappy bits from harm. Without any scientific data to back my claim, I say I feel like a whole lot of chronic pain, back issues and plenty more just plain wouldn't be if people understood how the human body works, or would at least exercise properly and not just ruin their joints and annoy people and dogs by running around aimlessly taking their iPods walkies.

 

[Bocaj2000]

PE is necessary. So is art. The sun is your friend.

 

[Angie7F]

I hate sports but enjoyed PE as time to hang out with my friends and chat and have a good laugh.
It was especially cool in high school in japan because it my school was not competitive in sports.
When I was in Australia the school was quite competitive so it was more high pressure.

 

[thraza]

i hated it, mostly because the teachers would end up putting things to a vote and we would end up playing hockey over and over again.

 

[rosac]

I loved it, and I can't understand why people hate it so much. Thanks to gym class, everyone found a sport they were good at at my school, even my mate who hated sport found he was pretty damn good at the high jump.

Also, it seems like people don't seem to enjoy it because they have the mindset that since they are bad a certain sport they aren't going to even try, which makes them seem even worse at the sport, and generally annoys everyone else on the team. I was crap at football (Soccer) and basketball, but I put effort in, which people respected me for. And I had a few flashes of glory every now and again.

The other argument I disagree with is the "but we could spend the time studying science/maths/insert subject here!" Physical Education is still useful, as exercise can help stimulate the brain and remove stress.

Just my two cents. I'm typing this argument whilst knackered, so I fully expect it to be ripped to shred in a few posts.

EDIT: re-reading some of the posts here, it seems most people have problems with their teachers rather than the actual subjects. I guess I was lucky to have teachers that rewarded the amount of effort someone puts in rather than their overall athletic ability. I remember one teacher nearly crying with happiness when the second stream rugby team (consisting mainly of skinny people like me) managed to do a maul correctly. It wasn't perfect, but it showed we were putting effort in. I also remember said teacher bollocking one of the "stars" being lazy because he was playing against people who were objectively worse than him at football.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

I didn't really like it until this year when I got to go in a recreational pursuits class.
The teacher is extremely nice, the people in the class are fun and the stuff we do even more so.
I don't like the normal gym/sport classes though because they are more about basketball or football and stuff. It would be better if they just have a selection of things to do and just be about getting active.

 

[Woodsey]

It used to be either tortuous as fuck (football, rugby, whatever in the fucking winter) or gut-wrenchingly hilarious (athletics, orienteering, dodgeball).

 

[RufusMcLaser]

From time to time gym classes were fun, most of the time they were boring, and at no point did they do one drop of good towards improving my fitness. The fit kids were already fit, the fatties stayed fat, and skinny kids tried to be unobtrusive during dodgeball.
Why?
My fitness never got better until I had specific goals tied to it and enforced/rewarded by someone else. If the payoff for (say) running a 30 minute 5k was no more gym class for the rest of the school year, I probably would have done it.

 

[Zombiefish]

In the uk gym classes are mandatory. I hated classes from the ages 11-15 as we were told ;go play this sport'. If i was bad at the sport my classmates would get frustrated at me and I would feel embarassed and useless.

A much better idea, which was trailed from 15-16 was to give limited options of different activities. students could choose whether they wanted to spend their time in the gym, on trampolines, playing football or tennis. I actually enjoyed this to some extent.

 

[Occams_Razor]

I didn't mind gym all that much, was nice to learn some new sports and get out and do something. Though being a nerd in a high school gym class can be a very unique brand of torture, but we live through it.

What I wasn't a fan of was the marking scheme, at least in my school. For all the claim that it was about "participation", and how ability didn't matter, it seemed a strange coincidence that all the varsity athletes came out with the higher marks than anyone.

 

[Xian_Frost]

The only thing I took away from that class was that my face is a magnet for flying objects, I was the only one not shy on changing in front of classmates and I was smart for hiding my locker combination in my socks when I forgot the code.

I hated dodge ball because I had to let my teacher take my glasses so they wouldn't get broken. Why would you aim at the face of the kid who can barely see? I almost broke my nose.

 

[SpectacularWebHead]

It's a good principle but it's poorly implemented. Getting kids to excercise is one thing, but encouraging massive amounts of polarization and bullying toward the less physically able kids, as is what happens like 90% of the time, is where gym class falls flat. It needs to be totally reinvented or totally scrapped.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

Everyone knows about gym, in one way or another, so, I want to hear your opinion about it. To me, it's a waste of time I could be using to learn about the nature of the universe, human mind, mathematics, or how to dance.

I think PE(Physical Education, what we in Britain refer to 'Gym class' as) should be mandatory 3 x 1 hour lessons a week, minimum.

And I wonder where you got that one from! I was thinking the same thing... mostly because, like you, I am also an adult who still does mandatory PT!

Also the sessions in school should be harder! I remember it was far to easy to avoid anything strenuous in lessons... it should be a lot more strict!

 

[Delicious Anathema]

Thought is was useless then, now that I'm well out of school and attending a gym I look back and...I still think it's useless.
Gym classes spawn locker room intimidation and uncomfortable exposition, kids and early teenagers can be really horrible at this kind of stuff because of their immaturity. It harvests problems with self-esteem that may or may not go away depending on the character.

Other than that, it's usually a fit teacher that thinks he's in an army or something to punish someone with push-ups. My math teacher never punished me with 20 equations, so what right does this person have to do it? Also, many of these fit teachers don't know what it's like to have extra weight and run for 10 minutes while your ribcage hurts from trying to gasp for as much air as possible.

Finally, sports. I hate sports with a passion. I don't mind physical exercise but I don't like the competitive aspect and the fact that too often students take the game to seriously. Also, being the last to be picked up for the team doesn't feel to good either.

Gym classes are pointless and only serve to bring down the average grade in otherwise excellent students, and raise it in some meatheads. Let people decide whether they want physical activity or not, I mean you don't put retarded children learning physics (it's a bad analogy but go with it). I am opposed to Gym being mandatory, and I would hate if sex education became too, it's stuff that should be a personal decision and self-maintained.

I lost more weight when I learned about food and changed my diet than I ever did in school. A nutrition class would be FAR more useful and less degrading than physical education.

Here's an idea to partially reinvent PE:
Have a personalized training for everybody, you are 20Kg overweight, if you lose 10kg you get an A or a B, if you don't you get a C (NEVER NEGATIVE SCORES), and you do the exercises you want and the teachers sees as fit for your condition. It wouldn't solve the locker room intimidation but it would help a lot with the rest.

 

[C F]

PhysEd? I remember it being pretty fun in middle school. Though to be fair, my school was awesome about it. Every quarter, a cut of the class would be pulled aside for a nutrition/biology lesson mixed with weight training. The rest of the year was spent on physical activities and sports like capture the flag, tennis, and fantasy football.
It didn't matter that I sucked at them, they were activities I was taught about and encouraged to engage in with a bunch of other kids at the school. I saw no reason not to like it. You showed up, dressed out, and put honest effort into it? The coach'll give you your A. It didn't matter if you were an inept scrawny wimp, my coaches could tell when you're putting your focus into it.

The class imparts some pretty fundamental stuff no kid should go without (i.e. actual exercise and appropriate knowledge thereof). If they're willing to educate you on the topic, I see no reason why it shouldn't be required.