Another potential hazard in the minefield of teaching. A new study says humiliation in gym class can turn kids off of physical fitness for life. Science Daily quotes one of the study participants:
“I am a 51-year-old woman whose childhood experiences with sports, particularly as handled in school, were so negative that even as I write this my hands are sweating. I feel on the verge of tears. I have never experienced the humiliation nor felt the antipathy toward any other aspect of life as I do toward sports.”
According to Billy Strean of the University of Alberta, good or a bad experiences in gym can be “based on the personal characteristics of the coach or instructor.” For example, negative experiences may come from a teacher who has low energy, is unfair and/or someone who embarrasses students,” says Science Daily. Ed Week’s Debra Viadero points out the research is qualitative and based on 24 accounts from adults looking back on their childhood gym experiences.
I hated gym class growing up and would much rather have been able to do individual fitness activities rather than forced to do team sports. The only portion of PE I could stand was the couple weeks in the spring we did track.
Frankly, I think traditional PE only exists to give districts an excuse to hire good football/basketball/soccer/etc. coaches.
Comment by Crimson Wife — January 8, 2010 @ 1:19 pm
It’s true enough, I suppose, that you shouldn’t humiliate a kid because that might turn him off to physical fitness later in life. But there is a much more important consideration here. You shouldn’t humiliate a kid just because you shouldn’t humiliate a kid. I am not turned off on physical fitness because of bad gym teachers, but I have always been turned off on physical education because of bad gym teachers.
I should add that it is possible for any teacher to inadvertently humiliate a student now and then. If we are going to interact with people then once in a while that interaction can take an unexpected turn and embarrass somebody. But it’s been my experience that gym teachers are in a different category from other teachers. They are not skillful either socially or pedagogically, at least not the ones in my experience. The gym teachers I had in middle school and high school didn’t want to teach us anything, physical or otherwise. They wanted to coach. Or maybe they just wanted to earn a relatively easy paycheck. Teaching PE was just a just a means to some other end. Thus they didn’t do a very good job. And yes, students were humiliated once in a while, in one way or another, more so than in any other class.
But, to be honest, I don’t remember humiliation nearly so much as aimlessness. The teacher’s thinking never seemed to go deeper than filling the hour with something. “I guess we’ll play basketball today.” seemed to be about as deep as their thinking ever went. Remember that I am talking of physical education classes here, not sports. Competitive sports are anything but aimless.
What are, or what should be, the goals and purpose of physical education? Fitness? I’m not so sure that is a realistic goal. It’s a worthy goal in its own right, of course, but I’m not sure just providing an opportunity for physical activity everyday contributes much to it. Learning sports? Maybe. Learning skills? Maybe, but what skills and why? Burning off excess energy so kid can concentrate in class better? Maybe in elementary school, but not in high school.
If anyone has an attractive vision of physical education, I haven’t heard of it. If the choice is between abolishing PE or improving it, I’ll go with abolition. I won’t advocate improving it until I hear a realistic, and desirable, vision of what PE should or could be.
Comment by Brian Rude — January 8, 2010 @ 1:46 pm
Required PE is a jobs program for the PE teachers. I have never heard a convincing explanation of why a swimmer training several hours a day or a soccer player juggling 4 elite teams should have to take PE in middle or high school. At the same time that many more kids are overweight and/or unfit, many more kids are full-time elite athletes.
Comment by momof4 — January 8, 2010 @ 2:34 pm
I was the pathetic last-chosen humiliated kid in nearly every PE class I took. Classes which emphasize sports over individual fitness are the problem. Are PE teachers better today than the ones of my youth? Yes, many are.
Comment by Jude — January 9, 2010 @ 12:13 pm
In lieu of PE, I’d like to see mandatory participation on intramural sports teams with a casual, fun, low-pressure vibe. School could let out early 2-3 days a week and kids could hit the soccer/baseball fields, basketball courts, swimming pools, hiking trails, for a couple hours of physical activity, some of it competitive in a low-key way. Dance should be an option too. This way kids could choose, they could exercise for a longer block of time, they could stick with one sport and one team for a season and really bond with teammates and really acquire some skills at the sport. The main functions, however, would be to get aerobic exercise, have stress-relieving fun, and develop friendships.
Comment by Ben F — January 9, 2010 @ 4:39 pm
Ben – I think that what you suggest should be an option. I am familiar with private schools that do just that. However, not all kids are happy with or suited to the intramural scenario or even the school’s competitive teams. I think those kids should be allowed to substitute training in their chosen sport/activity. There are only 24 hours in a day and I don’t think that kids who have committed to a particular goal, be it the New York City Ballet, a college sport or regional/national/international competition, should be required to do any sort of PE at school. Of course, they can choose to do so.
Comment by momof4 — January 9, 2010 @ 5:25 pm
Addendum: I’d add the same opt-out for kids who have an individual or group fitness program. If the goal is fitness, weight-managment, stress relief etc., it should matter where or under whose auspices that happens.
Comment by momof4 — January 9, 2010 @ 6:21 pm
I should type or proofread better: it should NOT matter where they do it.
Comment by Anonymous — January 9, 2010 @ 6:22 pm
Gees, guys, you make it sound as though all kids *can* do sports, either intramurally or in any other format. I couldn’t even hit a ball over a volleyball net, so the kids rotated around me, keeping me in a position where I could do the least damage. I not only lacked coordination, I also had congenitally bad knees (attributed to “growing pains” or called psychosomatic–yeah, and I can show you the “psychosomatic” bone spur on my right knee). In years of PE classes, I had two successes–a good performance in a standing long jump one day, and a good performance in an endurance run. I was so bad that one day the PE teacher, faced with the prospect of having me be on her daughter’s team as the last player chosen, told me to sit down instead. In college, I successfully completed folk and ballroom dancing to fulfill the PE requirements, but when I tried to learn how to swim, the instructor had to jump in to save me. The miracle is that I am *NOT* severely overweight and out of shape. I use a club quality stair climber that I earned by creating a website for a fitness center. I use it *alone* in my bedroom where no one can judge my inadequate inability to even walk straight. When my kids were little, I actually picked up a volleyball once and punched it over a net–ha! I could do it. Take that, 7th grade PE. I would never again take any kind of PE class. For some of us, it takes longer to learn even basic skills, and the nature of competitive PE destroys us.
Comment by Jude — January 10, 2010 @ 12:32 am
I think you’re all hiding behind some distant memory of a class you didn’t/ couldn’t succeed in. People don’t bash other subjects like they bash PE. Get over it.
Comment by Anonymous — February 5, 2010 @ 11:56 am
you guys are all wrong because if someone says that their teacher was mean it probably means that the teacher pushed the students hard…buut that just means that the teacher was doing their job
Comment by barley hales — December 5, 2010 @ 4:04 pm
I don’t think it’s the teacher’s fault, but whoever designs the curriculum. We’ve never done anything in gym except for team sports, which I have always found humiliating. This has caused me to have panic attacks in gym class a few times, and I now detest exercise.
In elementary school gym class, the other students would always make fun of those unathletic few (which included me.)
This didn’t happen much past middle school, but I still always felt like I was being judged silently for not being athletic.
Comment by annonymous — April 28, 2011 @ 3:19 pm