[quote]SteelyD wrote:
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Phys Ed activities I remember: Yoga. Square Dancing. Badminton. Darts (yes, darts with pointies). Fucking.Joke.
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We got to do archery and it was awesome. Kids don’t get that fun stuff any more. It was fun that they armed us.
I agree that we can’t rely upon PE to make any type of tidal changes in our children’s lives. It comes from observing parents and family members. That is why you typically see overweight kids with overweight parents. It is a learned behaviour and lifestyle. The same is often true of smoking, drinking etc. It is what we consider the norm in our immediate world.
To Professor X’s point about what teacher’s can and can’t do, the elementary schools locally won’t give F’s any more. Everyone has to feel good about themselves. Fortunately, the few times my daughter brought home some POS, with a D or something equivalent, it was relabeled an F.
Makes me want to home school my future children with mandatory iron time. Their form and progression will be graded, automatic fail for douche/bro behaviour.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Question, why do you think a one hour PE program is going to be able to outdo a home where the parents don’t know and don’t care about eating better and working out? [/quote]
I don’t think a 1 hr PE program can. I think making it more of a priority in education and giving it the time per week it deserves - not only in teaching kids certain sports and getting them active at some point in the day - but also in the “Health Class” component that has the potential to be a much more useful course that teaches kids about nutrition or anatomy basics.
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You can’t start with the kids. That does little good without changing the perspective of the PARENTS. Also, many of these parents would ask for the teacher’s head if they so much as made their kid feel like they were fat to start with…so what good is PE doing if they get zero reinforcement at home? [/quote]
It’s much more difficult to change a parent’s perspective than a child’s. I’m not suggesting that a good PE and Health program will be successful with every child. It’s true that we can’t change what the parents have them doing at home. But giving a 1 or 2 hr block during the day where kids are being active helps, not only in their physical well-being but exercise helps focus and performance in the classroom also.
Trust me making school an hour or two longer for extra PE will not help kids ‘focus and performance’. If anything they will just resent PE more because it is eating into their Xbox time.
There were shitty parents years ago. There have always been shitty parents. There have been plenty of studies that show kids fitness levels have not change over the past 30-40 years. What has changed is that many kids have life too easy. They eat when they want, they sleep when they want. They are not told to do some exercise when they are fat because it might ‘hurt their feelings’. They receive instant gratification in so many ways, without having to work for reward.
It’s not neglect thats causing these unhealthy and useless kids, it’s moddycoddling. In my experience of working in Education, some of the most physically fit kids come from the poorest/difficult backgrounds. Their parents don’t/can’t feed their every need to excess.
[quote]theBird wrote:
Personally I didnt like PE. I neeed that extra time to fit in time for studying for exams and training for state level soccer. Playing volleyball with the girls didnt cut it. I remember the longest rally was 3. What a waste of time. tweet tweet[/quote]
Haha, yeah, volleyball in my gym class was me on one side of the net, my buddy on the other, and everyone else letting us try for everything. Fun…but maybe not so educational for the class.
I agree in the importance of physical exertion and thus believe that gym should remain a subject in high schools. I realize that parents should be the primary teachers…but shouldn’t parents also be the primary educators for math/science/history/etc? What makes “gym” different?
IMO gym classes suck for basically the same reason math/science/other classes suck: because society doesn’t really value education and/or schools. If society did, parents would be more involved, teachers would be paid more, and parents/students/and society would be demanding better performance from these classes. As a caveat and to try to avoid the same old discussions, some teachers in some states certainly get paid LESS and teachers unions unquestionably deserve SOME of the blame. But overall, if you value something, you invest time, money, and energy into it. I don’t see that happening with a lot of schools.
PE’s good as a break in the school day to keep the kids from going crazy. Apart from that, I don’t think it serves much purpose. Maybe in elementary school it’s the only way kids get introduced to sports, but by high school everybody knows the rules of soccer or whatever and it’s not enough exercise to make you fitter.
I personally hated PE. When I was that age I was terminally clumsy and ridiculously weak – I had basically written off ever keeping up with the “normal” kids. PE was just something to try to get through with minimal humiliation. They actually had a weight room in high school, and we sometimes went up there for PE, but it never occurred to me to go over to the “boys’ side” with the free weights – it seemed so obviously VERBOTEN and nobody dispelled that illusion.
Something is drastically wrong with public education, of course, and somehow we keep putting more money into it every year and still having to make cuts, and this is a symptom. They’re cutting music, art, and science classes too.
[quote]AlisaV wrote:
PE’s good as a break in the school day to keep the kids from going crazy. Apart from that, I don’t think it serves much purpose. Maybe in elementary school it’s the only way kids get introduced to sports, but by high school everybody knows the rules of soccer or whatever and it’s not enough exercise to make you fitter. [/quote]
Isn’t seeing gym as “only a break” part of the problem though? As an adult, you can see the value in being physical and have taught yourself the value of iron. Shouldn’t that be what is taught? 1 or 2 hours a week might not be enough to get someone fit, but it should be enough to show someone how to get fit. In a similar vein, 1 or 2 hours of, say, math, isn’t enough to teach calculus…but it should be enough to show someone how to study and learn calc. Eh, IMO “gym” should be coupled with a health class as auxiliaries to biology.
Ah, that would be nice. In my ideal world (probably totally unrealistic) gym class would actually focus on fitness improvement, and have goals and standards. Get the kids to the point when they can run a decent mile and do a pullup. That might communicate that challenging oneself physically is a good thing. Get away from the “that’s just for jocks” stereotype.
For me, the switch actually flipped when I was reading about the Revolutionary War, and I was somewhat inspired, and i realized I wanted to do something hard, something that hurt a little bit.
Schools don’t NEED phys ed as “a requirement for graduation” when there are so many kids graduating somehow without fundamental math and reading skills.
No phys ed a travesty? No. Colleges offering remedial math and reading classes is a goddammed national travesty.[/quote]
Amen.
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This.
I work at a college and over 50% of our incoming freshmen are taking at least one remedial learning class and most are taking both. One of my high school buddies is a professor on campus who teaches the education majors and he says most can’t pass the math classes in his department on the first go-around.
These are the people that are training to teach our kids. It’s our fault as a society for being too lax and making excuses for people’s shortcomings and THAT starts at home. Period.
[quote]lewhitehurst wrote:
I work at a college and over 50% of our incoming freshmen are taking at least one remedial learning class and most are taking both. One of my high school buddies is a professor on campus who teaches the education majors and he says most can’t pass the math classes in his department on the first go-around.
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Not trying to start a debate about it (because I 100% believe it and agree it’s sad), but how did these kids get IN to college if they need remedial reading or math? Their SAT’s must have been horrendous.
[quote]lewhitehurst wrote:
I work at a college and over 50% of our incoming freshmen are taking at least one remedial learning class and most are taking both. One of my high school buddies is a professor on campus who teaches the education majors and he says most can’t pass the math classes in his department on the first go-around.
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Not trying to start a debate about it (because I 100% believe it and agree it’s sad), but how did these kids get IN to college if they need remedial reading or math? Their SAT’s must have been horrendous. [/quote]
EXACTLY! I can’t speak for all colleges, but at ours; those of us who actually give a shit feel that most of the students we get would be better served by either attending a community college first or forgoing college altogether and going to a trade school. The fact that ANY four year college has remedial classes of any type is ridiculous, IMO. Most colleges have dumbed down things greatly as the primary motivations have become profit and politics as opposed to education.
[quote]lewhitehurst wrote:
I work at a college and over 50% of our incoming freshmen are taking at least one remedial learning class and most are taking both. One of my high school buddies is a professor on campus who teaches the education majors and he says most can’t pass the math classes in his department on the first go-around.
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Not trying to start a debate about it (because I 100% believe it and agree it’s sad), but how did these kids get IN to college if they need remedial reading or math? Their SAT’s must have been horrendous. [/quote]
EXACTLY! I can’t speak for all colleges, but at ours; those of us who actually give a shit feel that most of the students we get would be better served by either attending a community college first or forgoing college altogether and going to a trade school. The fact that ANY four year college has remedial classes of any type is ridiculous, IMO. Most colleges have dumbed down things greatly as the primary motivations have become profit and politics as opposed to education.
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i am aware of community college graduates that need remedial courses whne they hit four year university. Some people aren’t meant for college.
[quote]AlisaV wrote:
Ah, that would be nice. In my ideal world (probably totally unrealistic) gym class would actually focus on fitness improvement, and have goals and standards. Get the kids to the point when they can run a decent mile and do a pullup. That might communicate that challenging oneself physically is a good thing. Get away from the “that’s just for jocks” stereotype.
For me, the switch actually flipped when I was reading about the Revolutionary War, and I was somewhat inspired, and i realized I wanted to do something hard, something that hurt a little bit. [/quote]
This is bang on.
What if PE was revamped to teach more healthy lifestyle habits and body awareness so that physcial activity was less daunting. The tests would be based on how much you have improved a certain aspect of health/etc.
like if you progressed from not being able to do a plank for 30 seconds at the start of the semester, and at the end you are doing rollouts no problem. something akin to that.
And personally for this to happen i think that the government based activity councils etc need a SERIOUS overhaul. all of the assessments and recommendations are from 1991 or worse. the problem is not only the class, but what people consider true fitness to be, eating habits etc, and what the doctrines are.
look at a cert like Can Fit Pro. almost every single method they teach in it is complete trash. who cares hos many pushups you are doing, I’m more interested in scap function or hip mobility which are much better indicators of how physically able you are.
and for the nutrition side of things. We are fucked. completely. all you can tell someone is to eat real food. So possible information on what real food is, and how to actually practically eat it. tell them about
how corn is in everything etc.
Kids these days DESPARATELY need self efficacy, and much less artificial self esteem.
Couple of points:
-remedial classes in college serve a purpose but it should not serve half the students. Remedial courses are to help students who came from bad schools.
-when it comes the parents, we should consider the cultural shift of having one parent at home (to watch/guide what the kid did, as a pair of eyes to watch outdoor activities, etc.) to having no parents at home with TV and X-box as babysitters (either increase in single parent families or dual income families). This is not the case of the individual family but rather the culture of a neighborhood, there were some parents/neighbors watching the kids. Now it is too dangerous to go outside.
-I think one reason American students do bad in math (in general) is that despite all the politicians saying how important math is, math is denigrated in everyday culture. ‘Math is hard’, ‘math is for nerds’, ‘math sucks’, ‘you do not need math’, etc. is so ever-present why do we expect kids to take math seriously? This same denigration of schools and teachers, I think, is partially accountable for the drop in the quality of American educations. If the kids think school suck and their teachers sucks because that is all they hear, why would they think they will get anything out of their schooling? Why would the best and brightest want to be teachers if they are consistently bad mouthed and, in most places, poorly paid?
That said, I think there is a real need for improvement in the US education system, but I think it starts with holding schools and teachers in high esteem in general/theory and strive meet those expectations in practice. I also think expectations for students should be high and that must be matched by parents for it to work.
