PE - did it promote a life long love of sport or was it ritual torture?

[LuckyMum96]

Just that really, for me it was mixed - too much PE was focussed on the school teams though and not enough on general exercise and activity

Hated it and have not taken a day's exercise or played any sort of sport since the day I left school.

Torture. Still have nightmares about cross country in December!

P E teachers were only interested in the sporty children.

Gym knickers, pleated PE skirts and white polo shirts here. Indoors, outdoors, rain or shine. Bare feet indoors, trainers outdoors. Hockey socks were only for hockey, but we used to ‘forget’ and roll them up over our knees when it was really cold. I think the cold would have been more bearable if lessons were planned to keep us moving, but I seem to remember an awful lot of time spent standing around freezing my tits off.

Pretty much every lesson involved competitive sport.

We did got to take golf one term which was fun, if not very aerobic (something to do with the school giving right of way or similar to a neighbouring golf club) which I did enjoy, although by the time we’d walked there and back it was a pretty short lesson. I think I’d have enjoyed racquet sports more if there had been enough courts to go around. Most of the lesson seemed to be spent waiting for a turn.

What do indoor PE did you do?

@PercyKirke

Hated it and have not taken a day's exercise or played any sort of sport since the day I left school.

FWIW I'm a bloke. The one thing that differs between the make and female experience as far as I can see is showers. Fist thing any PT master at a boys school learns is that it is impossible to get boys to shower. We're damned if we're sitting through the next two periods damp and steaming.

LuckyMum96 I read in the book 'Eat Sweat Play' by Anna Kessel about how changing the kit led to greater participation.

I hated it. If you weren't sporty you had no chance. My PE teacher announced I was as useful as a chocolate teapot to the class and my brothers PE teacher swore at him as he was no good.

My kids are dyspraxic and hate it too.

If it was about fitness and weight gain etc, they'd just have the kids do a good brisk walk for 20mins twice a day. But they don't, because it isn't. Noone ever got fit and lost weight doing PE.

It's a load of time wasting nonsense and after primary school it should be nothing more than one option amongst many.

@derxa

This was normal in the 60s/70s. Not really

Sorry, I have to disagree. That was the way it was in most State boys schools in the 60s and 70s and from what my DW and her friends tell me it wasn't much different for girls.

@nosswith

LuckyMum96 I read in the book 'Eat Sweat Play' by Anna Kessel about how changing the kit led to greater participation.

I hated our kit, artex top, horrible skirt, itchy hockey socks

Oh my god it was torture. Any love I had for sport was ruined by PE. Not only does it attract bullying teachers, it also lets the bully kids thrive as the teachers egg them on.

From being forced to run around outside in shorts in the middle of January, to being asked todo a high jump over a pole that was literally higher than me. Ugh.

I started bunking off the lessons once I got to year 10.

I hated PE at secondary school for various reasons, having been on the netball team at primary (so not completely useless!).

I had vivid stretch marks on my thighs, which the gym knickers we wore for indoor PE showed off nicely.

I can’t hit a ball with a bat to save my life, so rounders was hell. Teams picked by the sporty kids, with the saddos like me left til last. No one actually tried to improve my ball hitting or catching skills, so it was just an hour of nerves and humiliation.

I was pretty good at football, but we didn’t play much of that.

If maths or science teachers acted like some PE teachers in the 90s (ie allowing kids to be humiliated in class every week for not being good at maths/science etc) then there’d be uproar.

Yes, PE can be a chance for some kids to shine, and that’s great, but why should other kids be put off sport for life?

Neither. I didn't like much of it, but it wasn't horrific. Netball was ok. Liked rounders. Hated hockey - muddy and potentially painful. Showers and getting changed was a faff.

Hated PE

I now work in fitness

My PE teachers were all nasty bitches wearing their warm tracksuits whilst we froze in a shirt and tshirt. We were only allowed a sweatshirt if they said it was cold enough. That depended on their mood. They they watched us shower which was awful. In he end I just got my mum to write a note that I was on my period every week so I couldn’t have a shower or go swimming. They called my mum to ask so my mum lied and said I was under the hospital for period problems. I was really good at sports but I stopped putting any effort in as I hated it all so much. I do exercise now, mainly running and weights but I’ll never forgive those teachers. If I seen one around I would tell them exactly how they destroyed so many girls confidence.
Thankfully it’s much better for my daughter. They can wear leggings/joggers/hoodies. No showers. Her teachers are lovely. My daughter doesn’t really like PE that much but it’s not something she dreads.

They shouldn’t make sports compulsory. It should be an option for teens. But exercise should be with swimming, dance, yoga featuring more heavily.

My daughter would hate dance, it’s part of performing arts and she really doesn’t like it. Swimming can be an issue for some girls to with so much of their bodies exposed.

hated PE. Hated the kit. Had to occasionally flash your towel open on way into shower to show you hadn't just pushed your bra straps down (WTAF?!).
I am not exactly sporty now, but I have a sporty family, watch a lot of sport and can talk about it fairly knowledgeably. And I exercise daily.

Hated it. We had shared changing rooms- all girls but no privacy
And the forced shower after
If we didn’t have to change it might have been bearable

The teachers having their favourites I.e the sporty kids - who obviously picked other sporty kids for ‘their team’. and the rest of us left to just make up the numbers

I’ve never been in any kind of exercise situation since

Hell is a gym

14 years of absolute misery & humiliation thanks to school Sport.

I binned my trainers on the last day of school and didn't buy another pair until I was 48.

No wonder half the population is obese. PE teachers have a lot to answer for.

Torture, except for swimming. Was lucky that both my primary and secondary schools had their own pools and swimming was a highlight. I still love swimming now and pre-covid swam several times a week

Hated everything else though.

@Makegoodchoices

I wasn’t allowed to wear my glasses - then had to catch/hit a ball.

Ditto. Freezing on a lacrosse pitch and totally unable to see. Mocked and humiliated when I didn’t react in time to a ball coming at me out of the fog. A friend had her skull fractured by a lacrosse ball, which was the final straw: after that I used to skive rather than go to games lessons. I can’t believe that the sadists at my school were ever allowed to teach adolescents.

It seems to be quite a common experience that PE teachers don’t actually do any teaching- the kids with natural aptitude get all the attention and everyone else is just left to flounder. I know I went to school in the Bad Old Days, but that wasn’t true in any other subject.

Op Well done

Ritual torture.
The inappropriate kit, especially in winter.
Communal changing, I was the outlying small, underdeveloped child. I only wore bras constantly from y9 just because one lad decided to call me "ironing board". I did remember to wear something on PE days.
No ability at throwing, catching, running, anticipating where to go.
Ritually left to last in all team picking.
Always left to be substitute or goal keeper.
Vile teachers that had no nuturing ability and didn't actually teach.
At least the communal showers had died out between DMs and my time there.

Fortunately I did dance out of school which lead to aerobics/ yoga classes. I also did DoE. I've gone on to learn to run as it was practical to squeeze in around young children. I now run half marathons

I also learned to swim at 16 (thanks to DoE) and then got the confidence to be able to ride a bike at 19.

I strongly suspect that I have dyspraxia. DS1 has a diagnosis, and he's got much better confidence because we've done swimming lessons since babyhood, gymnastics, karate and junior parkruns. He's not a natural at team sports, but he's fast, and knows there's more to sport than PE.

Damaging.

Jesus, just reading this thread brings back waves of anxiety and revulsion at the memory of the fug of cheap body spray in the changing rooms.

I quickly moved to writing parental notes to get out of PE, or sometimes I think I just would sit out and refuse to do whatever. So not like I participated (ha) in very many classes. But fuck me the whole thing was a stressful, unpleasant, miserable ordeal that my self-esteem could have fucking done without.

Ugh, I need a cup of tea now!

I loved it. It was my favourite subject. PE should be given more importance in the curriculum but the focus is all wrong. We should be fostering a love of physical activity and educating on a healthy balanced lifestyle. There needs to be the opportunity for kids to compete if they want to but that shouldn't be the primary focus.