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

I know their are some who hated it, but what about the kids who hated maths / science etc but PE was their thing? All subjects are competitive with someone top of the class, and we all have our thing.

mumfordofsons No, not some. Most people come out of school hating PE, so there is something going terribly wrong somewhere.

The difference is that if you’re bad at maths or science, it isn’t obvious and you aren’t humiliated for it, you’re helped. That’s not the case with PE.

Although we had compulsory Saturday morning sport which meant we couldn’t go home from boarding school on Friday night. Annoying

Torture- took me years to realise I could enjoy exercise. School PE ruined that for me, for many years.

Absolutely hated PE. I was a chubby girl with low confidence and really rubbish coordination in a girls grammar school where nearly all the other girls were sporty team playing competitive types.

As others have said in this thread the emphasis on competitive team sports just seems wrong. I’d have responded much better to aerobics, jogging etc done in a non competitive way. Plus I would have been a lot more active then I was standing in a corner of a freezing cold hockey pitch hoping the ball came nowhere near me!

I think I just lack a ‘competitive’ gene. I remember being bemused at the age of around 12 when in a PE lesson the team I was on lost a netball match and the sporty girls were emotional about it - angry, sad, nearly crying. I just didn’t get it (and still don’t). But as an adult I’ve realised I do like being active on my own terms - walking, hiking, swimming etc in non-pressured environments and with no competitive element.

Ritual humiliation. The teacher wouldn’t let me wear my glasses for PE then laughed at me and encouraged all the other kids to laugh at me because I had dreadful hand-eye coordination. Yes Mrs Marshall, I remember you. You thought humiliating a less able child was fun for everyone, you watched me cry every week and laughed and you were a disgrace to your profession.

BUT massive kudos to another PE teacher. A rough, tough ex marine who was awesome. He was a hardcore guy who was brilliant with the boys (in a fairly rough school) and a bit scary to me. He knew I was crap at sport but very academic and was having a hard time. He made a point of taking my careers interview (I shouldn’t have been on his list and my heart hit my boots when I found out) and, 30 years later, I still have the report he wrote. He encouraged my ambitions (which seemed so crazy at the time), told me I would succeed if I worked hard and took time to analyse all the things I was good at and tell me why I was brilliant. I’ve used so many things he said with my own DS. I recently discovered that he was awarded an MBE for his work with disadvantaged kids and I can think if no better recipient. A genuinely inspirational man.

It’s probably connected that I vehemently hate sport and exercise, am overweight and have a very successful desk based career. It’s also connected that one of my DBs is a teacher and models himself on the 2nd not the first teacher in that story.

Torture and ritual humiliation. For sure. Hated it. And have continued to hate sport for the rest of my life. I quite like going for a bike ride, have recently taken up running, have always enjoyed swimming and love yoga. But competitive sport or team sport - no way. As a child I had outside school sporty hobbies that I loved (dance, skating) but school sports were not designed for short people and were all about humiliation.

I know their are some who hated it, but what about the kids who hated maths / science etc but PE was their thing? All subjects are competitive with someone top of the class, and we all have our thing.

Were they forced to wear clothing that showed any lump / bump? Were they forced to stand in a line with the maths wiz getting to pic who she wanted on her team? Were they then forced to attempt integration by parts and laughed at when they couldn't do it?

As for now - I do exercise, run or gym. But a lot of the negatives don’t exist. I’m as warm as I want to be, it’s time for me, I don’t have to miss out on other things to do it, it improves mood and health.

I did get a better experience from ballet which showed me what it was like to be in control of your body in a good way

We were made to do a cross country run in all weathers. A teacher set you.off then about two thirds of the way around another teacher stamped your card. Me and and a few friends hated the run which was usually in the rain so we cheated. We set off running hard so teacher setting us off saw us as front runners. A bit further along route we caught a bus for 4 stops. Then walked and jogged for a bit then when in sight of other teacher run again and got our cards
stamped. Run to finish. We did this every week. Teachers thought we were good at cross country.

Torture for me. I remember playing rounders and being told off by one of the girls as I was doing it wrong, she actually made me cry. She had a right go at me. Come to think of it, she’s a teacher now. Poor bloody kids.

If you're not sporty then PE is a total and utter nightmare.

One year, some friends and I got out of tennis by asking if we could go cross country running on our own. Surprisingly (it was around 1970) we were allowed, so we walked into the town centre, had a coffee and then jogged up the drive to the school so we arrived out of breath. We did this for half a term but then the teacher said, as we had trained so hard, she had entered us all for running events on Sports Day, I think she secretly knew what we were up to. I was entered for the 800m but by some fluke, I was very skinny and the other girls were heavier, I won. It was the first time there had been a girls' 800m event so, for a year, I was the record holder with a very slow time. I can't deny I felt some elation being cheered on by the rest of the school as I won but it also proves I wasn't all that hopeless - my talents, such as they were, just hadn't been channelled in the right way.

Torture and ritual humiliation for me, with the humiliation coming both from teachers and other students.

Huge focus on team sports and athletics, none of which I was good at, and total contempt from teachers and pupils if you weren't very capable. The thing that rankles most is that there was absolutely no acknowledgement that some people are good at sports outside of the very narrow window that school offers - I wasn't a quick runner but, once I actually learned how to run properly, have found that I am a good cross country runner, and I was good at horse riding and very strong, but there was no interest whatsoever in those things and I was made to feel useless. It fostered a loathing of exercise in me that led to my becoming significantly overweight and unhealthy from GCSEs through to second year of uni.

I've since found an enjoyment of exercise, and have swayed between being very slim and very fit, running half marathons and exercising daily, to nowadays when I'm not super fit but am healthy, not overweight, and walk loads and do more formal exercise a few times a week. I still get very anxious and self-conscious about exercising in a group, though. I won't even run with my DH. So I do think school PE was very damaging.

I found an enjoyment of exercise in 2nd year of uni when I realised I desperately needed to lose weight. It really highlighted for me how inadequate school PE was, though. I had no idea how to exercise effectively or run properly, once I learned those things everything became easier and I started to enjoy it. I have no idea why schools don't teach those basics, rather than just expecting kids to throw themselves round a running track with absolutely no foundation, then wondering why only the naturally able runners enjoy it.

Torture.

I am a sporty person. I did sports outside of school. I did the optional athletics club my school ran too. I loved those. PE lessons put me off playing team sports and didn't help the athletics. Netball still makes me twitch.

I enjoyed PE, I was sporty and I’ve ended up playing sport my whole life. I did find a lot of the PE Teachers a bit annoying though. Weirdly competitive and mean. Hopefully that’s not the case these days.

One of my DC was asked to do deep lunges while walking across the length of a hockey field on her first day at a new school. Apparently everyone’s legs and bums were killing them all week. I thought that was a sure way to put all the students off PE for ever more.

I think PE should allow for the sporty competitive kids and for kids that need ‘fun’ ways to keep fit. PE shouldn’t put anyone off.

Terrible torture and humiliation.

All school PE lessons were was the opportunity for those already doing sport outside school to excel. There was never any actual coaching or support with technique for those who didn't do sport outside of school.

Torture, pure and simple. Sadists in tracksuits.

Torture. I hated it.

Sadly PE was still shite when my children got to secondary school. And neither of them are physical
Slouches. The irony is they could have had a pair of bloody good cross country runners in my son and his mate if the teachers had laid off the oh he's a swot and doesn't play rugby nonsense. Both young men now run for recreation.
My own experience when returning to my old school was awful and salt was rubbed into the wound when one of the by then aged PE teachers said oh Obi you'd have made a wonderful modern dancer. Eh? Well why the flip didn't you tell me when I was 13?!!!

I teach in a secondary school, and can confirm PE teachers are still mean both on and off the pitch. They think everyone loves doing cross country, and they always try to rope non-PE staff like me to join in competitions. I'm more than happy to help out colleagues but not PE colleagues for their expectations, I just say I left that torture behind 20 years ago thank you!

Torture.

I'm not tall and not sporty. Yes to memories of communal showers, teachers noting your period, itchy blue sports shorts.

A lasting memory is still of one our female teachers who would balance herself sitting on a hockey stick...

1980s. Deeply unpleasant and humiliating experience for me and for the vast majority of girls I did sport with. And I wasn't even that bad at sport - made it into the school team for a few years (I think years 7 to 9) for athletics and hockey - but I still found it horrible. Most of the reasons have been mentioned by pp -
The embarrassing kit that showed your underwear,
The horrendous cold outdoors in winter with inadequate clothing
Compulsory communal showers while watched very carefully by that one teacher
Tracking periods to stop girls using them as an excuse for avoiding sport or showers
Humiliating team selection processes. I was never the first to be picked but often not the last - but some of my close friends got chosen last and it was awful for them
Blatant favouritism and bullying from the teachers
Never once actually having any teaching or coaching to help you improve at sport
And worst of all: every.single.sports.teacher at my secondary school was an utter psycho, men and women alike. In the 1980s corporal punishment was still allowed, and the male teachers at least took this as permission to cuff the boys round the head more or less at random. The female teachers tended to be psychologically nastier.

They were nastiest with the younger kids who were too scared and inexperienced to show their disdain. By 6th form the teachers sort of gave up on bullying us because PE was such an obvious irrelevance by comparison with A-Levels so we really didn't care, and it was also obvious that we had chosen to stay on at school so were there 'voluntarily'. So at that point we got offered 'soft options' like mixed badminton and basketball. I think I stopped going to sport lessons altogether half way through 6th form and just went home instead - they either didn't notice or didn't care.

For those of you who wrote that you 'loved' school sport - do you think that you were in one of the (apparently) few schools that didn't humiliate people, and did most people think like you? Or were you basically the teacher's favourite sporty types who got to choose the teams, and in that case did you notice all the bullying going on around you? Was your sportiness maybe something of a defence mechanism to avoid being picked on?

Another question: I've been out of the UK for a long time, my experience was back in the 80s. Has sport in schools got much better these days or is it still primarily about humiliating people? The number of people saying 'torture' suggests that it was bad at least until comparatively recently.

@dannydyerismydad

Terrible torture and humiliation.

All school PE lessons were was the opportunity for those already doing sport outside school to excel. There was never any actual coaching or support with technique for those who didn't do sport outside of school.

This was my experrience as well - plus some bullyng from PE teachers for certain pupils - sometimes me.

I've got the impression they try more at DC school and most of the PE staff seem nicer - they've done more types of sport and seem aware some children are less into sport - even so my kids don't really like or enjoy PE lessons.

On the whole hated it! Loved athletics as I’m a good runner and its an individual sport. But I cannot catch a ball/hit one with a rounders bat for love nor money! And everything was very ball orientated! So in team games I was always the one letting the team down. As PPs have said, no focus on helping crap students to improve. I’d have appreciated remedial ball catching classes, being shown an actual technique of howTF you actually do it! This would happen in any other subjects with struggling students, why is PE different!!
Once left school I joined a gym and have done running, swimming, Pilates, cycling, weights, everything and I love keeping fit. But no balls please!

Another thing I’ve just remembered- being left handed I was sometimes told off in PE lessons for doing things ‘wrong’ or back to front when actually I was just doing them them the way that felt natural to me. And as the only leftie in the class I felt very singled out. This was in the 1990s.