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

@AldiIsla

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.

Such fond memories of Math's Day at school. Having to perform mathematics in front of the whole school. The competition of which School House would win. The anger towards the thick kids who couldn't do long division as quickly as everyone else. Then getting naked in front of peers and teachers to round the day off. Smashing.

All of this.

Well said AldiIsla. I have never forgotten the weekly humiliation of PE and how it damaged my self esteem.

Worse were the PE/Games teachers who also taught other subjects. I was crap at PE/games. But was OK at other subjects. Trouble was when you got a PE/games teacher for another subject, they brought their opinion of you into the classroom, so assumed you were crap at academic stuff too.

Absolute torture for me. Hated it, but I was active as a child/teenager as I spent hours and hours a week dancing so it wasn’t because I was unfit. I was just no good at school sports. If they’re have focused on fitness I think it would have been much better. I don’t do any sport now.

Absolute torture. I ended up volunteering to take an extra language (German) purely because it clashed with PE on the school timetable.

It was not torture but I didn’t enjoy it.

Once we got to 4th year at high school, my friends and I started dropping most of the gym kit. We’d change into a tshirt and stick trainers on (with our skirt and tights). It meant we could always opt for table tennis, where we’d spend most of the lesson sitting on the crash mats in the corner chatting and play about 1 game of table tennis when forced to.

The thing about being shit at maths or science vs PE was all in the teachers’ attitude. Maths teachers all knew loads of kids hated maths and struggled. They tended to have some empathy for it (and the school streamed us so they didn’t have to suffer through calculus etc). The PE teachers just could not in any way appreciate or accept that some people are just not enthusiastic about hockey or volleyball or whatever else, and we were all thrown in together.

Plus, in maths, no one ever made you line up and pick a team/stand there waiting to be picked near last.

It’s good that some kids love PE (DS2 is very sporty and often disappointed that PE isn’t sporty enough) but PE teaching is often very poor and just doesn’t work for the uncoordinated and unsporty (my DS1 loathed PE). Maths and English teachers just cannot abandon the people who are crap at their subject in the way PE teachers still seem to do.

And another vote for torture! I am not and never have been ‘sporty’. I loathe team sports. I always knew that the second it was not compulsory, I’d never again willingly watch, engage in or go anywhere near a competitive sport. I’ve stuck to my vow. I’m fit and active, love to run and hike and enjoy yoga. Had there been an option to do ‘fitness’ rather than ‘PE’ at school, I’d have taken it. As it was I was an utter bugger and put all my pent up frustration with school into rebelling in PE (sorry, Mrs Dickie, not your fault I would never share your passion for shot putting ‘get your necks dirty, girls’).

Ritual humiliation unless you were naturally sporty. And I found it weird how the PE teachers would stand guard at the exit to the changing rooms until we had all showered naked together

Ritual torture.

In maths and science we were streamed into sets and taught according to ability. That didn't happen in PE at all.

Children in middle or lower ability maths or science sets weren't routinely made to humiliate themselves by demonstrating their lack of aptitude in front of the top students in the year, so it really is a poor analogy. Nor did the maths and science teachers routinely yell at them from the touchlines of a field because they weren't trying hard enough.

Such fond memories of Math's Day at school. Having to perform mathematics in front of the whole school. The competition of which School House would win. The anger towards the thick kids who couldn't do long division as quickly as everyone else. Then getting naked in front of peers and teachers to round the day off. Smashing

100% this.

If you do any degree of teacher training, there is discussion of pupils who are less able, less keen, resistant to teaching.

I appreciate not all teachers in any subject deal with the less able or keen very well, but how is it that PE teachers seem to bypass any need to accommodate those pupils at all?

One of my PE teachers was called Mrs Grimshaw which I felt was very appropriate as summed up PE lessons.

Eventually age 48 I discovered I enjoy running and am gutted that joint pain has stopped me. I refuse to ever hold a rounders bat again.

Just thought of something else - we used to do swimming first thing on a Friday morning which meant dragging a wet towel and swimming costume all day because we didn't have lockers. I also had long thick hair which inevitably got soaked and I spent the rest of the day with a wet shirt and hair.

Any PE teachers around reading this I wonder? It's pretty damning. And sadly things haven't changed if my DC's experience is anything to go by

Put me off sport forever.

And the teachers were sadistic bitches.

I am a mild-mannered person but why are PE teachers so fucking horrible.

Even now, 30 years later, my DS PE teachers are horrible. The female PE teachers hate the boys. The male PE teachers see PE as an opportunity to coach the football and rugby teams, so anyone who doesn't play football or rugby goes in the bottom set, no matter if they are national level runners, swimmers (future Olympic gold medal winner in one case was in bottom set PE) - total idiots running that department. And horrible people too.

The PE teachers are silent I see. Thing is, if you do come here we do want to engage with you. Otherwise, we are going to see these threads and the damage done in de-teaching children about mind-body connections.

My two hated their PE teachers and they were bullied for not liking football ! They liked other things. Worst subjects ever and sadistic teachers who got off on being horrible. Ds2 is now a black belt in karate but that was seen as inferior to football or rugby as it's not a team sport.
I was pleased when they left school so I didn't have to put up with the moaning about the lessons every week! 😃

Some PE teachers make Donald Trump look like a nice fluffy harmless kitten!

Yes, it would be interesting to hear from some PE teachers. I'm sure there must be some on here.

Certainly from a historical perspective this thread is pretty damning, and from a contemporary one there is certainly still a lot of room for improvement.

Is it a teacher training issue (for teaching PE)? There were some nice PE teachers at one of my DDs' schools but not at the other. Or maybe it helped that that particular DD was good at sport and team games. My other DD had different teachers, wasn't sporty and hated it.

In my own experience (70s & early 80s) was that of people who had had a total empathy bypass, were sadistic and oblivious to the damage they were doing. Or perhaps they just didn't give a shit anyway.

Why the total obsession with team sports instead of a more holistic and inclusive approach?

Why are/were the top students in the class selected and told to pick their own teams? Why was that ever considered a good method of teaching? Couldn't teachers see or understand the lasting effects this had on those of us who were always last to be picked? That has been a recurring theme throughout this thread and others I have seen regarding school PE over my years on MN.

I'd be genuinely interested to hear comments.

I genuinely think PE teachers just don’t understand that you can’t be made to be sporty by repeat exposure.

They also won’t be aware of the hideous undercurrents in the pupils’ relationships so will be able to put that to one side. Whereas we poor fuckers will have to mark someone who’s hated us since we were 9 (or whatever, that just came to me in flashback).

There’s no stiff upper lip and be honourable amongst teenage girls. It’s just so cruel.

Btw I posted earlier about being gangly and uncoordinated but actually I was decent at some sports (basketball/cross country) however I never ONCE got encouraged because I didn’t fit the body type of a sportsperson and I’d always be picked last because I was the swotty type.

How do they get trained to just not deal with any of that?!

Anyone also have NO IDEA where the swotty =/= athletic stereotype come from?
Looks around my colleagues and see cyclists, fell runners, rock climbers and at least 3 people on the University 1st rugby team.

Pointless torture I weasled out of as soon as possible.

I am wildly outdoorsy and active - mountain climbing, horse riding, hill walking, running - I love to keep fit. That bears no relation to the pointless team games and races that comprised sport at school. PE teachers were often overweight and lazy and invariably cruel. Not exactly role models for a lifelong love of fitness.

Terrible. I was not sporty and totally uncoordinated. Always last to be picked but later graduated to being picked penultimately as marginally improved and managed to hit a ball (but not very far).

The only time I did like it was when we did aerobics in secondary school. Later on as an adult I went on to exercise classes and joined a gym.

At my dd’s school in Primary they still do this picking members of the team thing. So nothing has changed.

I enjoyed bits of it like football and cross country. Other bits I hated. My school (a boys school) were very big on rugby and I hated being forced to play it. One time I twisted my ankle and the teacher forced me to continue playing. Sadist.
It must have been the perfect job for paedos, all that forcing kids to get naked in the showers.