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

@Janevaljane my DPs tried, but as they aren't sporty themselves we did very little apart from walking. I hated sports thankfully my BF was the thin weedy intellectual and I was the fat one, so I was generally picked second last for teams.
Our school was very focused on winning at matches to the exclusion of anything else.

Torture. Loathed it.

@MrsAvocet

My youngest son is very sporty. He is doing GCSE PE and plans to do A level and then a degree in Sports Science or similar and even he doesn't particularly enjoy "normal" school PE. He loves his GCSE lessons, especially the theory, but as he has no real interest in football or rugby the mainstream PE lessons, in winter at least, hold little interest for him. He does have a natural aptitude for most sports and isn't bad at any, but like everyone else, he has his preferences and neither of the 2 traditional "boys" school team sports interest him. And he is definitely not unusual. I realise that there are issues around resources but the school manages to offer quite a variety of sports in 6th form so I am unsure why a bit more choice can't be given to younger pupils, who might then not develop the loathing of school PE that is so common. I do have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about GCSE PE actually. They have to do 3 sports from an approved list, one individual sport, one team sport and the 3rd can be either, but all 3 must be competitive. I think this gives the wrong message about sport. In my opinion, exercise absolutely does not have to be competitive to ne valuable and I think the syllabus should reflect this. In fact if I was writing the syllabys I think I would insist that one of the activities was non competitive. Allegedly the list of approved sports has been chosen as they are easy to demonstrate progress in, without the PE teacher needing to have super specialised knowledge, but I think that's rubbish. You can demonstrate progress very easily in lots of non competitive activities in terms of improved personal performance or achievement. Currently you can only include things like running and cycling if you race, but huge numbers of people enjoy those activities in a non competitive way. I think the focus on competition in school sports in general does young people a great disservice - there needs to be more focus on activity for physical and mental health, and simply for fun.

My dd did horse riding for A level and she had to show what she did well and what she could improve. It didn't matter if she won or not (thank god ). Football and hockey are the same, and swimming- you don't have to win or lose, just show where you improve and what would make a difference to your performance.

Absolutely hated PE at school. It gave me a life long hatred of most group activities, especially sport.

Maybe you naturally hated them anyway which is why you hated PE so much?

I don't think children and young people generally speaking naturally hate sports/PE.
I think what leads to hatred is negative association with being humiliated, embarrassed, pointed out, left out and in my case, feeling perved on whilst naked and going through puberty.
My dislike of school sports was most definitely triggered by the bully that was the PE teacher and us girls all felt the same.

I was fortunate enough to have ponies growing up and loved all the physical activity surrounding them. Funnily enough, no negative experiences with team work, lessons and competitiveness through Pony Club, as it was run by enthusiastic, inclusive, lovely adults, who we felt safe with.

@ancientgran

If only the kids who were good at team sports had shown some team spirit to the kids who struggled. What I learned about team spirit was that if you were good at something it was fine to be nasty to people who weren't.

That was what I learned from it too.

Absolute torture and still dislike sport, plus am sure it damaged my confidence generally. To be last to be picked every time then hear the whispers of Oh no, we've got Lizzy made me want to crawl into a hole, so then I'd be even worse at catching, throwing, understanding rules, etc, as I'd get into a state of panic and performance anxiety at everyone watching me. The words rounders and netball still make me instantly anxious. It got so bad I'd try and be off sick on PE days and once tried to break my hand by slamming a desk lid on it. Dance lessons replacing some of the competitive sports in Year 11 were a huge relief, but too little, too late. Schools should recognise the individual differences in people and allow those that prefer individual exercise such as dance or aerobics to do so and leave those that actually enjoy competitive team sports to it.

Loved PE at primary school, long jump, high jump, all of it. But high school was hell on earth.

It was the way it was managed in high school, the best picking the rest every week. Gym skirts, yuk. Being herded in to the communal shower room naked with 30 others, no towels, watched by teacher.

Bullying was encouraged. It was actually horrific.

@Janevaljane

Everyone is different and being forced to do team sports when you're not that way inclined or skilled is humiliating and emotionally damaging

Being taught how to work as a team is immensely valuable.

Learning how to play hockey is much easier than learning how to perform yoga safely and effectively. You might not be able to hit the ball very well, but not many can unless they play outside school or are just naturally good at it.

You do realise that it is perfectly possible to be able to work as part of a team without it having to be a competitive sports team, right?

I have worked successfully as part of many groups in offices. Never a problem, despite my school, and particularly the PE department, trying to tell us that if we couldn't work as part of a team in a competitive sport such as netball or hockey (for girls) and football or rugby (for boys) then we would be no-hopers in any other area of life.

There are other ways to foster a team spirit, and other subjects or areas of life where it is needed.

You do realise that it is perfectly possible to be able to work as part of a team without it having to be a competitive sports team, right?

Of course. But we are talking about PE.

I was tall, skinny, reasonably fit and always picked somewhere in the middle for teams.
But I still found pe awful.
Year 7 was mixed sex and I remember us playing football. Divided into teams and out we go. Except the games were completely dominated by the boys who played all the time. I'd never seriously played so along with a few others sort of hung around the pitch freezing and being ignored. After when we were split from the boys we never played football again.
I find it shocking now that a pe teacher could let pupils spend a whole class without once touching the ball.

It wouldn't have been too challenging to do some ball exercises like professionals do , dribbling, passing, penalty practice. But no.

Yes I'm well aware of the assessment criteria thanks Janevaljane but the fact remains that you do have to be competing which is something that puts a lot of children/parents off, especially given that you have to compete in 3 separate sports for GCSE . At my children's school you are not allowed to take GCSE PE unless you compete in at least 2 sports outside of school. Why on earth can't one of them be a non competitive pursuit? Why does the running that my DS does to improve his fitness for his other sports not count, but if he put on the local athletics club vest and did exactly the same thing in a race it would? With the easy availability of electronic monitoring devices it shouldn't be too difficult to get around the assessment issues. The message it gives is that sport = competition and as is apparent from many of the posts on this thread lots of people only start to enjoy sport once that link is broken.

@Janevaljane

You do realise that it is perfectly possible to be able to work as part of a team without it having to be a competitive sports team, right?

Of course. But we are talking about PE.

Of course we are, but PE in the school I went to destroyed team spirit and confidence for so many of us by actually telling us that if we couldn't work as part of a sports team then we would be no-hopers in other areas of life too.

It carried over into other lessons too when the sporty types who had publicly humiliated those of us who they had tried so hard to leave out of the teams they had been allowed to pick themselves continued it.

Torture

Hated getting changed in front of people. Hated doing team sports. Hated having to put my uniform back on after getting all sweaty. Hated being embarrassed infront of people when I couldn't do something. It was especially torturous when I was a chubby preteen, just starting high school and was self conscious anyway.
I still hate team/competitive sport.

It wouldn't have been too challenging to do some ball exercises like professionals do , dribbling, passing, penalty practice. But no.
A good games lesson should consist of warm up exercises, skills teaching and thenapplication of skills in a game then cool down. So yours wasn't a good lesson. So many examples of bad teaching from decades ago

Yes I'm well aware of the assessment criteria thanks Janevaljane but the fact remains that you do have to be competing which is something that puts a lot of children/parents off

Well, yes. It's sport. Not fitness or exercise.

If you really can't bear to be in a football match and lose, or enter a show jumping competition and knock a pole down, or come 5th in a swimming race for your assessed video (all of which would be fine), then you probably wouldn't choose PE gcse or alevel

@Janevaljane

I don't see why it should be logistically more difficult to set up circuits, just to give an example, and let everyone do it at their own pace, than it is to get everyone into a hockey game. It seems like a lack of imagination rather than a problem of resources to me

But plenty of kids love team games and would find circuits really boring.

What a bizarre argument.

"Loads of kids find the competitive nature and ample opportunities for bullying and real lasting damage to their self esteem really hurtful - can't we sometimes have something that doesn't feed into that so much?"
"Oh no, the kids who already love PE as it is wouldn't enjoy that as much".

"Loads of kids find the competitive nature and ample opportunities for bullying and real lasting damage to their self esteem really hurtful - can't we sometimes have something that doesn't feed into that so much?"
"Oh no, the kids who already love PE as it is wouldn't enjoy that as much"

Are you saying that kids who enjoy team sports are bullies? Because that's what it sounds like.

Yes, do the odd circuit, but the fact is the vast majority of boys for example enjoy playing football and wouldn't love having to give that up for weekly circuits (which are boring week after week if you are a kid).

Torture and humiliation. Especially in secondary school.

And the idea that kids who don't like sport because it doesn't boost their self esteem would be empowered by circuit training is laughable.

Well yes. It's sport. Not fitness or exercise
And there was me thinking that PE stood for Physical Education, not sport.

I presume it's easier for the outside examiner to judge students if they are taking part in officially organised events with rules, rather than doing press ups in their parents sitting room.

It would be a bit bizarre to do A level sport if you didn't actually enjoy sport

@Janevaljane

*"Loads of kids find the competitive nature and ample opportunities for bullying and real lasting damage to their self esteem really hurtful - can't we sometimes have something that doesn't feed into that so much?" "Oh no, the kids who already love PE as it is wouldn't enjoy that as much"*

Are you saying that kids who enjoy team sports are bullies? Because that's what it sounds like.

Yes, do the odd circuit, but the fact is the vast majority of boys for example enjoy playing football and wouldn't love having to give that up for weekly circuits (which are boring week after week if you are a kid).

And your boys can't possibly play football at any time outside of PE lessons? I'm saying, as literally hundreds of other people in this thread are also saying, that the team sports exclusive focus of MANDATORY PE lessons leads to making it far easier to be bullied with no option of escape, is often facilitated if not actively encouraged by teachers and staff who have no empathy for the children that don't fit into their favoured groups, and actively deters people from doing any form of exercise in their adult lives.

I don't see why "boys like football" takes precedence over that when they can choose to do that every lunch, afternoon and weekend if they choose. Sounds to me like this is just a repeat of the earlier "but I like it the way it is, I'm alright Jack".

Actually, you can be empowered by well-thought-out circuit training if it challenges the narrative that some people want to marry the concept that bad at team sports = bad at any physical activity EVER.

Also wouldn't general physical training upgrade team sports in making for fitter athletes?

I remember a former boyfriend being surprised by my competency at swimming since he knew about my PE antipathy he automatically assumed he'd be a better swimmer than me. Awkward considering he could barely swim while I could tread water, surface dive with the competency of someone comfortable with it.

Also when establishing a consortium with academic and industrial partners nationally and internationally precisely no-one queried my competency because I was always picked last for anything team related or my ability to hit a rounders ball. It's almost as if being popular in PE ALMOST NEVER translates to the real world...