Making the unfit kid who comes last run round the field again?

[Veuvelily]

Can anyone tell me the logic here.
What is the games teacher trying to achieve?

The child has tried his best and feels like he’s being punished unfairly
Plus he’s then used up all his energy, so is tired for the actual games lesson

I think on balance this isn't the best approach to take to encourage a child to get fitter as it is a bit humiliating. Whilst I do accept that the number of overweight/obese children in the UK is an absolute disgrace and needs to be tackled on every level, this will only serve to make the child feel inadequate, shamed and singled out. Best have a word with the school. My kids are fit and really enjoy physical activities, because both at home and in school they have been centred around having fun.

@tattleandbagels

It's shocking how people are willing for kids to abandon all exercise, for schools to remove all competition and pretend everybody is great and there's no need to put any effort anywhere.

I don't think anyone is saying children should abandon all exercise, simply that this practice is not the way to instill any love of exercise.

I went to a school where the PE teacher was only interested in competition and the kids who were good at games. She therefore concentrated all her attention on the official school teams and left the rest of us to get on with it. I was perfectly happy to exercise, not least because otherwise it was bloody cold, but what happened in practice was that people stood around the netball pitch chatting. It was an hour a day absolutely wasted. If she'd just let us go in the gym or go on uncompetitive walks or runs, at least we'd have got some decent exercise and been more motivated generally.

I used to have this happen to me but that was 30 years ago. The second solo lap I used to walk it while ignoring the screams of the PE teacher. The other kids thought this was great, me effectively sticking 2 fingers up to the PE teacher who they all thought was a twat.

PE teacher also used to make us run from the swimming baths after the swimming lesson back to school, it was probably 2 miles. Anyone who made it back to school after the PE teacher was put on a lunchtime detention. I not only had my PE bag and my school bag but had cooking on the same day so had boxes of cooking stuff. Funnily enough I never beat the PE teacher and flatly refused to do a single detention!

@CatkinToadflax

That’s appalling. Really unfair on your DS.

Slightly different situation but my DS1 was born extremely prematurely and was tiny when he started school (wearing age 2 trousers). He has various disabilities including autism, hypermobility and dyspraxia. He cannot run properly. At sports day each year they made him ‘run’ in the same group as every other child with an autumn birthday, regardless of him barely coming up to their shoulders in height and being unable to actually run. He was so far behind that it was like he was in a separate race. We moved schools eventually for multiple reasons and he was so terrified of sports day that for three years in a row he didn’t take part at all.

Similar experience here with dd (now 17), she often had to race against the rest of the class despite having physical disabilities, in the end I started taking her out of school for sports day so she wasn’t humiliated in front of the whole school and parents. She then had a supply teacher at high school that used to call her ‘lazy’ and ‘useless’, I wasn’t putting up with this so complained to the school, somehow DD’s disabilities had not been highlighted with the supply teacher but even so no child should be mocked for not being able to keep up.

It doesn’t matter how fit the children are, someone will always come in last in a foot race. Could all be future Olympic sprinters and still, someone has to be last over the finish line. Do the whole “how can you be so unfit to be last” is a complete red herring.

The point is do you then publicly humiliate the last one to finish the race? I think it’s cruel and sadistic. That was me in PE as I posted due to my asthma. It was humiliating enough to always be last. I would probably have ended up weeping in the toilets or forging excuse notes to skip PE altogether if I’d been then forced to keep going on a “loser lap” for all to see.

Zzelda my dc's secondary school have figured that out which is great. They allowed the children to pick from a range of exercise types so the children can do something they enjoy.

so its everytime he does running-the girls arent made to run

what is his teachers problem

sounds like bullying to me

@Hellocatshome

Erm this might sound really harsh but the only way you stop being unfit is by exercising more, so running around the field again is actually beneficial to the child's fitness. Obviously has to be done in the right way with the right explanations etc and not done to humiliate the child.

Someone has to come last an will inherently be poor at running or sport.

If you came in last in a maths test, should the class be made to watch as you complete another test and get graded?

I rarely say go mental at teachers but go mental.

Nothing else. Wtf is the bastard playing at how is this not bullying? Tell the head you will also be reporting it to Ofsted/the press if he is not sufficiently reprimanded.

Even so, if one kid is way behind the others and has a lap to go, why bother making them do the last lap? It's not a fucking Olympic event.

YANBU OP. There has to be a better way to handle this situation. i.e. helping a child to gradually improve his/her fitness levels without resorting to bullying or humiliation

Vile. Someone will always come last in a race and this sort of thing is just a power trip humiliation.

The role of PE should be to foster an enjoyment of physical activity as a foundation for a healthy lifestyle. Making someone do an extra lap is just pointless, it’s not going to make them fitter, it’s going to make them associate exercise with humiliation. 20 years ago shit like this happened every week in my school. It’s taken me almost all that time to go back and rediscover exercise that I enjoy.

again, proves the point, we need MORE PE lessons, daily ideally, we certainly do not need any less.

I agree with you that we probably need more PE lessons, @tattleandbagels, but I don't think it proves your point. What we need are PE lessons that are taught properly. A lesson that involves humiliating the kid who comes last in some pointless race is a very badly taught lesson.

@DrCoconut

This is why traditional PE should be optional for those that like it and are good at it. The same as choir/chess/cooking/whatever are. The rest should be taught about health, why a good diet and exercise are important etc but not humiliated on a field 1950's style. I bet uptake would be better if the lessons were things like yoga, dance, fun games where no one cares who wins and the kids could wear whatever comfy clothes they choose rather than a horrible PE kit. It comes down to whether the aim actually is promoting health and fitness or forcing conformity. I suspect it's still the latter in many cases.

Absolutely

My immediate thought is the bully PE teacher in Grange Hill in the 70s.

I certainly wouldn’t accept it. I’d be demanding a meeting with the head of year and PE teacher. Your DS sounds like he has a hell of a lot to deal with without being bullied by his teacher.

My PE teacher was like this, she use to make us girls strip into or PE knickers with tight tshirts, I was a fuvking F cup before leaving school, she use to berate us for trying to cover our chests. And heaven forbid we got dirty any field sports were offensive to her. I absolutely hated her and PE, I pretty much had a standard sick note for the last 3 years of high school. It definitely effected the way Ive viewed sports, exercise is anything but fun for me.

If he's active, he should be able to jog around the field without a stitch

Getting a stitch has nothing to do with fitness levels.

You are right that you should be able to jog around a field but (a) we don't know how large the field is and (b) kids don't jog, they sprint and then collapse. Because they are not taught how to run.

And everyone isn't the same - some kids will always be better at sports than others, and some may be better at certain sports than others. For example, you may be a good runner but rubbish at catching a ball, or a great batsman at cricket or rounders, but not so great at ice-skating. A good teacher will encourage all to do their best and give them to the tools to do their best - as with other subjects.

You get a similar mentality with music and art too - if you are rubbish the teacher isn't interested, you don't actually get taught how to be better.

Also, a child may have an undiagnosed connective tissue disorder (e.g. hypermobility), mild heart condition, thyroid disease which may be contributing to their inability to complete the required task. How is it ok that this is overlooked at schools?

Totally agree that this type of humiliation has no place in modern sports teaching but that fact that you describe a child as unfit is very concerning.

No child should be unfit and should be taking regular exercise that suits them and that they enjoy.

@tattleandbagels "I would be very concerned if my young teen was too unfit and "exhausted" for running an extra-lap that the rest of his class managed."

I've checked all the way through this thread and I can't find anything about the boy being asked to run a lap that the rest of his class managed. It seems to me that they did a lap (or x number) and he came last so had to run the lap again. I can't find anything that says the rest of the class had to run the lap again. Therefore he isn't being asked to do something the rest of the class managed. They're all having a rest whilst he does another run. If they were all told to do it again that's different - but they're not.

I don’t think they are even allowed to do this sort of individual public humiliation punishment to recruits in army boot camps anymore......

@Excilente

nope, no other POV here.

My DC's sports teacher times them, and rather than shame them, simply gives them a goal of beating their own best time the next time, so the only person they're competing against is themselves.

Yep, that's an excellent idea. Humiliating them and effectively punishing them for their own entertainment makes them a horrible person who shouldn't be teaching.

Unacceptable. They ran around. once. They did what they were asked.
So why punish them for not being as fast as the others? We don't make the child who finishes their maths last do ten more sums, do we?

I was always last when running as a child, and humiliated as a result. I had undiagnosed asthma. Sending me to run another lap would not have increased my fitness.

I hated most PE as a child because it was always team games and the favourites picked their friends first. I remember getting one report that was negative and telling me I needed to join clubs to improve my fitness. The next term was athletics and I was one of the quickest in the year, even without the clubs. The issue was never my fitness. The issue was lessons too often focused on the cool, sporty, popular kids holding court and the rest of us didn't matter.

I was in a similar position with swimming. The PE teacher despised me and confidently assumed I was hiding in the changing rooms when she couldn't see me shivering on the side of the pool at our first lesson. She was stunned and, I think, a bit frustrated to see me happily in the water already and swimming confidently. But she learnt nothing from that, e.g. that the way to go was to let me choose exercise I enjoyed.

I sort of got my own back. Two days a week swimming was voluntary and didn't happen if no-one signed up. I signed up regardless, whatever the weather (it was an outdoor pool) so the PE teacher never got to skive out of supervising the voluntary swimming sessions