... to think this parent is being a bit prescious, and this school a bit weak?

[mw14]

Speaking to a friend yesterday, I began to think I've turned into an old git, but on consideration I'm convinced I'm right. My friend has a daughter who is 13. For the first two indoor PE lessons of the term, she claims she forgot her trainers, and as a result, her teacher allowed her to sit out the lesson. The school were displeased though, and emailed my friend to alert her and ask for her support in ensuring she had her full kit. The girl got a talking to from her mother, but then, yesterday, her mother received a phone call from the school.

Apparently, she'd yet again claimed to have forgotten or lost her trainers, clearly expecting to once again sit on the sidelines. However, this time the teacher did the right thing, and ordered her to get changed into her PE kit and to do the lesson in bare feet. For some reason, this upset her, and she's since had the audacity to complain to her mother about it being "unfair" and "horrible".

I don't want to sound like a miserable old sod, but it's almost unbelievable on several levels. Firstly, that the school accepts "I have no trainers" as an excuse. Secondly, that my friend, like so many parents, has not got a proper grip of her daughter, and thirdly that she saw doing PE in bare feet as such a bad thing! AIBU?

MorrisZap, I think dance is now part of the PE National Curriculum.

I always had the impression that PE teachers were only interested in the sporty kids and just couldn't be arsed with the crap ones like me. To be fair, I don't blame them really. I was wilfully lazy and made faces and eye-rolls if asked to do the slightest thing.

Also was terrified of any moving object, though that was quite handy in dodgeball.

I think many schools do lessons in single sex groups, especially things liek gymnastics.

Most secondary schools do seperate PE for girls and boys IME.

Oh God school PE

I get this cold sick feeling whenever I think about PE/Games

it's the stink of rubber and sweaty shoes and being bawled at

I'd support any child in avoiding it - if it's anything like PE at my school it's pointless, brutal and exactly the sort of experience that gives people a lifelong hatred of exercise, and school

DD is doing orienteering in PE this half term. They do blocks of half a term on specific things dance, netball, hockey, gymnastics, cricket, tennis etc. Much better than when I was at school. She goes to a mixed sex school but PE is single sex.
And if she forgot her trainers she would be made to wear the manky school ones they keep for emergencies. They don't forget twice!

Think dancing is also part of the curriculum as well.

For some children it is not to do with lack of choice though. Many, more so girls IME, try and avoid any of the activities offered throughout school PE, be in hockey, netball, althletics, cross country, dance, gymnatics, areobics, whatever.

I got a great comment on my report for volleyballin the 4th year

"Greensleeves has convinced herself she is useless. On the court she is lazy and stroppy and invokes a poor atmosphere with her irritating and critical remarks and behaviour"

LadyG, I'm sure the manky spare trainers work! Some earlier posters thought the idea of shared trainers abhorant and revolting - I assume you'd not agree with that. Better than bare feet?

Oh yes, school reports on sport, another source of mirth for me. "Lankyalto has enjoyed badminton this term" when I had never ever in my life picked up a badminton bat, or whatever you call the things.

I would aspire to a report like yours Greensleeves

I used to get called Cinderella in hockey too, because I ran away from the ball

all I remember about hockey is flailing about in freezing mud with my goose-pimpled legs blue with cold, trying to dodge this bone-hard white fucking ball which kept being socked towards my shins at 100 miles an hour

it was like aversion therapy, I can't even be present when people are talking about sport now

I reckon they put that on the PE teacher traiing course, Riven. That and being totally unathletic themselves, and the ability to wear hideous sportswear in mltiple layers.

I feel I've started a group therapy session!

athletes foot

mw14, I would have found barefoot PE humiliating because it would have make me different from anyone else, at a time where girls in particular are desperate to fit in.

I also question a punishment which forces someone to do sth using incorrect equipment - my gym would never allow me to go in barefoot, so why is it OK for a PE teacher to force someone to do so? If a punishment was required, surely the teacher could have come up with a far more intelligent one (e.g. write an extra essay on the importance of exercise?)

I did not got to school in the UK, so I cannot comment on the posters' experiences. I have a minor disability, so PE was always hard for me, but my teachers always managed to find a way for me to do sth which would push me to do some exercise within my means, without humiliating me. I cannot see why a PE teacher would not do so with someone who obv. does not feel confident exercising, when an English teacher would try to find alternative solutions if someone wasn't, say, confident at reading.

BTW, I think PE is as important as other subjects - but if we keep forcing teenage girls to do it without taking into account the standard teenage body issues, they will just grow up hating exercise, and possibly passing on their feelings to heir children.

So If I was her mother, I would probably say that my DD deserved a punishment because she obv lied. I would however question the punishment given (with the school, not with DD), and try to find a way to encourage my daughter to exercise within and outside school.

Don't most high schools offer choice? In my (state) school three classes would get changed and go up to one hall where we were told (for example): "football in here, rounders outside in the cage, badminton in hall 2, cross country outside with Mr X and aerobics in the fitness suite." In first two years we did have to try everything but were split by ability (we decided our own ability, so not too depressing).

The only compulsory things I remember was a "beep" running test once a year and social dancing for the month of December. I think, social dancing aside - that was universally hated, most people were happy to do PE in this way and a number of girls who were prime candidates for finding exercise uncool kept it up and now teach cheerleading or aerobics themselves. It worked and can't have been that difficult to implement.

If girls are "humiliated" by being made to be differet to their peers, wouldn't sitting at the side of the gym as the class has its PE lesson have a similar effect?

I do wonder whether the school has it right allowing pupils to wear trainers for gymnatics in ay case. It's not exactly what the professionals wear!

I absolutely fucking hated PE at high school.

1. All the PE teachers were fat and smoked. Why they get paid the same as a Maths teacher is a mystery.
2. The male head of the department always found an excuse to wander into our communal female changing areas.
3. I hate team sports. I am very clumsy and do not enjoy having the piss taken out of me.
4. PE clothes were a joke. Miniscule pants and a aertex T-shirt to play hockey outside in the sub-zero Highlands.
5. Communal showers and dirty changing rooms.

I no go running twice a week and the gym twice a week. I can compete against myself. It took years to get over my exercise phobia the school had given me.

FWIW I have never thrown a javellin, jumped over a wooden box, played hockey or any other of the inane sports I was forced to play.

IMO PE at school has massively contributed to the obesity crisis. I

I agree with that last point Crack Fox

I absolutely dread and hate any form of "sport" now - I can't even think about it without recalling the squalor and stink of school sports halls, the discomfort and the embarassment and the general bullying bestiality of school PE

the only forms of exercise I do now are walking/hill walking/dancing at home on my own

mw14, obv. the girl thinks it's better to sit on the side and watch - otherwise she would not have tried the same trick twice in order to avoid PE (I cannot believe she thought it would work btw- was she desperate?). I think I would have felt the same in her position, but perhaps come up with a better excuse

MW14 - I missed that bit of the thread! Well, it depends on whether it was indoor or outdoor PE I suppose. TBH, as long as they were wearing socks I don't see the problem with wearing the old trainers from the lost property box - do the people who object bring their own bowling shoes when they go bowling for instance?
But if it was indoor PE, I wouldn't have a problem with doing it in bare feet anyway if my DD had forgotten her trainers.

Hated PE at school we had a wierdy caretaker who used to hang around the showers. The teachers used to drive around shouting at us from their warm cars while we did miles of hideous cross country running in the rain. Eventually they sent a note home to my mother saying that there was obviously something wrong with my eyesight because I could not catch a ball. If it is still like that I would give her permission to bunk off.

I remember a group of us had to play Netball at school (20 years+ago) wearing just our regulation navy PE knickers - we all had 'lost' our skirts.

The truckers driving by loved it!