'Schools should have twirly, girly, fitness for girls' (?!!!?!!)

[Berts]

As in, on the news this morning, 'Schools are being encouraged to introduce Zumba, or dance, to encourage girls to participate'.

So depressing. I was not a sporty kid, always last to be picked for any team and no hand-eye coordination at all. I only discovered competitive sports at the age of 30, and it's been brilliant! I love it! I love competing and being super-fit!

I wish I'd realised I loved competitive sport years ago, so what went wrong at school?

I suspect it's a combination of (a) sports teachers who are only interested in naturally sporty, talented kids and don't take time to help the weedy less apt to get better; (b) lack of choice (netball all winter, rounders all summer, er, that was it); and (c) girls feeling it's not okay to be sweaty and knackered after a good training session.

Any thoughts?

I didn't find exercise any help with period pains - quite the opposite.

We did dance and aerobics at school in the 80's, and I loathed and detested it. I would never, never, go to zumba/aerobics/body combat.

What would have made a difference for me was some sort of differentiation, and an appreciation by the PE staff that not everyone is good at some sports, and some help to do better. Maybe in a group of low ability tennis where someone took the time to show you where you were going wrong I wouldn't have developed a lifelong loathing of it as I was humiliated.

Maybe some 'best sports for you' profiling would be good too - I am a tall, solid woman. Fantastic at strength sport, terrible at gymnastics. When someone outside school asked me if I wanted to try rowing, it clicked straightaway

Obviously everyone is different then. The worse thing for my period pains in the first year was sitting still. I clearly remember the agony of trying to survive through an hour of anything where I had to sit on a chair or stool.

I had very bad flooding and passed massive clots (which was what was causing the severe cramping).

Being able to move around really helped (plus drugs obv..) - I guess like labour in a strange way.

Anything that keeps non competitive girls fit and that they can continue with outside and when they leave school is great!

DD1 has a very physical hobby for which being fitter would be a great help.

But there is no recreational swimming, gym or other after school club I can find. Gym and dance are aimed at younger ones, Ballet does exams, swimming is really serious 3+ times a week,

School lunch time clubs are as bad, hockey, netball team practice etc.

horse riding?
tennis?

I suffered under the PE teachers from hell. It wasn't until I was in my 20s that I discovered competitive sport and ended up for about a nanosecond playing sport at international level. I have such bad memories of a teacher who refused to see the bullying that was happening under her nose, then sending the girls who had been bullied to run 3 times round the pitch as a pitch as a punishment for "non-participation"

I also wonder about the emphasis on sport and not necessarily on healthy physical lifestyles. Living next to a park and river I have fond memories of science sessions spent searching for bugs and plants outside. By the time we got back to school we had walked several kilometers. My primary school had the policy of walking children to outside events if at all possible rather than spending money on transportation. We were quite used to a 40 minute brisk march. The result of this sort of training is I tend to walk anything up to a couple of miles rather than take public transport. It's just natural and probably accounts for a lot of my daily physical activity.

HeathRobinson - I was thinking both of participation outside of PE and the very unwilling, foot-dragging, fannying-about-to-waste-time, reluctant participation that characterised many of the girls I shared PE lessons with, back in the (distant) day. Girls who hang round on the touchlines of the hockey pitch and shuffle away if the ball comes anywhere near them are not getting much in the way of exercise.

But yes - to some extent I'm keen on this initiative, b/c I think it's a good idea to get non-sporty girls doing the kinds of exercise they might choose to do outside PE lessons, and maintain in adult life.

Very much agree with slug about healthy physical lifestyles too.

Yes of course if girls aren't necessarily made to wear leotards, & sanitary pads are much thinner nowadays the self-consciousness & fear of leaking shouldn't be such an issue. It certainly was for me in the 80's/90's.

campergirls - ha ha you're describing me there with hockey! I loathed it.

I think PE has changed somewhat, though. My dds go to a school where they've had the opportunity to swim, use the very modern fitness suite and do golf. As a result my middle dd is stronger than I am. (Bloody rowing machines!)

They wear tracksuits and the school ethos praises individual achievement as well as that of the school teams.

But still, imo, there are not enough choices for PE. I'd like to see horse riding; archery; swimming; martial arts; yoga; cycling etc etc with children actually having a real choice. Probably not terribly practical at school.

My post should have made clearer that I was speaking for myself too! As an adult I love running, yoga and swimming, but I was a total team-game PE refusenik.

How much PE has changed varies enormously from one school to another, IMO. I really agree though that there should be more choice. This goes for boys as well as girls: the massive over-dominance of football (in PE and in the playground) is a problem for a lot of boys.

I wouldn't expect a PE teacher to be negative! Just to understand that it is possible to adore Maths and hate PE. Ours once used it as a threat e.g 'if you make that noise you can get changed and do Maths instead'. I thought 'if only we could'!
No other teacher expects everyone to enjoy their subject.
As an adult I love running, dancing, swimming, tennis and badminton- but it took a long time to get over school PE and actually enjoy it.

2shoes have you actually been in a zumba class? It's very obvious when you are crap at it.

But I agree with broadening the activities available at PE. I never liked the team sports. Always been rubbish at catching and throwing balls. But I love dancing. Would have loved it if our PE actually offered this choice. And I was at a girls school!

I saw the coverage on bbc breakfast this morning. They also say 48% of teenage girls think getting sweaty is not cool. I don't remember us being allowed a quick shower after PE at school. There's also a large number thinking sports isn't feminine, which is far more worrying. Why as a society we don't view being active as being feminine?

I love Zumba precisely because you don't have to be exact, you can still enjoy it. It just proves that we are all different and we like different things.

I think that the attitude of other pupils has a lot to do with it. To me a team should help and encourage the weakest, not tell them they are rubbish and moan when they get them on their team.
If they choose you last EVERY time, why on earth do they think you are going to even try?! I got my own back by going up to the team leader at the end and asking who won! I knew really but it was fun and a vicious circle as they were even less likely to choose you.

Zumba looks stupid. They were doing a demo of it in our local sports centre. The music was too loud, the women too shouty, tons of make up. Talk about LOOK AT ME!

I loved PE at school, was on most teams and was sports captain in my senior year. We had a fairly traditional girls PE curriculum (hockey, netball, athletics, swimming, tennis) that worked well for me, but I recognise most of the complaints people have on this thread. Sport teaching used to be pretty bad for anyone who wasn't part of the clique, and that was true for all the people I knew at state schools (and most from independent too). It rarely involved any actual coaching and certainly did little for those not already engaged.

I think it's great to see PE extended past competitive sports and I think it's a bit misogynistic to think just because an activity is favored by women it's "twirly, girly" and not worth doing. Boys and girls should be introduced to a wide variety of competitive, non-competitive, team and solo activities during their time at school and given the opportunity to find and develop their skills so they both get and stay fit at school and build a base for leading a healthy adult life.

I think it's awful that so many parents colluded in their children's poor school experience by simply writing notes to let them off PE instead of trying to get them a decent experience. How many parents would think that was OK for maths or English? Yet a lack of physical activity can have devastating health benefits long term. Bad PE teachers should have no place in schools but it must be hard to teach a subject that so many children and parents (and I suspect other school staff) have so little respect for they don't care about not trying or not receiving good teaching.

I refused to do PE, in primary school because I was the best football player in the school but because I was born with a vagina I had to play netball (I was also good at netball but hated the skirts)
In secondary it was the same but with rugby, we weren't allowed to play contact sports with the boys, I was the only girl in that group
I think a wider range of all subjects should be available for all students.

I think it's a good idea, not sure why it's depressing? Offering as big a range of activities as possible in PE is surely a positive thing! I think having a diverse choice and encouraging kids to try new things in PE is much more preferable to just assuming everyone will be happy with hockey or football.

And if you think girls would rather do dancing because they are afraid of being sweaty and knackered afterwards then I'm going to assume you haven't done much dance training!?

We had a ladies rugby team tits, I loved it

I always loved PE, even though it was uncool. I was crap at gymnastics, basketball, handball, football. I was good at volleyball, hockey, baseball and badminton.

Our school (in Holland) dealt with it by teaching PE for the whole year group simultaneously - we had a full-size sports hall plus small gym so this could be done. This meant there were always 4 activities on offer, and you could specialise. PE is not an A-level subject in Holland, but it is compulsory in schools all the way through because exercise is considered important - so we could enjoy the exercise we chose without having to worry about marks.

We did have dance on offer alongside more traditional competitive stuff, it worked well. And girls and boys did the same sports all the way through, none of that netball for girls/football for boys crap.

Hated PE at school, except for maybe cross country running. Too much emphasis on sport and not enough on fitness. Queuing up for 20 mins to have a (usually failed) attempt at hitting a ball... Would much rather have done something like aerobics. Now I enjoy running, Zumba, yoga, the thing that makes me sweat (like a horse!) is probably Laser Quest!

It's depressing because some politician or journalist has found yet another topic to suggest that teachers aren't trying hard to include all pupils in their subject. Zumba is just the fad of the moment (remember line dancing, or disco roller skating??).

Isn't it more important to encourage pupils to 'have a go'; so they can try a wide range of sports and find one or two which stick?

The problem for my daughter has been having to change with the boys in the classroom (Y5) while she goes through puberty and skinny immature girls commenting on her "disgusting tits" while the boys are fascinated. My son is Y9 with Asperger's and dyspraxia. He has refused to participate in school PE since he was told he was "f s*" at rugby.

Never mind, as a family we continue to do archery, walk, swim, cycle, trampoline.....none of which are offered at school!

What puzzles me is why they set every other subject by ability in many schools, but not PE where it actually makes more immediate difference.

Good point notcitrus, they wouldn't ask someone who struggles to read to read something in front of the class (I hope).

I wish PE would focus less on those with natural aptitude.

At my school you were picked on by the PE staff if you weren't 'school team' material. There was no emphasis on sport for fitness.

I would have been much more interested if the goal was to improve your own performance, without being compared to the uber sporty set. I think girls and boys should set targets of fitness levels they want to achieve and then work towards them eg like couch to 5K, distance jumped at long jump, time spent Zumbaing before you need to sit down etc

yy to setting PE by ability!

Tell you what if they want to encourage girls to do sport then give them a reason to do it.

When boys do sport they have dreams and aspirations of becoming top class footballers, Rugby players, Cricket stars, boxers etc. Female footballers, Rugby players etc etc are mocked and paid fuck all.

What is the point in doing sport if you are a woman? nothing to aspire to, no respect from the pursuit just aspersions/jokes that you are gay or rubbish and no pay or a pittance compared to the males.

There is a difference between doing sport and fitness, the amount of DVDs and games sold every year and the amount of health clubs around shows woman are interested in being fit we are just not interested in wasting our time on things that will get us no where in life.