Why do some kids hate PE?

[Enid]

and shouldn't we be encouraging them to enjoy it rather than helping them bunk off?

enid's thought for the day.

hockey in the cold. bichbastards getting your ankles on purpose

communal showers - forced.

I am feeling a lot of anger and hostility on this thread... let it all out, ladies, let it out...

I hated PE. Was quite chunky as a child (have my moments now ) so the trauma started in the changing room. Can completely identify with MI's Public Wobbling!!

I'm not very co-ordinated as an adult and it was worse as a child. I can't catch, can't hit a moving target with any kind of stick or bat, can't jump and can't run. Which meant that I was utterly useless at the kind of stuff we had to do in PE.

Unfortunately, and this is what really gets me about all these horrid PE experiences, because I was useless at these particular sports, I thought I was useless at all sport. It was only 15 years after I left school that I found out that you can put me on a bike, point me in the right direction and I can keep going for miles. It's very solitary but I enjoy having the time and space to think, and there is still an edge of competition as I am constantly pushing myself to beat my PB. And I love it. So a big fat raspberry to all my old PE teachers who laughed at my lardy thighs on the freezing hockey pitch and wrote horrible things about me on my report card even though I was really trying!

Caligula, Harpsichordcarrier et all

BRAVO!

Pe is the work of the devil. One of my earliest - very vivid and visual - memories of junior school is of watching the sack race on sports day through the window of the school loo, where I had (successfully) hidden for the duration of sports day.
Poor ds is dyspraxic and I am dreading, dreading, dreading it for him.
Has any of this changed I wonder?

and AND we girlies had to wear short gym skirts.

I remember my gym skirt getting ripped off one year. Unfortunately, it was sports day, and was in view of the whole school. (It was a girls school, with a boys school next door, and yes, youve guessed it, sports day was a joint affair) I caught it on a hurdle, and ended up revealing my rank pants and rippling, mottled thighs. Ew.

Mind you, that's not as embarrasing as what happened to a girl in my year, who lost her swimming cossie doing 'fly in the school swimming gala, and ended up showing the whole school her bits and pieces.

And we were sometims taught athletics by Mr Cookson, who was the pervy games teacher from the boys school, and was like wotsisname from Grange Hill and said things like
"YOU BOY!!!!!!!!!!!"

And didn't you find all the girls on the netball team dull as arse?

showing off those netballers just becuase they were tall.

my girl is on the netball team, loves it, her PE teach thinks she's brill

this worried me becuase the girls ont henetball team were always the cocky shites

The worst one on the netball team at school was Rosie Hawker. She was such a twat. It was her life ambition to become a Gladiator. Need I say more???

Gingerbear - I'm with you! I was useless at PE - completely uncoordinated; hopeless at catching or hitting a ball of any description with a bat of any description. Couldn't really run with any style.

But I loved PE! I just found it envigorating. I loved the feel of hockey boots on frosty frozen ground, with the mist rising off "top field". And I adored CC running! Also, as I went to a tiny school, basically anyone who was prepared to turn out could be in the team for just about anything, especially for interhouse matches. And we always lost every game, so it didn't really matter how useless you were individually!

Mumsnet is great - I genuinely had no idea so many people loathed PE with such passion.

This brings back memories ! I hated PE for the first few years and played on my hayfever in the summer to get out of athletics,so me and someone else got to supposedly play tennis on the playground - seeing as it was unsupervised not much tennis went on. In the 5th year we got a choice of what we wanted to do so I quickly worked out ice skating was the best bet for that. As for the evil vicious gym horse and that vile spring board thing, well I go cold at the thought. The worst memory is hockey on a freezing day with Mrs Grimshaw bellowing "4 laps of the field for a warm up" - with a name like that it was never going to be good was it!

DD has dyspraxia and I think I'd better have a good think about how to handle this well in advance of it becoming an issue.

Just going for the top three threads....

But to add my 2 pence worth. At least PE stops when you finish school........

why is it called PE anyway? Yes, it's physical but totally lacking in education. I guess swimming is a useful lifeskill, but chasing a ball up and down a frozen field?!
Why not teach useful things like running for a bus without your low slung trousers falling down?

here here! running to bus without the pants falling down and without hair and makeup getting ruined before something really important!

ds also has motor skill issues so initially he dreaded sports afternoons because he has to shower and change (top shirt button and tie plus bootlaces) and doesn't want to be last. We were just getting on top of that when last week he was teased for being useless at soccer practice -quiet word in teacher's ear time, I think.

The school has a policy of selecting every child at some point for teams even though they may not be the best children. There is an U8 soccer tournament on Saturday when they are fielding 4 teams so a reasonably high chance of ds being chosen - and he now doesn't want to do it if he is .

I hated it because
a I was crap at it
b I hated to look a pratt in front of my friends
c It was all about 'team spirit' and I don't have a lot of that
d It invoved running round getting hot and sweaty
e it invoved going out into the cold and wet
f I was crap at it.

I know I said I was crap twice, but I was very crap at it.

OK and the staff deligted in making you feel like a shit if you didn't like it

Oh and our first hockey lesson in year 7 was spent throwing the balls at each other so we would get over the fear of being hit by one!!!!!

WTF??????

That realy worked well.

ARSE!

I had blue, mottled, fat legs. It was the north, yes, but everyone else seemed to have olive skin, including my best mate, who was a dead-ringer for Natalie Imbruglia . I, however, was a dead-ringer for Bella Emberg.

The teachers were bitches - one of them was shagging a boy in the fourth form

I was good at netball but I was never trendy enough to be in the "in crowd" so I was too afraid to try for the school team (they all had sharp nails)

No wonder kids hate PE

What I hated most was being told to enjoy it... My natural instinct on having a ball thrown anywhere near me is to duck (this still seems a sensible strategy to me now, but I had my glasses broken at least once in junior school (when I still enjoyed sports). So I found ball sports stressful (and my poor depth of vision makes me very bad at them). Then there was the running madly up and down in the mud whilst waving sticks around - couldn't quite see the point of that, especially as not only was I bad at it, but the school always lost their matches too. Then there was netball. Being tall I always got made goal keeper. This meant standing around and sticking your arms up going "me me me" in an inane happy voice. I resented that we couldn't play real sports like football.

In the summer we played tennis and athletics alternately. I enjoyed athletics, you got to do what you liked and compete mainly against yourself. I was terrible at tennis, but for no good reason I wasn't allowed to swop.

It wasn't until I changed school at sixth form and discovered cycling and rowing that I realised that I wasn't completely useless, and that sport could really be enjoyable.

I will encourage my children with sports, as it is an easy way particularly for boys to make friends. But if they don't like it I would be happy to find an out of school club for them to do something they enjoy and give them notes for sports. My mother made me do sports even when I had periods - because it would make me feel better! (and she taught at my school so there was no way to skive off).

My main grip remains the pressure you are under not just to do the horrible thing, but also to enjoy it. I have never heard a maths teacher saying loudly in front of everyone "don't be silly, of course you can do your sums, it's such fun! Now get going..."

Why weren't you lot at my school?!!!!!

I hated PE with a passion. We had netball and hockey in winter and rounders, tennis and athletics in summer. Couldn't do any of it. Can't catch, can't run, can't hit a ball. I liked gymnastics and dance (also both indoors, which suited better) and IIRC we got to go horseriding in the 5th year.

We had to wear an aertex blouse and a very short nylon skirt in all weathers. We also had communal showers and I still recall the class fat girl dropping hers at the age of 11. She blushed all over.

I was never picked for teams (the fat girl and the girl that nobody liked both got picked before me). The only time PE wasn't hell was when I briefly went out with the captain of the volleyball team (mucho respecto heh heh).

I do think PE should be streamed, just like academic subjects, so that the sporty types get a proper game together and the klutzs are saved the ritual humiliation.

(That would be dropping her towel. Must preview )

This is so cathartic, thank you! Love the idea of streaming. I'd have been so happy in the bottom set with the other spectacularly uncoordinated people.

All those comments about sadistic PE teachers ring so true. Why did they never explain HOW to get over a hurdle, or how to get over the bar in high jump? You either did it instinctively or, if like me you had no idea, you just got left to flounder while being sneered at by pathetic PE excuse for a teacher. Or ritually humiliated by same pathetic excuses for human beings.

If they could actually teach, they'd be doing a proper subject, so they just take their frustration out on people who can't fight back. Sad sacks (apart from my friend Ann who is the only sporty person ever who isn't 'sporty' IYKWIM and has ended up teaching PE. But I forgive her).

One PE teacher even tried to force me to play netball or something when I had broken my wrist. Yelled at me in front of the whole class that I was lying and she'd phoned the hospital who told her I was making it up, FFS! Luckily I was an arsey teenager and pointed out in no uncertain terms that she was lying and that hospitals don't give out information like that. Cow.

Another accused my younger sister of stealing an Aertex shirt or something ludicrous. My sister proved her wrong. But very nasty episode. Why are they so warped? And why do we allow children to be damaged by them? It's their ruddy fault I can't swim - too damaged by succession of bloody bullies who thought pushing you in the deep end would sort you out. I can't swim because they made me afraid to take both feet off the bottom.

The thing is, I was very flexible and quite good at gymnastics, but we never did them at high school. Enjoyed orienteering out of school too but never got to do that in PE.

Someone posted that if PE was actually taught effectively we wouldn't have a national obesity crisis. Good point.

As for the communal showers...

One final example of PE teacher sadism. My school was quite posh but bordered the red light district. There was a path that bordered our hockey pitch where perverts in raincoats would hang out, getting their kicks watching teenage girls in those hideous PE knickers and micro-skirts. A few years before I went there, the Yorkshire Ripper had actually been arrested on this path (one of the times they let him go).

Whenever we complained, the gym mistress, safe in her tracksuit and knowledge that it was teenage girls they were lusting after, not sour-faced old prunes, would just call out 'ignore them, gels, and play up'! FFS...