Lynne, google John Taylor Gatto. And when you’re done with him, perhaps John Holt.

Real learning does happen in schools of course — especially for people who thrive under its specific type of structure, whose educational goals just happen to by in sync with the school’s, and with the support of gifted teachers. But everything I’ve heard from friends who are teachers, including those who have their MAs (two working on doctorates) in educational theory, the teaching philosophy advocated for and propagated by the system itself has not changed, no. They know that I’m interested in educational theory, and so sometimes lend me their textbooks, so I’ve seen it for myself as well. There’s nothing progressive happening in mainstream education today. The educational reform movement of the ’70′s was abandoned for a very simple reason — it wasn’t compatible with our culture’s work ethic, in which production is the goal, rather than passion, freedom, and critical thinking.

I’m a kinetic learner. I think with my hands. Even when I’m sitting down and reading I unconsciously act out the text. These jokes about jumping forward and backwards for a test would have been GREAT for me, I could dance it out. Win! But I still hated PE, because we never learnt anything and it was no fun so I just never went.

My mum was a PE teacher back when it was still called games, and at home that’s what did, played GAMES, and that was fun and taught me all sorts of mental (strategy, teamwork) and physical discipline. We always did practical or fun things: lifesavers, orienteering, sailing (island dweller). S’more practical and inclusive, too: you can play hotstove in a wheelchair, you can go rambling if you’re blind, you can swim with mixed ages…

I’ve wandered. Uh. Oh, point being, PE clearly isn’t about learning physical skills or fostering ability, it’s about teaching you to surrender control of your body to authority. If it were it would be teaching practical, environment-focused things like the aforementioned orienteering, car-dodging for city kids, lifesavers for coastal kids, self-defense…

But I will say this, I bet high school kids are a lot more active than researchers would think. They probably don’t count the cumulative hour or so every day of walking around the school with several pounds of heavy books strapped to your back.

Re: gym class…I firmly believe that grading kids on their physical capabilities is not just unfair but cruel and questionably legal. Who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to start grading kids on whether they could do a certain number of push-ups or sit-ups? Gym teachers aren’t physicians; when they insist you can do one more rep, they don’t really know whether you can do one more rep without hurting yourself or not; they just think you should. Ugh. I only had one semester of PE that was any real fun, and it was my freshman year of high school. Unlike in elementary and middle school, we learned to play some actual sports. My favorite, oddly enough, was football. It was way more fun to play than it ever was or has been to watch.

Also, LOL at catching these researchers in their doublespeak. “Oh noes! Our lazy, obese children and their two hours of daily exercise at age 9!!”

I am sure people here have experienced favoritism in academic classes, too, but I never noticed it in such a glaring display as in gym class.

No kidding.

My entire gym class experience, grades 1-12, can be summed up in one moment when I was seven years old, when a gym teacher who was playing “king’s court” with us belted me in the face with a dodgeball. As I sat on the floor, sobbing and holding my bleeding nose, he yelled, “Are you going to CRY now? Are you going to CRY LIKE A LITTLE GIRL??”

I was a little girl.

Oh wow, that sounds about twice as big as the gym classes I had in school. It must be even more of a nightmare for students and teachers alike.

I don’t think anyone’s mentioned this yet, but gym class was also a festering pool of sexism IME.

Front Page of the Herald Sun here in Australia yesterday was about a 10 year old who entered a body sculpting competition. Before anyone jumps up and down lets make this clear. She eats healthy, is not allowed to use weights or exercise machines and wants to be an olympic athlete when she grows up…

Guess what the article was about? yup, you guessed it, how BAD her parents were for allowing her to do all that exercise. You know the stuff she absolutely loves to do. Aparently she would be psychologically scared for life…

WOULD THE FUCKING WORLD MAKE ITS MIND UP ALREADY!!!

Too fat, too thin, too fit… jeez louise… any wonder why were pole axed half the time.

(on a good note public outrage was at the paper for daring to publish that story and for saying such awful things about a “healthy active and driven kid” and the photo of the wee lass in her on stage bikini)

“In Illinois, gym was required 5 days a week through grade 12 (still might be, though if it is, it’s about the only state left doing that ), “… Kate

Kate, it still is “required” but there are a heck of a lot of ways out of it. Kids are exempt if they are taking marching band, health, driver’s ed, a third year of science, a fourth year of math, or if they play a varsity sport in their jr or senior year. My youngest son hates PE and will “get by” taking only one semester of it his whole 4 years of high school since he will meet all of the above exemptions except the sports one. For kids younger than high school, in our district, they get maybe 40 minutes of PE three days a week.

And, to Miss Conduct…

“*This wouldn’t be rocket science and I don’t know why gym teachers can’t do it. What the hell are they being taught, if not the physiology of exercise and individual differences? Facism 101?”

The PE teachers I work with regularly have 50-60 students per class, each class of the day. Differentiated instruction is taught and certainly is not rocket science, but it does take time. They do their best and do have students do individualized plans and target improvement rather than absolute benchmarks. At the high school where I teach, none of our PE teachers are varsity coaches – they all are PE teachers first and foremost, but their classes are full of kids who do not meet the above exemptions (jr/sr with no advanced math or science in their schedule), and having 30 non-academic jr/sr in a class with 20 freshmen is a class management nightmare.

Before I taught high school, I spent many years teaching college. I decided to teach high school because I had an idealistic view that if I could differentiate instruction to engage every student then they would all learn my subject (science) and enjoy it. The reality of it is that no teenager will like every one of their high school classes. Some adore band and hate science, some hate math and love PE.