Gym Follies

[Randy Twizzle]

A busybody health professor has just discovered that gym class can be a waste of time. That's precisely why I enjoyed it; it had no redeeming social value. My high school gym teachers were a surly bunch of aging ex-jocks, some with drinking and/or gambling problems which they made little attempt to hide. They largely didn't give a damn and that's why we loved them.

.The Associated Press

Updated: 3:22 p.m. ET Jan. 17, 2005

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Lisa Lewis, a health professor, heard her two sons talk about how bad their high school P.E. class was, so she went to see for herself.

“It’s been terrible,” she said. The teacher was a basketball coach, and “that’s basically all they did — play basketball between 40 and 50 kids.” Many students, especially those who weren’t athletic, just stood on the sidelines of the disorganized game.

Physical education experts say there’s little accountability for P.E. teachers in most schools. They say the classes are often poorly run, and students don’t spend much time in them anyway — even as American children grow fatter and more out of shape.

Nearly one-fifth of all high school P.E. teachers don’t have a major and certification in physical education, according to the most recent numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Focus on winning, not on health

Often the instructor is a coach more interested in winning games than in producing healthy students, experts say.

“That stigma that a coach cares more about the team than his physical education class does exist,” said George Graham, professor of kinesiology at Penn State University.

“When a teacher or coach is doing that, it’s really up to the principal to get in there and say, 'We want to win ball games, but the kids in P.E. deserve a good education too.'’

The lack of respect for P.E. also appears in the number of students required to take it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that in 2003, only 28 percent of high school students nationwide attended a daily P.E. class, but 38 percent watched television for three hours or more each school night.

While 71 percent of the nation’s freshmen were in P.E. at least one day a week — hardly enough to be effective, experts say — those numbers drop to 40 percent by the students’ senior year.

Participation varies by state

But participation varies widely by state. In Tennessee, for instance, only 18 percent of seniors were enrolled in a P.E. class, while New York has better than 90 percent participation.

The National Association for Sport and Physical Education says Illinois is the only state that requires daily physical education K-12, while Alabama requires it for K-8.

In California, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, New York, South Carolina and Vermont, accountability standards are being developed for health and physical education programs.

“Unless we hold physical education teachers accountable for the fitness of the student ... there’s no way to evaluate who is good or who is bad because we’re more concerned with math and reading,” Lewis said. “There needs to be some sort of minimal national fitness standard — that would be a very easy thing to establish.”

Some schools have done just that — like the Victor Central School District just outside Rochester in Victor, N.Y.

Superintendent Timothy J. McElheran said his teachers are held to specific goals and judged like any math or science teacher would be.

[Indestructible!]

The lack of respect for P.E. also appears in the number of students required to take it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that in 2003, only 28 percent of high school students nationwide attended a daily P.E. class, but 38 percent watched television for three hours or more each school night.

The National Association for Sport and Physical Education says Illinois is the only state that requires daily physical education K-12, while Alabama requires it for K-8.

“Unless we hold physical education teachers accountable for the fitness of the student ... there’s no way to evaluate who is good or who is bad because we’re more concerned with math and reading,” Lewis said. “There needs to be some sort of minimal national fitness standard — that would be a very easy thing to establish.”

Superintendent Timothy J. McElheran said his teachers are held to specific goals and judged like any math or science teacher would be.

Hi Randy,

Thanks for posting that article, which is a topic fairly near and dear to my heart! After all, I'm a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Cal State Northridge, and I've seen/heard these horror stories (and many, many more) related to "gym" classes. BTW, I hate that word, "gym". After all, it describes the facility in which you engage in activity, not the class you are taking... you don't hear anyone call their Math class "classroom 1B", do you? From here on out, I'll use the term "Physical Education" (PE)...

BTW, my specialization is not actually in Physical Education Teacher Education (what we call Pedagogy, or what our European friends call Didactics)... I'm actually a Sport Psychologist by training, and that's what I teach here at CSUN.

And, I grew up in Canada, which follows a different educational model of PE than the U.S. does... High School, Varsity, Junior Varsity, and even Intercollegiate athletics just are NOT nearly that big a deal in Canada as they are in the U.S. Indeed, most of my PE teachers growing up were NOT coaches of our school athletics teams. They viewed themselves as TEACHERS first and coaches second (if they coached at all, which many didn't). Unfortunately, in the U.S., I've seen many PE teachers who view themselves as COACHES first, and teachers second (sometimes a very distant second). Thus, I'm not surprised at all at the observations that Lewis had when she watched her children in their PE class.

But, a number of things in the article you posted alarmed me, and I feel I must comment here. Let's look at the quotes above, shall we. First, the lack of respect for Physical Education is certainly reflected in the fact that only ONE state in the nation requires daily PE (Illinois) through the 12th grade. Imagine if we only required other subjects of our students (e.g., math, science, reading and composition, social science) up until the 8th grade, and then they became optional? We'd certainly notice the citizens of the nation decline in each of these areas over time, wouldn't we? Yet we woefully lament about the nation's "obesity epidemic", and wonder what on earth we should do about it. If you eliminate regular PE in the K-12 setting, why in the hell should we be surprised that this is occurring?

Having said that, I was also perturbed by one other thing Lewis mentioned in her article. I agree with her completely that PE teachers need to be held to some measures of accountability (e.g., teaching competence, knowledge of subject matter, etc.), just as all teachers should. But, her statement that "Unless we hold physical education teachers accountable for the fitness of the student ... there’s no way to evaluate who is good or who is bad" is extremely misguided. Using fitness standards is problematic for many reasons. We know that someone's level of fitness is based on many factors (genetics, nutrition, experience, age, gender, level of ability or disability, etc.).

Why should PE teachers be evaluated solely on how fit their students are? I tell you what, if that's how I was being judged, I wouldn't take that job in a million years! All the PE teacher has control over is the 38 minutes of activity that students receive in their PE class a couple of times per week (here in California, anyway). The PE teacher has NO control over the other 23 hours of their student's day... How many students will go to McDonalds 5 times per week? How many will go there because their parents use that as breakfast/lunch/dinner for the family? How many students don't get to eat nutritious or complete meals at all during a day (or, for that matter, even get to eat at all some days)? How could I possibly counteract the powerful influence of genetic factors in a few months of teaching? Oh yeah, let's not forget that wonderful time of puberty, where the body changes rapidly (yet differentially) for every one of my students. How can I possibly control that?

Should PE teachers be held accountable? Damn straight they should! But basing measures of teaching quality solely on fitness measures is a suckers game. Base the quality of a PE teacher on (a) the level of their students knowledge via homework, written assignments, and written tests after each unit, (b) how well their students learn fundamental motor skills (e.g., running, hopping, skipping, striking, etc.), © how well their students develop a fitness program for themselves, via the setting of individualized goals and indicating a plan of behavior to improve their fitness (that is appropriate for them), and (d) how well students develop skills in the affective domain (e.g., have a greater appreciation for the value of movement in everyday life, understand and practice sportsperson-like behaviors, understand and be sensitive to individuals with physical and developmental disabilities, etc.).

Oh yeah, take this from me... the PE classes that children will take over the next 10-20 years will be VERY different than the PE class you and I experienced as kids. The focus now is on physical activity through a variety of movements (dance, games that are not sport related, etc.), and there is a decided push AWAY from the sport model of PE. Let's face it, how many minutes did you actually spend MOVING when you played softball/football/volleyball in your PE class? Not many! Some of the classes these days have the kids moving, in their target heart rate zone, for the vast majority of the class!

Some professors (myself included) believe that PE teachers shouldn't even be allowed to coach in the athletic programs offered at their school. In that way, they really will be TEACHERS, and students won't have to put up with a lot of the garbage Lewis reported in her article.

One last thing. Many of you might think "who cares, it's just gym, and my gym classes/teachers sucked, so who needs them in schools anyway? Besides, our kids need to do better in math and science in todays technological world, so getting rid of gym just gives them more time to do well in these subjects". Well, PE shares a nice kinship with other areas of study that you may be more passionate about... just replace the term "gym" in the statement above with any of the following subjects: music, art, theatre, etc. Yep, when it comes right down to it, the first subjects to get the axe in the K-12 school setting are PE and the Arts. Hell, even RECESS has been ELIMINATED in some schools!

And the leaders of the nation still wonder why its citizens are out of shape, uncreative, and apathetic.

Sorry for the length of the rant! Just imagine how long this would be if I were a PE teacher rather than a sport psychologist!

Cheers,

Shane