From what I gather, lots of schools now just abolished P.E. period.
But the recent thread about pull-ups triggered a memory of P.E. from 1974.
I believe P.E was mandatory for every student at our school, both girls and guys. So I took it for four years. Physical education was mostly about playing sports of course. Football, basketball, volleyball and so on but once a year the coaches tested us to see what shape we were in.
So for a week everybody would be timed doing push-ups or sit-ups, how high we could jump, and other tests. One thing they had us do was climb a rope fastened to a steel girder at the roof inside the gym. I think the coaches were lunatics for having us do that. The gym roof was kind of high and we were required to climb the rope and once we got to the top we had to tap the roof with one hand and then climb down. It was weird and a little scary. I hated it but it was required and I did it and I was just happy I didn’t fall or embarrass myself. The fear of embarrassing myself was much stronger than the fear of falling.
Anyone else have to this at your school? And while I’m on the subject, probably the weirdest thing they had us do was: Pole Vaulting! Anyone have to do this either? Does it strike you as a weird thing or is it just me?
We had to do the rope climb, but only like three people could make it to the top. They all tapped the girder, too. We didn’t have to pole vault! But we had discus and shotput and high jump. I thought shotput was the stupidest. We were lucky if we could throw it three feet.
We only went to compulsory PE in grade 8 the first year of highschool. Just played a lot of sports and I remember one part of assessment was square dancing! No wonder I said no in the rest of highschool!
My high school actually had bowling as an option for PE cause there was a bowling alley just down the street. I did not select the bowling option because my bowling skills were similar to Rhubots shotput skills.
Pole vaulting actually sounds pretty fun. I’m far too fat to try it now though. Although it probably would be a pretty funny sight.
Last gym class I took was 6 years ago. It seems like an extremely bad idea to abolish PE. All the kids will be unfit. I was a pretty active kid up until high school, I can only imagine how much fatter I’d be if I didn’t have to take gym in high school. I remember being a happy student when I found out that the class below me would be forced to take gym for 4 years instead of 3 like mine.
Gym was almost always fun for me. Kind of like recess for big kids. At least that’s how I thought of it.
Until the dreaded fitness tests. We had to run a timed mile, stretch our fingertips over our toes, sit ups, push-ups, the pacer test, hold ourselves up on a pull-up bar and that’s all I can remember right now. I haaaaaaated fitness week.
And swim. Hated swim. I was super afraid that I was going to drown, That my hair was going to get caught in the filtration system, or that I’d catch a disease from that pool. I remember a stupid rule where if you skipped pool then you got a 0. If you showed up in a swim suit but did not swim then you got a 1. And if you did both you got a 2. I got a C in PE that year because I refused to get in for the whole 3 month term. My parents were not proud of me for that. I didn’t care though… I still wouldn’t get in that pool.
Other than that gym was a couple hours were I could fool around with friends and focus on something other than anxiety.
We had mandatory swim test but after the first year we get electives. I just took yoga. Idk if others on here are like me though. I was terrible at PE. Only thing I did not get As in.
nick back in the seventies I was in grade school were PE was separated between boys and girls as it should be. most of the activities were geared for physical endurance and had no qualities for equavolation. I can remember a friend and I protested about the girls softball field and was til the 80s wen I was in high school that things went coed. it took a lot of the other things away from the school which meant less hours for home-ec and shop. what was your favorite PE activity.
Yeah, swimming was my most hated sport in P.E. It was bad enough that we had to wear the swimsuits they passed out that had been worn by other students before us for years. But the swimsuits were practically speedo’s. And we swam during the winter and the pool was barely heated or maybe not at all. We even had to swim when it was sprinkling rain. And to top it off, one year I had a bad cold and I couldn’t get out of swimming. It is rather interesting to hear yours and other peoples experiences in gym class though.
haha…@Moonbeam we had like a recreation period where we could do ten pin bowling. It was that or swimming and some other things which I forget. I did bowling once…funny days! After a couple of years to trying to get us to do stuff I think they gave up. I had periods of study. I couldn’t ditch but I’d go hang out in the library. The Education round here left a lot to be desired!
The best times I had in P.E. were my senior year when it was near graduation and the coaches brought is into the gym and let us do what we want and we could form our own teams instead of the coaches managing it. We got to play basketball or volleyball or just sit there and watch if we wanted too. All us seniors took a volleyball court for ourselves and we had some great games and a lot of fun.
