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[Duke 2.0]

 There are a lot of special cases and personal opinions here, which should kinda be addressed. First and foremost that PE hurts self-esteem or whatever personal problems that may develop from similar things. That's the teacher. This applies to every subject. Bring up an argument based around the concept of the class itself besides team sport activities, which should be separated into something you should sign into and required either a skilled teacher or a god program for them to follow.

 There was an argument that physical activity seemed out of place in a learning environment that I won't quote because iPad, so I gotta bring up the idea of using your body to loosen up the mind. At this point I can only bring up personal examples like walks clearing the mind and being more creative and free after stretches, but I'm sure there are studies showing how physical activity is helpful for your mind. A useful thing to have as a break between thinking classes.

 Really though it's just a side effect of cruddy educational systems and teachers who should not have a job somehow being in classrooms. The subject itself has enough benefit to justify the cost of hosting it in public schools, especially if combined with home economy classes to teach people how to live a healthy life.

[G-Flex]

There are a lot of special cases and personal opinions here, which should kinda be addressed. First and foremost that PE hurts self-esteem or whatever personal problems that may develop from similar things. That's the teacher.

It's not just the teacher. It's encouraged by the way the program is set up in the first place. If we don't expect anything from the class or its teachers, then you will have bad teachers startlingly often.

At this point I can only bring up personal examples like walks clearing the mind and being more creative and free after stretches, but I'm sure there are studies showing how physical activity is helpful for your mind. A useful thing to have as a break between thinking classes.

A walk, or stretches? Sure. But I sincerely doubt that running or other heavy exercise is going to help me take a math test 10 minutes afterwards. It's jarring and unhelpful.

[Darvi]

By teaching people teamwork, fair play, and how not to be a sore loser and stuff.

Sorry, I burst out laughing reading this.  PE always seemed to consist of nothing but bad teamwork ("It's all your fault!"), dirty play (or accusations of dirty play) and sore losing.  PE would need to be handled very differently in order to teach these things rather than just give people a chance to not do them every week.

What it should do and what it actually does, are, sadly enough, not neccessarily the same thing.

I think it helps that here, PE teachers need to have some sort of education to even get accepted (probably some sort of pedagogics education). Takes care of the "any hobo can apply" part and might explain why I've yet to see a douchebaggy PE teacher (it's usually the maths and civics teachers that are elitist jerks).

We also had those weeks last year, where every lesson a pair of students would do the teaching, and we would then provide a brief history of whatever sport (yeah, we don't do that weight lifting shit, except voluntarily. We play goddamnfucking games) we presented, and then would provide exercises that somehow related to said sport. Like, my group did dodgeball, so after we were done with warmups, we did some races that involved throwing the balls around as fast as possible, and then finished the lesson by playing what could be described as Dodgeball Meets Mafia

We also don't do sex ed and that stuff in PE. That belongs into Biology imo.

Also, I agree with the last section of ninja-dukes post.

It's not just the teacher. It's encouraged by the way the program is set up in the first place. If we don't expect anything from the class or its teachers, then you will have bad teachers startlingly often.

Welp, at least something the educational system here gets right.

[Vault]

PE is required because they want you to be healthy active people.

It has nothing to do with ANYTHING ELSE!

Not teamwork, not sportsmenship, no no no.

Then why not teach you how to be healthily active instead of setting people who aren't particularly skilled at sports for failure and ridicule?

I think physical education is -definitely- important, but the way it's currently handled is pretty damn sad.

Growing up, my PE 'classes' consisted of running around, basic stretches, and on more that one occasion, being forced to fucking squaredance.

Now, once I got into High School, my options had opened up. I took up weight training, and once I actually got into it I -loved- it. All of the classes had decent coaches, many professional teachers or former athletes. We learned dietary needs with some basis for individual body chemistry, proper lifting techniques to avoid injury, how to push limits safely, etc.

Now, if all PE classes were handled by professionals who actually -taught- skills rather than blew on a goddamn whistle and yelled out non-motivational shit, I think we'd be better off.

Provided you're lucky enough to live in a large enough area that things liek that are actually an option. I'm pretty sure we didn't even *have* weight lifting equipment at any of the four high schools I attended. -.-;

[Haspen]

Of course it should stay in school programs.

Our brains are 'improving' but without mandatory 'move your arse and run around a bit', that brain will need to be moved around in self-moving rover or something because everyone will be lazy fat ass.

Of course I'm just generalizing.

I had a rather nice PE teacher, sort of like commander-father firugine. He didn't played favorites, and if you were lazy, you were getting 2's and that's it. You were doing exercise every class without whining - 5s. And his exercises weren't anything horrible - if you were 'average' guy, you had no problems with passing.

I was terribly lazy and got a 3, just because my self-guilt kicked in the two last months and I decided to improve I still adore and visit the man at the school.

1.5km laps on un-even ground, every May and October... never gonna forget.

[breadbocks]

Not all PE classes are bad. If you have a teacher/coach who isn't doing their job, complain to a higher authority. Don't instantly generalize every single class into a bunch. I've had exactly 1 bad experience in PE classes, and that was when I realized how unfit I was, which was no fault of my coach. Sure, there are a bunch of jocks, but those jocks are just as annoying as the smartasses in academic classes who don't realize they should loosen up.

[G-Flex]

Not all PE classes are bad. If you have a teacher/coach who isn't doing their job, complain to a higher authority.

Haha, what authority? Who do you complain to in order to rectify the fact that the curriculum is bad, the teachers are bad, and the expectations of the above are bad? There's pretty much nothing your average student can do.

[Vector]

My school district was similar to Jackrabbit's, plus self-defense classes teaching folks how to recognize and stop assault, basic first aid (how to deal with stuff like someone who's been knifed or whatever without making it worse, and CPR, etc.), basic swimming skills, nutrition, how to create an exercise program, how to use weights in a healthy way, all kinds of things.  Almost 100% of our PE teachers were female, extremely fit, and strict--but fair.  Grades were chiefly based on participation/self-improvement and could be made up by doing an extra timed mile run, which was offered once a month or so.

We had it through the sophomore year of high school, starting in second grade or so.

[Darvi]

Not all PE classes are bad. If you have a teacher/coach who isn't doing their job, complain to a higher authority.

Haha, what authority? Who do you complain to in order to rectify the fact that the curriculum is bad, the teachers are bad, and the expectations of the above are bad? There's pretty much nothing your average student can do.

At that point, tell it your parents. If they don't care enough about it to at least complain, then you have other problems.

[KaelGotDwarves]

@Vault: it's a problem of the shitty school district's implementation rather than an indictment of the subject matter.

To stay fit, healthy, and physically active is a life skill. I'm sitting here eating at a table watching a 30some old woman outside struggling to get out of her car because of her obesity. It's pathetic. We are failing our children by failing to teach them common sense taking care of their own bodies.

Whether your district has decent programmes will largely be influenced by the socio-economic standard of the school district.

[Neonivek]

Then why not teach you how to be healthily active instead of setting people who aren't particularly skilled at sports for failure and ridicule?

because school has always favored one kind of student over the other.

[Vault]

watching a 30some old woman outside struggling to get out of her car because of her obesity. It's pathetic.

True enough, thankfully those people remind me that while I'm notably out of shape I'm really not all that bad. >.<;

But yeah schools not implementing it properly seems to be the general consensus in here.

[userpay]

As much as I hated PE in school (admittedly mostly because of the weekly mile run, we did have some really fun games at times like Snake) I would say it should stay around. Its really just a pity where the joke "Those who can't do teach, those who can't teach, teach PE" applies all to often. I mean if PE had been rolled into stuff like swimming or self defense where you're learning and exercising that would be great but the majority are just plain exercising. Even my school, private for crying out loud, was all physical and no teaching.

[G-Flex]

Not all PE classes are bad. If you have a teacher/coach who isn't doing their job, complain to a higher authority.

Haha, what authority? Who do you complain to in order to rectify the fact that the curriculum is bad, the teachers are bad, and the expectations of the above are bad? There's pretty much nothing your average student can do.

At that point, tell it your parents. If they don't care enough about it to at least complain, then you have other problems.

Right, but I think it's a rather systemic/pandemic problem, and one that people are so used to that they won't complain, or that complaints won't be seen as legitimate. Just try getting any kind of education reform done in the US in general; it isn't easy.

[Aqizzar]

I never would have thought I'd reach a point in my life where I was arguing in defense of PE classes, although I basically reached that as soon as I wasn't in them anymore.  Which is kinda the point.  Yes, the more intellectual and electronic the world becomes, the more schoolchildren need something like PE to remind them that they have a body for a reason, and it does in fact respond to what you do with it.  And yes, the problem is very much one of management.

I don't know where all these stories about self-defense classes and stuff come from, because my schools were definitely in the "fat guy with a whistle pointlessly yelling at everyone" camp.  My 7th grade PE coach took it a step farther, in that he was active participant in whatever the day's activity was.  By inevitably putting to together teams, one of all the 9th grade guys whose grades got them kicked off the football team, which he would captain, and the other team made of everyone else, "captained" by me, who would tackle dummies, whether or not the game was football.  If he was hung over or had too much homework from his other classes to grade (my district had a policy of using coaches with a free period to teach other classes like basic math and history, because who needs a degree, right?) he would just tell us to run around and stay busy.  The semester final exams were to play against him in GoldenEye, with your grade based on how well you do.

It was abundantly obvious that this was a guy who never got over the fact that gradeschool ended, so he got a job that let him bully middleschoolers for the rest of his life.  And I'm not just whining about being picked on or anything.  After a few months, I was sick of him increasingly singling me out, so I went to the vice-principle about it.  This got me singled out more.  I was his caddy, his demonstration dummy, his mascot, and at one point a human football.  After a while, I just stopped giving a shit, at which point he lost interest and stopped as well.

Since I was in the band, I never had to go to PE after 7th grade.  After I quit the band in high school, I had to pick trimesters of physical stuff.  That would up being two trimesters of off-campus bowling, and one of tennis, which was only because you couldn't take only bowling.  And tennis wound up being what the long-suffering coach called "abstract sports", i.e. running all over the court and talking videogames between serves.