Gym Class Misses the Point

I am over gym class.  I am really not understanding the purpose.  Not that I don’t think physical education is important, because I totally do.    But from what I can tell gym class really should be renamed Sports Education Class with an occasional play time thrown in.  Because that’s REALLY what many PhysEd classes have become.

That is all well and good – if you have an athletic kid.  The kids who play soccer, football, hockey, baseball and basketball, well, gym class is a dream.  But if you are an academic kid, or a computer science kid or an artistic kid or a theater kid, gym class is your worst nightmare.   And unfortunately, teachers aren’t doing much to fix it.

The same kids are picked to be captains – the athletes, the outgoing kids, the popular kids, the favorites.  The same kids are picked last – the brainy kids, the creative kids, the differently thinking kids.  Why is this a problem?  Because when we don’t give those other kids a chance, we will never know what kind of leaders the non-sports-minded kids could be, they could develop into, because they aren’t given a chance? 

Some teachers employ the rule that if you are picked last this class, you are captain in the next.  Others go down the roster so every kid gets a chance.  Kudos to those teachers for giving every kid a chance to experience being a team leader. 

It is shocking to me how many gym teachers do not give every kid a chance.  Isn’t that the whole point of education – to give young humans the opportunity to learn and experience so they figure out what they like and don’t, what they are good at or not, what they aspire to or don’t?  But if some kids never get the chance to try, how will they ever learn?

But I digress from my original intention of this piece.   Which is to ask why we ONLY teach sports in gym class (with the occasional violence of the barbaric dodge ball game, which is a whole other subject).  Then we ask the kids to do fitness tests, where they have to do pull ups and sit ups and timed runs and a host of other tasks to assess their fitness.  Except we don’t teach them how to do these things.  We don’t train them for these tests. 

Gym teachers don’t teach them the proper form so they don’t injure themselves.  Gym class doesn’t prepare them for or provide them with the strength and endurance they need to do the tasks they are measured on.  Why? 

Why don’t we teach them HOW to do these activities?  Why don’t we teach them WHY to do these activities?  Why it is important to be strong?  To have endurance?  To be flexible?  

Which leads me to my next point.  Why do we only teach sports?  Why do we not teach proper stretching technique?  Or dance?   Or yoga?  Or Zumba?  Or how to train for a marathon?    

There are TONS of ways to stay active and fit and healthy – why do gym classes only teach sports?