[bittermang]

I think the worst thing about gym is that I didn't learn anything there.

I didn't learn about calories, or healthy eating. I didn't learn about basic cardio, why it's good for you, or how often to do it. I didn't learn about how to build muscle, what reps or sets were.

Gym amounts to mindless busywork. Do stuff or you get an F. It could serve as a foundation of knowledge to set yourself up for healthy habits for the rest of your life. Instead, it has the opposite effect of training you to hate fitness.

[Benjammer]

That's because personal health & fitness is treated as a completely personal endevour in society, much like most of what we call "parenting," at least in most parts of the US. You could design the perfect curriculum based around teaching holistic personal health habits at specific age-appropriate levels, but the first time the fat kid goes home and says "hey maybe we shouldn't have mac N cheese or casserole for the 4th night this week" you get the fat parents making a fuss over their kid making them feel bad or just for questioning them at all.

"School" is a product that must be sold to the parents, the people "signing the checks" with their local tax money. It's kinda like enterprise software. The users are not the people making purchasing decisions, so you're always going to end up with a bad incentive structure for the quality of life of end-users (students) if the decision-makers aren't fully aligned with the users. How many fat parents are going to be on board with the school teaching their fat child a healthier lifestyle?

Right now, it appears that parents want a product that gives them the _feeling_ of caring about their child's long-term health habits, without them personally needing to make any changes to their lifestyle or parenting style.

[mreome]

It can go beyond just not learning anything, and into learning negative habits. For me "Gym" was the most dreaded part of my life as a young person, and was one of the few things in school I really hated. I was generally out of shape, and have some issues with my vision. Given that, all gym taught me was how to handle being belittled and insulted both by my school peers and by adults in authority roles, and I learned that I should avoid situations involving exercising and sports unless I wanted to be subjected to that. It's taken many years, and my need to deal with resulting health problems, for me to try to un-learn all that.

What really bothers me is that I actually enjoy weight lifting and a number of solo cardio exercises (rowing machine, exercise bikes, swimming laps). I knew this when I was young too. But with only a few-weeks-a-year exception, these were not a regular part of "gym". I feel like these kind of activities are far better to learn, as the can provide a life-long basis for regular exercise, and should be an all-the-time option. Combine that with the other health focused skills you mention, and you're going to have much better life-long outcomes then you will get by yelling at the fat kid who can't do a hand-stand.

[sethammons]

It seems to be getting worse. At least it used to be "do something with physical activity." You might do half-assed basketball or running or something. Now, at least in the part of California I was formerly in, they were not able to require kids to actually do anything. Kid wants to stand around? Ok, go for it. Then you toss in required testing and metrics, and now gym (aka P.E.) has written tests on stuff. Not sure what stuff as I stopped paying attention.

[fibonachos]

I gained a deep, searing hatred of team sports due to a combination of forced participation and being a physically awkward teen in the middle of an epic growth spurt. Being graded on ones ability to complete a mile within a certain time constraint, as opposed to being graded on effort, is utter madness. The whole thing put me off physical activity for most of my adult life. Only in the last couple of years have I started exercising again, but on my own terms and for my own reasons.

There is a huge difference between "because you have to" and "because I want to".

[usaphp]

> Being graded on ones ability to complete a mile within a certain time constraint, as opposed to being graded on effort, is utter madness

How is that different from being graded in other subjects in school? You don't get an A in calculus because you tried to answer the question, you get a grade based on how good you answer the question.

[unsignedint]

Anecdotally, PE in US wasn't worse, compared to Japan. (Where I have been for first 6.75 of school.)

Grading in Japan was fairly black and white; whether you can do certain thing or not. It sucked even worse being thrown into some team sports with no briefing on rules.

At PE classes in US, where I spent most of middle and all the high school, I think the problem was more of how compatible I was with the teacher. Some graded very strictly on the outcome (which sucked), but some other graded on efforts (which was more reasonable) -- some had good balance while others were worse.

Problem of physical fitness is that there are quite a bit of genetic that plays huge role. You can only improve your athletic ability so much to meet some standard. Thus, unless you are training for the Olympics, it really should be graded based on how much you improve over time rather than whether you can reach certain goal that may be unrealistic to some.

[hermitdev]

It's been 25+ years since Ive been subjected to PE and I dont remember it being graded on ability, but more on participation and effort. It was really hard to not get an A. You basically had to refuse to even attempt the day's activity to fail.

[coryrc]

I have a lot of complaints about the rural Michigan school I went to, but we learned all those things in middle school PE.

[borkt]

I went to school in the north bay area, slightly rural. PE taught all of those things, the teachers were great at teaching proper form in weightlifting, the mile "times" required were easy for anyone who didn't walk. I really am not understanding why every comment but yours seems to think PE is possibly the worst experience of their entire education.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Yeah, same here in WI.

[mirkules]

In my high school, gym was a practical course. We could even elect to be on a team, practice a real sport and not be in the “general” fitness class.

We also had a theoretical “health” course where you learn about healthy eating, calories, etc.

But in all honesty there is a disconnect between the theoretical and practical, no continuity whatsoever between the curriculums. Not like my teenage self would have listened anyway...

[grawprog]

I dunno I wasn't a big fan of gym but in high school I remember learning the rules to most of the major(and weird obscure) sports played here, how to stretch, how to use weight lifting equipment, how to dance and general stuff about fitness. There wasn't really any testing though. You pretty much passed as long as you showed up and participated.

I fucking hated the mile and half run though....

[Jach]

I liked gym when it was an every day sort of thing, and we only did the mile run once a week (though you were docked points if you walked and didn't sprint for the final section). Then came 9th grade at a different school that was already doing A/B days (to match high school -- for me 7-9 was Jr High) and we did a mile run every class -- except unlike my 7th/8th grade counterparts the coach didn't care if you walked most of it. It was also funny that at this school no one wanted to shower after, I wondered if that's because they weren't basically forced to in 7th/8th grade like I was at the other school and so never learned to get over any embarrassment.

Anyway I rather liked gym class before 9th grade, mindless as it was, after that I took one of your hybrid health education + mild exercise courses (mile run every month? could walk the whole thing if you wanted) in 10th grade that did nothing for either (lol food pyramid -- a subject also repeated during a cooking class and a general health sciences class) and fulfilled my final PE requirement with an online bowling class during my final term that required (with no verification) about 10 games and scores to be submitted with the testing which I did in one or two sessions.

[cam_l]

It always irked me that in gym you were asked to do things without any instruction. Kick this ball, get a grade.

But then it occurred to me that is how most kids felt with maths. Ie. Mindless busywork to set you up for a lifetime hating it.

[Zanni]

Exactly. It's called Physical Education most often, but there's very little eduction involved. There could be, and that would have made it more accessible for me--I'm thinking weight lifting and mobility paired with kinesiology and anatomy--what a fantastic class that would be. Instead it was half-assed team sports, punctuated with the occasional fitness test, which we were never prepped for. Oh, you want to test how many pull-ups I can do now? Because this is the first time I'm doing pull-ups this year ...

[anth_anm]

"These 2 weeks we're doing volleyball"

"I don't wanna play volleyball, can I get some guys and we'll play floor hockey instead?"

"NO"

Well, fuck gym I guess.

[mrweasel]

And most likely they didn't even teach you the rules.

We played football, not to an insane degree, but I always found it weird that they assumed everyone knew the rules.

Personally I don't think gym and music should exist at part of the school day, at least not in larger cities. Instead it should be required that everyone takes lessons in at least one instrument, and practice at least one organised sport after school. Then children are free to pick something they care about. Any fees should be paid by the city or government.

[2bitencryption]

"These two weeks we're doing trigonometry"

"I don't wanna learn trig, can I get some guys and we'll do algebra instead?"

"NO"

...et cetra

[tnecniv]

My middle school class had so many menaces that the gym teacher normally just let us play what we wanted as long as everyone who wanted to play could.

This normally devolved into some quantity of boys playing basketball and most of the girls reading on the side.

[lazzlazzlazz]

You did learn - or, you could have. You learned how to run, how to endure being sweaty and hot, how to jump, etc. Many athletic abilities are learned. You can tell someone with a modicum of physical training from a novice easily - even decades after any learning.

[mreome]

I learned how to handle being belittled and insulted both by my school peers and by adults in authority roles, and learned that I should avoid situations involving exercising and sports unless I wanted to be subjected to that. It's taken many years, and my need to deal with resulting health problems, for me to try to un-learn these "athletic abilities."

Just because "gym" could provide valuable life skills, does not mean it does in the form it currently takes in many schools.