The general decline in standards today

[Matt Crunk]

The current Principal of my high school alma mater was a schoolmate of mine who was a couple grades ahead of me in high school. He was a star player on our basketball and baseball teams, and a typical jock athlete who lived for PE. After high school he went directly into college where he got a teaching degree, then went directly back to the same high school where he was hired as a teacher and coach, eventually working his way up to assistant Principal, and finally Principal.

The guy is a total dolt. He knows school because that's the only place he's ever been, but he's an absolute idiot when it comes to anything outside his very narrow scope of life experience. I clashed with him many times during the brief few years my son went to that school. I finally ended up putting my kid in private school, and eventually home schooling him through most of high school.

 

[Stearmen]

The big push for physical education in US schools came out of a concern in the early fifties that American kids were getting too fat and sedentary. "The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports" came out of this period, along with mandated phys-ed classes, which were universal by the early sixties, and remained so into the eighties.

You can argue with the way phys-ed is taught -- I hated, and still hate, volleyball with the flame of a thousand suns -- but you can't argue with the fact that kids today are fatter and more sedentary than ever. If mom and dad aren't going to kick their doughy backsides into the street to work off the blubber, somebody's got to. We need more phys-ed, not less.

Actually, that's just a cover story to make it seem more benign. The actual reason for the stepped up phys-ed was, to many of the draftees were failing the physical part of basic training. That is why we all had to pass the minimum Marine Corp Physical Fitness Test. I still can't believe I could ever do 100 setups with legs straight! I just noticed, the Marines now only require for a male 17-26 to do 50 crunches.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What we need are parents who will go out with their children and play with them---not let the TV, videogames etc. babysit them. That always works for me. No video game consoles in this house.

Not just videogames, but screens of any kind need to be strictly rationed for kids. There needs to be a good chunk of each day where there are no phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, game consoles, or any other electronic devices.

As far as compulsory phys-ed goes, I don't see it as any different from compulsory English classes, compulsory math, compulsory science, or any other class that we require children to take. The mere fact that kids have to go to school in the first place is a compulsion. It ought to be a well-rounded experience, and physical training is a part of that.

 

[Edward]

Pro football is an overhyped clown show at best, and a parade of vicious, semi-literate thugs disguised as athletes at worst. If it has any redeeming social value at all, I don't know what it is.

Extend that sentiment to any form of professional sport, and you're talking...

I like the idea of folding things like hiking, camping, and woodcraft into the greater field of physical education. Kids used to learn this stuff in the Scouts, but as membership in those organizations continues to decline, there's a real need for something else to come along to take it up. We have a local organization here called "Trekkers" which gets a lot of kids involved in the outdoors, but it can only handle so many kids. Something conducted thru the schools would be entirely appropriate, for my money.

I went right through all levels at the Scouts and did my Duke of Edinburgh's Awards at school. Fantastic fun, and extremely useful lifeskills as well - the polar opposite to pointless games/pe "lessons".

PE was mandatory at the small High School that I attended. Outside in good weather..inside in winter. I actually enjoyed the time out of the class room and looked forward to it each day.
HD

By law, I believ,e it was mandatory until sixteen in my day, though the school I attended forced it on us until we left. They managed to force me to turn up and wear the stupid kit (though I dropped the shorts in favour of non-uniform jogging bottoms in my last two years), but that's all they got out of me. I had a whole series of dodges. Soccer was fine because you could very easily stay out of the teacher's eyeline andso get away without participating. I once dida whole term of basketball because it was indoors - warm and dry - and the nature of the game and it being a single court gym meant I could legitimately spend most of the hourf sitting at the side. It also helped that I acquired quite the reputation among my peers for being a nonplayer... I'd stand there and take pride in being picked last, then stand on one edge of the court and let my "team" play around me. They rarely tried to get me into the game. Cricket was great in the Summer too. Still couldn't tell you the rules if I tried, but 90% of the game was standing around doing nothing, so that suited me just fine.

I remember when I was seventeen a games teacher tried to break me. Being determind not to waste my time running and getting myself out of breath for no reason, when sent to do the 1600m, I walked. He made the rest of the class sit and wait, missing their promised soccer game, until I finished - made a whole show of it (it was almost like something out of Full Metal Jacket, or so I like to think). I was stubborn enough to keep walking. Twenty-three minutes later, there was only about five minutes of the half hour class left, so we were all sent inside. How I avoided a good kicking for that I'll never know (not that it would change anything in my attitude - maybe the class knew that....). I suspect that's what the teacher wanted, but in any case, he never tried to call my bluff again.

I seem to remember I hated physics more, on balance, but I was able to drop that at fourteen, and at least it never seemed like such a collosal waste of time. I remember a coupel of fun experiments in that. I don't recall a single positive thing about PE.

There are always some kids who love and excel at PE - the natural athletes who usually also participate in team sports. But there are also kids (among which I was one) who hate being forced into structured physical activity, had little to no interest in team sports, and had much rather sit out PE or take a study hall instead. You cannot make children enjoy PE by forcing it on them. Those who do not enjoy it will always do the bare minimum required to get by, and odds are it will have no effect on their habits later in life.

Bingo.

I mainly recall the kids who excelled at PE were the less academically gifted; I remember wishing they could opt for more PE and I could have more real classes. My parents were spectacularly unhelpful, thoug,h as they declined to let me out of games (a note from them would have helped). My mother had some weird notion that when I was older there would be no cinemas, so we'd have to play a sport to be able to go on dates. My mother has some very weird ideas.

I might add that while I HATED being forced into physical activity, which in PE included walking, running, playing basketball or dodgeball - I was at the same time an avid roller skater, skateboarder, snow skier, swimmer, scuba diver, and a sponsored Bicycle Motocross racer (ranked 6th in my state) who got plenty of exercise on my own - but I got it doing things I loved, not what was forced on me by PE/gym class.

I played badminton in an after school club, and I was always a swimmer. Spent sseven years in the Grammar School swimming club - in the pool at 8am every Friday morning. I even represented the school a couple of times, but frankly I never had the competitive drive to excel on that front. I've never really been competitive at all that I can think of; I've never really cared to measure my own achievements against someone else's, and I sppose I never measured my own self-worth by winning a bauble of some description. [huh]

I'm not sure if it's the same way for kids today, but in my day kids, especially boys, learned the basic rules of those games (football, baseball, basketball, even soccer) on the playground in grade school - during recess, not PE class, which didn't come until junior high.

Fairly common in my day too, though we had PE at primary level also. I remember joining in the football (soccer) game on one single lunchtime when I was about eight. After the game had run forever, I remember being incredibly bored and thinking lunchour must be up... then I discovered it was only a third gone. Never repeated that. To this day I can tell you very little about the kicky ball thing...

I would much prefer children today be taught how to budget money and understand household finance---now THAT is something every one can us throughout life and not be suckered by the guys from marketing. Hat on backward stuff they can figure out on their own.

Exactly.

Actually, that's just a cover story to make it seem more benign. The actual reason for the stepped up phys-ed was, to many of the draftees were failing the physical part of basic training. That is why we all had to pass the minimum Marine Corp Physical Fitness Test. I still can't believe I could ever do 100 setups with legs straight! I just noticed, the Marines now only require for a male 17-26 to do 50 crunches.

I've long believed the only reason for PE "lessons" throughout the course of the twentieth century was to prepare us as cannon fodder in the event of another major war.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I went right through all levels at the Scouts and did my Duke of Edinburgh's Awards at school. Fantastic fun, and extremely useful lifeskills as well - the polar opposite to pointless games/pe "lessons".

I get that you have no use for sports, like I have no use for scouting. That doesn't mean that either are no fun, useless, pointless or have no "life lessons" in them.

 

[Edward]

I get that you have no use for sports, like I have no use for scouting. That doesn't mean that either are no fun, useless, pointless or have no "life lessons" in them.

The difference, of cours,e being that no kid was ever forced to join the Scouts.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Where I grew up, baseball had a special place as a marker of working-class cultural identity. The baseball team you supported was as much a part of who you were as the church you attended or the neighborhood where you lived. As I've gotten older I realized we were rooting for shirts, rather than the people who wore those shirts, but when you're raised that way it becomes an indelible part of who you are. I didn't watch a single Red Sox game all the way thru this year, but I'm still connected to them in a way that's impossible to explain to anyone who didn't grow up that way. It has nothing to do, even, with the actual sport -- it's part of what it means to be from where I'm from.

But as the culture I grew up in is steadily erased by "gentrifying" people-from-away I'm seeing less of that kind of allegiance in kids growing up. Most of the younger fans I know today are what we call "pink hats" -- people who jumped on the bandwagon in 2004-2007 when it was the hip, trendy thing to do, and who don't have that deep heritage going back generations. We old-timers actively resent the pink-hats as one more example of middle-class cultural appropriation.

That's why the Red Sox are important to me. I couldn't care less about football, hockey, or basketball, because they weren't part of my cultural fabric. But I'll go to my grave a Sox rooter, no matter what.

 

[HudsonHawk]

The difference, of cours,e being that no kid was ever forced to join the Scouts.

What does that have to do with anything? We "force" kids to learn all sorts of things, that doesn't mean they have no value.

 

[Matt Crunk]

Where I grew up, baseball had a special place as a marker of working-class cultural identity. The baseball team you supported was as much a part of who you were as the church you attended or the neighborhood where you lived. . . . That's why the Red Sox are important to me. I couldn't care less about football, hockey, or basketball, because they weren't part of my cultural fabric. But I'll go to my grave a Sox rooter, no matter what.

Growing up in Alabama, where college football is akin to a religion, you are expected to be either an Alabama or Auburn fan. I can't count the times that people have looked at me like I'm a three-eyed man from Mars when I tell them that I really don't follow football and could hardly care less about either team.

 

[HudsonHawk]

But as the culture I grew up in is steadily erased by "gentrifying" people-from-away I'm seeing less of that kind of allegiance in kids growing up. Most of the younger fans I know today are what we call "pink hats" -- people who jumped on the bandwagon in 2004-2007 when it was the hip, trendy thing to do, and who don't have that deep heritage going back generations. We old-timers actively resent the pink-hats as one more example of middle-class cultural appropriation.

Kids today don't have the loyalty because they only want to associate with a "winner". Part of this is because their parents have coddled them and they expect a trophy for showing up, and part of it is because they've failed to learn two of the most valuable life lessons organized sports teaches; perseverance and dissapointment. You don't always win and the world isn't always fair. But you keep trying.

 

[dh66]

Growing up in Alabama, where college football is akin to a religion, you are expected to be either an Alabama or Auburn fan. I can't count the times that people have looked at me like I'm a three-eyed man from Mars when I tell them that I really don't follow football and could hardly care less about either team.

+1 to this.

I've been a lot of places, and met all kinds of sports fans, but nothing stacks up to the kind of insanity that goes on around here. An Alabama fan might truly hate you from the bottom of his gut and genuinely wish you harm for being an Auburn fan, and vice versa, but to not care one way or another about either team (or at least some team from a neighboring state) is totally incomprehensible to folks. At least if you are a fan of ANY team, they can understand and relate to you on some level.

Last year after Auburn beat Alabama in the annual showdown, a girl here, an Alabama fan, shot and killed another girl, NOT because the other girl was a fan of the opposing team, but because she didn't seem upset enough about the loss.

 

[Edward]

What does that have to do with anything? We "force" kids to learn all sorts of things, that doesn't mean they have no value.

PE/Games had less than zero value to me. It was a negative. Wasted time I could have spent on something academically productive. Also, on the borader level, wasted budget that could otherwise have been spent on something decent. The Scouts and such are optional. Anyone who would get nothing from them doesn't have to go. Kids woul have other opportunities if they want to do sport.

I appreciate you're saying there's a level of subjectivity, but I'm simply never going to be convinced there is any cultural or other value in sport. By all means, let it be there as a form of entertainment, but let's not have it inconvenience those of us who care naught for it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Part of being a Red Sox fan was understanding that more bad things happen to you in life than good things. Babe Ruth will always be sold to the Yankees. The left-field grandstand will burn down and there won't be insurance money to replace it. You'll spend $350,000 on Lefty Grove and his arm will go dead. Ted Williams will break his wrist in an exhibition game and be useless in the World Series. McCarthy will give the ball to Denny Galehouse and pinch hit for Ellis Kinder. Mike Higgins will be a racist pig. Tony C. will get hit in the face. Jim Lonborg will go skiing. Darrell Johnson will pinch-hit for Willoughby. Bucky Dent will hit the home run. John McNamara will give the ball to Schiraldi. The grounder will go thru Buckner's legs. Roger Clemens will always fail in the clutch.

That was why 2004 was so special to us, it's why all over New England people left newspaper clippings on gravestones after they finally won it. That's what the pink hats -- and the people who poo-poo sports -- will never, ever understand.

 

[Matt Crunk]

I've been a lot of places, and met all kinds of sports fans, but nothing stacks up to the kind of insanity that goes on around here. An Alabama fan might truly hate you from the bottom of his gut and genuinely wish you harm for being an Auburn fan, and vice versa, but to not care one way or another about either team (or at least some team from a neighboring state) is totally incomprehensible to folks. At least if you are a fan of ANY team, they can understand and relate to you on some level.

I actually have an Alabama cap that I wear on occasions when I really want to blend in (like a quick run the hardware store or something) and don't feel at all like dressing up. It's sort of my Alabama redneck disguise. It's amazing how one article of clothing can render a person almost invisible in a crowd.

 

[jamespowers]

PE/Games had less than zero value to me. It was a negative. Wasted time I could have spent on something academically productive. Also, on the borader level, wasted budget that could otherwise have been spent on something decent. The Scouts and such are optional. Anyone who would get nothing from them doesn't have to go. Kids woul have other opportunities if they want to do sport.

I appreciate you're saying there's a level of subjectivity, but I'm simply never going to be convinced there is any cultural or other value in sport. By all means, let it be there as a form of entertainment, but let's not have it inconvenience those of us who care naught for it.

Agreed. I wish I had the PE time back so that I could have went further in Accounting classes or even the sciences. You can easily earn a living in those two. Your chance of earning a living with sports is very low. I am thinking of this logically based on how much you put into it and how much you get out of it. Then again, I see locally that the hat on backward crowd manages to sucker local communities to stupidly spend public money building them stadiums and other accommodations when they can barely meet their budgets as it is…... :doh:

 

[HudsonHawk]

PE/Games had less than zero value to me. It was a negative. Wasted time I could have spent on something academically productive.

That's because you refused to learn anything in them. One could just as easily say "I hate math, refuse to learn it; therefore, it has zero value to me and is simply wasting time I could be doing something productive." As we say in my neck of the woods, "it ain't the arrow, it's the Indian." I guess if you want to indict any kind of compulsory education, you're off to a good start, but that's a different discussion.

 

[Matt Crunk]

I still think PE should be an elective, not a requirement.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Last year after Auburn beat Alabama in the annual showdown, a girl here, an Alabama fan, shot and killed another girl, NOT because the other girl was a fan of the opposing team, but because she didn't seem upset enough about the loss.

Sociopaths will find a reason to lash out.

 

[jamespowers]

+1 to this.

I've been a lot of places, and met all kinds of sports fans, but nothing stacks up to the kind of insanity that goes on around here. An Alabama fan might truly hate you from the bottom of his gut and genuinely wish you harm for being an Auburn fan, and vice versa, but to not care one way or another about either team (or at least some team from a neighboring state) is totally incomprehensible to folks. At least if you are a fan of ANY team, they can understand and relate to you on some level.

Last year after Auburn beat Alabama in the annual showdown, a girl here, an Alabama fan, shot and killed another girl, NOT because the other girl was a fan of the opposing team, but because she didn't seem upset enough about the loss.

Same thing around here with the hat on backward crowd. However, I do see waning interest in the big three sports (The mug and thugs). Baseball is really losing it the most. I suppose in today’s fast paced society, baseball is just oo slow paced---at least that is what I have read lately….
As for the violence, they don’t call them fanatics (fans) for nothing. They get irrationally wrapped up in that stuff. I am always amazed at how much they know about even the player’s persona lives. :eeek: It is like legalized stalking. lol lol

 

[HudsonHawk]

I still think PE should be an elective, not a requirement.

How much of it were you required in high school? We were only required to take one year. After that, it was elective.

And you don't end every conversation with "ROLL TIDE!!"?