Great words

[greencom]

Check out his guy's rant, I love it! Couldn't have said it better myself!
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net ... mbassjocks

[Earl]

Fat Man! Where are you? (Where is that boy? He's never around when you need him. Isn't he ever going to show up?) Oh, there you are! Fat Man, I've been looking for you. Come on, get over here! Mr. Greencorn -- eh, Greencom -- came by yesterday and left you a present. Well, actually, it's for all of us; but I think that you of all people will especially appreciate this. As Rocket J. Squirrel says (today on DVD ) in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, "Now here's something you'll really like."

Check out his guy's rant, I love it! Couldn't have said it better myself!
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net ... mbassjocks

[Fat Man]

Fat Man! Where are you? (Where is that boy? He's never around when you need him. Isn't he ever going to show up?) Oh, there you are! Fat Man, I've been looking for you. Come on, get over here! Mr. Greencorn -- eh, Greencom -- came by yesterday and left you a present. Well, actually, it's for all of us; but I think that you of all people will especially appreciate this. As Rocket J. Squirrel says (today on DVD ) in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, "Now here's something you'll really like."

Check out his guy's rant, I love it! Couldn't have said it better myself!
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net ... mbassjocks

Good evening Greencom

Good to see you again.

I'm here Earl.

I've been watching Saturday's video clip from the Phil Hendrie radio talk show. I can't get the live KFI feed on Saturday evening, so I have to watch the recorded audio clip on Sundays.

Anyway . . . . .

I felt the need to quote the contents of the web page from the link that Greencom provided.

Here it is.

That's right asshole, bag my groceries!

I was in a grocery store the other day when I noticed a familiar face behind the cashier. I could barely recognize the lumbering ape from behind his apron, but sure enough he was one of the dumbass jocks I went to highschool with. I see all that football he played really paid off. Mr. Bigshot jock-boy is bagging MY groceries. All that time spent running laps in gym... who'd have thought that it doesn't mean shit in the real world? I guess his prospective employers weren't as impressed with his ability to make a basket from the three-point line as much as his anorexic ex-girlfriend. Who's king now, chump?

Paper or Plastic?

More and more, I'm running into dumbass jocks I went to highschool with bagging my groceries, cleaning my dirty dishes and renting out my videos. They're the ones stuck doing shit work after being out of highschool for 4 years. Oh sure, they ate coal and shit diamonds when they were in highschool, acting all high and mighty with their rented limos and cheap perfume, taking their dates out to school dances and bragging about the sub-par action they had the following day, but now it's a different story. They're no longer rewarded for screwing off in class because they're on the school football team. They're no longer let out early to go run laps and throw baseballs. They're no longer favored by coach fill-in-the-blank that's teaching math instead of a real teacher. Nobody gives a shit anymore jock-boy, now BAG MY GROCERIES.

Every year in highschool, I had to pay somewhere on the order of $73 for registration, not counting $15 for the parking decal that didn't guarantee us a parking spot. Most of this fee went towards a general "activity" fee that covered sporting events (oooh, highschool football is no longer a pastime, but it's an 'event'), assemblies (with production values well below an average B movie) and school dances. Every student, regardless of his or her participation in these "events," was required to pay this activity fee. I wouldn't even bitch so much if our highschool football team didn't suck as bad as they did. I remember one year when they were brainwashing us with school-spirit propaganda, they showed us a video highlighting the football scores throughout the year. In one of the many games they were slaughtered in, the score was 37-0. We didn't even score a single damn point. What pisses me off most is that the majority of our "activity fee" went towards buying these dipshits new football uniforms. Here's a hint: I don't think it's the uniforms, you morons!

I can't help but snicker every time I see another bald, fat and impotent (you can tell just by looking at them) highschool jock mopping the floors in a bathroom. They'll never better themselves because they're just too damn stupid. When given the choice of academics or athletics, they chose athletics. They have nobody to blame but themselves. It's never too late for these dumbasses to pick up the pieces and get going, but they won't. They just don't have the ambition and they're too damn stupid. I can't emphasize this enough. Just too stupid.

It pisses me off that in highschool, while the jocks were being excused early to go practice football, they wouldn't excuse me to go program or work on animation or something else that someone in the real world might give a shit about. We were forced to use 8086 monochrome IBM pieces of shit running DOS 5.0 using a Pascal compiler. If they would have even used a fraction of the budget they allotted for football on new computers, not even nice computers (hell, I'd have been content with a 386), maybe our school could have had a programming department that wasn't pure shit. Then again, the typing/writing/algebra/english teacher that they had filling in every other class couldn't tell assembler from her asshole in the first place.

Physical education is the biggest crock of shit in the universe. It doesn't do any good to anyone. How much money is blown in maintaining expensive gym equipment every year? Showers, locker rooms, bathrooms, basketball courts, football stadiums, baseball helmets.. all for what? Where's the payoff? Little Tommy's parents coming to the football game to cheer him on? Please. Throw that shit away. Nobody needs it. Nobody cares. It's completely worthless to anyone and everything. Even if one out of every 100 dumbasses who hoped to become professional made it big, it still doesn't justify the cost of all this equipment. Sports have no place in public schools, period. I don't care about football, baseball or hockey. You want to play, play on your own time. Let the others that come to school to learn get something done so they can make something of themselves. The notion that sports is allowed in public schools is preposterous. Why not devote a class to playing video games? What the hell good does it do? No more or less than sports. BAH.

783,054 dumbass jocks came to my page but left frustrated after not being able to read any of the words.

A lot of jocks in high school don't realize that only about 1 in 10 high school jocks go on to play football in college, and of all the jocks who played in college, only a very small percentage go on to play professionally and make millions of dollars.

The vast majority of jocks, if they didn't make passing grades in their academic subjects, they either end up bagging groceries, or scrubbing toilets.

Every time I see some loser bagging groceries who had once played football in high school, when I look at him, I have to wonder how many students were thrown through plate glass windows or down flights of stairs because of him. How many people who's sisters and daughters were raped by losers like him. How many science or art projects destroyed, notebooks stolen or destroyed and textbooks torn up by losers like him, and how many broken hands by locker doors slammed on them, hands the will never heal properly, crippled hands that will never play a piano or violin ever again because of losers like him. How many good students driven to suicide by harassment and bullying because of losers like him.

No, losers like them are not even good enough to bag my groceries!

Instead of saying I want either paper or plastic, I feel like asking such a loser, how many girls he raped when he was in high school, how many other students he bullied around, how many other students he had driven to suicide.

Those are the questions that I ask any guy who brags about playing football in high school.

And the quality of education has been going steadily down hill over the past 4 or 5 decades so that most high school graduates today can't read beyond the 5th grade level. Our schools can only prepare young people for a future of bagging groceries or scrubbing toilets, while we import educated nerds and techno geeks from overseas to keep our wheels turning.

No, instead of bagging groceries, such a looser belongs in prison making license plates.

[Ray]

Check out his guy's rant, I love it! Couldn't have said it better myself!
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net ... mbassjocks

RITE ON! They ate coal and shit diamonds in high school but WHERE ARE THEY NOW??!!!!

[ChrisOH]

When I was in high school (I'm 40 now, so would've been mid-to-late 1980's), we had to take "health" class for half a year and PE for half a year. It was the same dumbass gym teacher who taught both. "Health" was a joke. The very first day of school, he told the class, "Look, I don't like health, and you don't like health, but we'll just get through it, and then we'll really have some fun in phys. ed.!" He taught things in class that were blatantly false (like about anatomy, medicine, etc.) and couldn't even pronounce most of the scientific terms. In biology class, the teacher there, when told that Mr. so-and-so from health class said it was such-and-such a way, openly laughed at him and said to take whatever he attempted to teach with a grain of salt. There were units in health about sexuality and STD's, and he told us that if any of us ever got a venereal disease, to let him know and he'd drive us to the VD clinic to get a shot for it. "I won't tell your parents and I'll make up an excuse to tell the principal to get you out of school, so don't worry about any of that," he said. This was about the time AIDS was becoming a serious issue, but he glossed that over -- he said, "Oh, there's this new disease out there called AIDS, but I wouldn't worry too much about that -- it's mostly just gay guys that get it anyway, and I'm sure none of you guys are like that!" At this, all the jocks in the class starting laughing and cheering "hahahahaha -- them fags", etc.)

In PE class, we had to do a "Marine Corps physical fitness test" that was supposed to be age-appropriate once at the beginning of the semester and once at the end of the semester, and the ending one counted as your final exam. Supposedly, we would have improved so much during PE that it would be reflected in our final grade. But, as Earl has talked about, there was no focus whatsoever on fitness during the entire semester. It was all just sports, sports, sports -- and always a "tournament" where the losers had to run laps around the gym, the worse you did in the standings, the more the laps. In volleyball, he told the class how to do a "hit the spastic" drill, as he called it -- he said to find the "spastic" (the worst player on the team) and always aim the serve toward them. During one practice, I hit a ball backwards and out of bounds, and the gym teacher laughed and said, "I guess you guys found your spastic!" and then all the jock kids started calling it the "hit the Chris" drill.

Of course, the jock boys who did good at the sports, the gym teacher attempted to recruit for his baseball team. (He'd put his arm around them and say, "You ever thought about playing baseball? We could use a guy like you -- practice starts next month!") So it seems PE was nothing more than a way to recruit boys who *already good* at sports onto the school teams, and the rest of us be damned. No advice was ever given on fitness techniques or how to improve our scores on that fitness test. Needless to say, I failed it both times, and got an F on the "final exam" for PE. Only failing grade I got in any class or any exam -- in fact, I graduated 13th out of about 125 in my class.

Turns out this gym "teacher"/baseball coach became the winningest high school coach in the state of Ohio (or some accolade similar to that) and some years after I graduated, a new baseball field was built at the school and named after him. That's right -- this dumber-than-dogshit "teacher" and officially-sanctioned bully -- got a *building named after him* at *taxpayer expense*! There was an article in the local paper about what a great role model he was at "molding young men". They're damn lucky I no longer lived in that town and paid taxes there -- I would have protested and likely would have leaked everything I just wrote above to the press.

Since we've talked about saying things on here we wouldn't ordinarily say....I don't give a shit how many stadiums they name after this asshole, or how many games he won, or how many "young men he molded" by teaching them the extraordinarily valuable life skills of hitting a ball or catching it -- I still think HE WAS A FUCKING DICK who doesn't deserve a damn bit of honor for anything! (So, Earl, you had asked about some of my conflicting feelings toward sports and things I would ordinarily say -- there's a small snippet! )

Also, I remember in junior high, on a *science* test, the teacher (different from one above) had a bonus question about who won some college basketball game, tournament, whatever. I also remember getting criticized by some other students for "blowing the curve" (getting too high a score on tests and reducing the grades of others). I later came to realize why "grade curves" were instituted -- so that the sports stars would be able to get barely-passing grades and stay eligible! Same way with the bogus extra-credit questions.

In a lot of the book subjects, the teachers were coaches. In U.S. history, it was the basketball coach, IIRC. He didn't lecture once the whole year, I don't think -- he just wrote notes on the board at the beginning of the day, and each class period took the whole class time to copy the notes down, then we'd be given a pre-printed test at the end of the week. The teacher/coach wouldn't say anything other than to point out when the test would be -- he'd spend the whole class at his desk either diagramming basketball plays or reading sports magazines. No discussions of the material or anything.

I also took an astronomy class in senior year, and the teacher had arranged to do a presentation at the local public library about some recent scientific news and discoveries, and he encouraged all of us to come if we were able. About a week before, he abruptly announced he had to cancel the library presentation. When someone asked him why, he replied that he had to hold a game, practice, whatever, for some sport (he wasn't a sports-minded guy at all). He told us he wasn't happy about it, but the administration had told him that coaching sports was part of his job, and he needed to put that ahead of any other programs or commitments he had, including the library presentation. Never mind that the presentation was *in his field of study*, and that giving an intelligent talk at the library to the public (who, by the way, *pay taxes* for the both the library and the school) would have been an excellent opportunity to promote the school and its *academic* programs. But nooooo....sports was way more important than all that! I sure got the message the school district was sending.

A few years after graduation, I saw my former astronomy teacher working in a computer software store, and he recognized me, so we chatted a little. He said he was managing the store now and loved it, and that he was no longer in teaching. Looking back, I can't help but wonder if the school's promotion of sports over academics influenced his decision to leave the profession, and also how many quality teachers our country may have lost over the years precisely because of attitudes like this.

[ChrisOH]

[quote="ChrisOH"]

Since we've talked about saying things on here we wouldn't ordinarily say....I don't give a shit how many stadiums they name after this asshole, or how many games he won, or how many "young men he molded" by teaching them the extraordinarily valuable life skills of hitting a ball or catching it -- I still think HE WAS A FUCKING DICK who doesn't deserve a damn bit of honor for anything! (So, Earl, you had asked about some of my conflicting feelings toward sports and things I would ordinarily say -- there's a small snippet! ) [quote]

I meant to say things I *wouldn't* ordinarily say -- thought that needed some correction!

BTW, last year, I did a 9-mile hike through Cuyahoga Valley National Park with one of the hiking clubs I'm in, over some very rugged terrain -- not to brag, but I don't think that's too bad for someone who was the "spastic" and declared in the "unfit" category on my high school gym fitness test! I'd love to have some of those baseball, football, and basketball players from high school do that same hike with me now at age 40, and see just how well they'd hang with me and my fellow hiking enthusiasts!

[i_like_1981]

BTW, last year, I did a 9-mile hike through Cuyahoga Valley National Park with one of the hiking clubs I'm in, over some very rugged terrain -- not to brag, but I don't think that's too bad for someone who was the "spastic" and declared in the "unfit" category on my high school gym fitness test!

I had to put up with similar labelling back when I used to do PE in high school. PE classes are full of dickheads, and I use this term to describe both the bullying students who use their physical ability to inflict terror on the smaller and less physically-able students, and the teachers who don't seem to realise that there are some people who won't benefit from being forced to play competitive sports with bullies who they just won't cooperate with. Schools need to start thinking more along the lines of what benefits every student, then I will be more supportive of mandatory PE. Yeah, sure, let the star athletes play football and rugby if they want but throwing those who are obviously not keen on these sort of games in with them is practically asking them to hate it! People should be entitled to go to the gym and even do walks around the school fields to keep their fitness levels up if competitive sports aren't for them. Forcing nonathletic students to play competitive sports with people who are likely to target them for bullying just won't do any good! I know for a fact it didn't help me.

I should start doing more walking as well. Sounds like it's doing you good, and not only doesn't it improve your fitness, it also allows you to explore and see good scenery as well, depending on where you are. I'd sooner do a long walk in the rain than another PE lesson in the sun with bullies and thugs.

Best regards,
i_like_1981

[Earl]

ChrisOh, I'm so angry about what you've described about your own P.E. experience that I'm almost at a loss for words; but, frankly, I'm not at all surprised. Over the years I've heard similar tales many times before. I hardly know where to begin.

When I was in high school (I'm 40 now, so would've been mid-to-late 1980's), we had to take "health" class for half a year and PE for half a year. It was the same dumbass gym teacher who taught both. "Health" was a joke. The very first day of school, he told the class, "Look, I don't like health, and you don't like health, but we'll just get through it, and then we'll really have some fun in phys. ed.!" He taught things in class that were blatantly false (like about anatomy, medicine, etc.) and couldn't even pronounce most of the scientific terms. In biology class, the teacher there, when told that Mr. so-and-so from health class said it was such-and-such a way, openly laughed at him and said to take whatever he attempted to teach with a grain of salt.

Unqualified to teach, eh? It figures. Again, not surprising.

There were units in health about sexuality and STD's, and he told us that if any of us ever got a venereal disease, to let him know and he'd drive us to the VD clinic to get a shot for it. "I won't tell your parents and I'll make up an excuse to tell the principal to get you out of school, so don't worry about any of that," he said.

That's interesting. I wonder how the parents would have felt about it, considering that it's their responsibility to provide for their children's health.

This was about the time AIDS was becoming a serious issue, but he glossed that over -- he said, "Oh, there's this new disease out there called AIDS, but I wouldn't worry too much about that -- it's mostly just gay guys that get it anyway, and I'm sure none of you guys are like that!" At this, all the jocks in the class starting laughing and cheering "hahahahaha -- them fags", etc.)

What a nice hateful attitude to have towards people who come down with a terrible disease. What compassion!

By the way, I wonder if any of these jerks have ever heard of the former college football player Brian Sims (who was very much an asset to his team) and Esera Tuaolo (a former professional player who once played in a Super Bowl game). Both of them were gay when they were playing and undoubtedly still are. No doubt there are others who are afraid to come out of the closet. (Read the article entitled "Being A Gay High School Football Player," which is found on the "Articles" webpage of this website.)

In PE class, we had to do a "Marine Corps physical fitness test" that was supposed to be age-appropriate once at the beginning of the semester and once at the end of the semester, and the ending one counted as your final exam. Supposedly, we would have improved so much during PE that it would be reflected in our final grade. But, as Earl has talked about, there was no focus whatsoever on fitness during the entire semester.[Earl's italics] It was all just sports, sports, sports -- and always a "tournament" where the losers had to run laps around the gym, the worse you did in the standings, the more the laps.

Absolutely pathetic.

In volleyball, he told the class how to do a "hit the spastic" drill, as he called it -- he said to find the "spastic" (the worst player on the team) and always aim the serve toward them. During one practice, I hit a ball backwards and out of bounds, and the gym teacher laughed and said, "I guess you guys found your spastic!" and then all the jock kids started calling it the "hit the Chris" drill.

Absolutely pathetic. The bum should have been fired for this reason alone.

Of course, the jock boys who did good at the sports, the gym teacher attempted to recruit for his baseball team. (He'd put his arm around them and say, "You ever thought about playing baseball? We could use a guy like you -- practice starts next month!") So it seems PE was nothing more than a way to recruit boys who *already good* at sports onto the school teams, and the rest of us be damned. No advice was ever given on fitness techniques or how to improve our scores on that fitness test.[Earl's italics]

The hypocrisy is astounding. The jocks who wanted to make the baseball team, the basketball team, or the football team wanted to take P.E. For that reason sports-based P.E. never should have been mandatory. There was absolutely no need to force all boys to take P.E. in order to have a baseball, basketball, or football team. You have to be really boneheaded to not be able to see this!

Needless to say, I failed it both times, and got an F on the "final exam" for PE. Only failing grade I got in any class or any exam -- in fact, I graduated 13th out of about 125 in my class.

How unjust! You were penalized by a system that did not provide any instruction about physical fitness! If any academic class had been taught this way, there would have been a national outrage decades ago; but since this was P.E., no one cared. Absolutely pathetic.

Turns out this gym "teacher"/baseball coach became the winningest high school coach in the state of Ohio (or some accolade similar to that) and some years after I graduated, a new baseball field was built at the school and named after him. That's right -- this dumber-than-dogshit "teacher" and officially-sanctioned bully -- got a *building named after him* at *taxpayer expense*!

There is injustice in the world. Reminds me of all the postumous honors Stalin received in the Communist bloc when he died and went to his reward.

There was an article in the local paper about what a great role model he was at "molding young men". They're damn lucky I no longer lived in that town and paid taxes there -- I would have protested and likely would have leaked everything I just wrote above to the press.

They probably wouldn't have listened to you. I have neither any faith in nor any respect for the sports media. They're not just simply biased; they're a propaganda mill. They're not a journalistic institution any more than were the Nazi and Communist propaganda mills.

I can't take any more of this. It makes me sick. I'd like to present a positive alternative to this disgraceful, hypocritical farce. ChrisOh and i_like_1981, compare your P.E. experiences with this desciption of the PE4Life program. I've posted the following link several times before in this forum. It's to a "Teaching Tolerance" webpage, which is associated with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Since clicking on the link will kick you out of the forum, I've also gone to the trouble of copying and pasting the text of the online article -- which everyone (including, and especially, sports fans) should read who professes to be concerned about the physical health of the school students of this country.

http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/numbe ... sonal-best

Personal Best


Number 22: Fall 2002

Titusville is tiny. Tucked into the hills of northwest Pennsylvania, off a back road between Buffalo and Pittsburgh, the town looks like a Norman Rockwell backdrop gone ever-so-slightly to seed. Hang a right out of Titusville Middle School, cruise down a couple of blocks of aging but tidy clapboard houses, and youâ??ll suddenly come to the edge of town. On your right will be a bare field stretching toward the Titusville Wastewater Treatment Plant; on your left, a little drive-in with big windows called City Limits Ice Cream.

Titusville is friendly. It's the kind of place where you walk back to your car after paying for a tankful of gas, fumbling with your keys and a Dr. Pepper, and find your door being opened by a passerby â?? a rosy-cheeked boy no more than 5, with thick glasses and a mighty cowlick. "You're welcome!" he'll say, ambling away.

Titusville is dwindling. Its main claim to fame dates all the way back to 1859, when Col. Edwin Drake picked this spot to drill the world's first producing oil well. Soon after, the town was incorporated with 8,000 opportunistic souls. But the oil wells that attracted them stopped churning long ago.

Slowly but surely, every other major industry in the area took a powder as well. Now there are just 6,400 folks in Titusville. More than one-third of them â?? 2,500 â?? are enrolled in the local schools. And as Titusville Middle School principal Karen Jez says with a wistful sigh, "We know a lot of these kids are not staying."

The reason is simple: Jobs are scarce. "It's a unique community," Jez says, putting the best face forward. "Thereâ??s a lot of families that live in town and donâ??t own automobiles. They just see that as a luxury, so they walk. We have a lot of families that donâ??t have telephones, because they donâ??t see that they can afford those kinds of things right now. Half of our kids are on free and reduced lunch. But weâ??re striving to give them the best education. They need to be ready when they leave us."

As part of that effort, Titusville schools have given the town a fresh claim to fame: a ground-breaking physical education program that is fast becoming a model for schools all over the United States.

At a time when wealthier school districts are slashing the funds and class time once allocated to gym, Titusville has joined a small-but-growing movement in the opposite direction, investing serious time and money in a wellness-based curriculum known as the "New P.E." In the process, they're reshaping the social climate of Titusville schools.

Gym class used to be the bane of non-athletes' existence, a place where kids were often humiliated, and where social hierarchies formed and flourished. Now it's an essential part of Titusville's campaign to cut down on peer harassment.

"We're working very hard on creating a caring community across the board," Jez says. "The fact that kids are equalized in P.E. helps. We don't have as much name-calling, teasing, bullying as we have had in years past. That all comes from being a healthy being."[Earl's italics]

"Ask any group of 10 adults for their memories of gym class," A. Virshup writes in Women's Sports and Fitness magazine, "and seven of them will launch into litanies of frustration and humiliation: the groans when they came up to bat, the failure to do a single pull-up on the annual fitness test, the gruesome uniforms.

"P.E. seemed less a class than some tribal ritual for jocks to enjoy and the rest of us to endure," Virshup recalls.

In most American schools, it hasn't changed much. True, uniforms are generally out â?? but skills tests, competitive team sports and embarrassed non-athletes remain phys-ed staples. P.E. has been sick for a long time. And lately, it's been dying.

While the number of overweight children in the United States has doubled in the last three decades, the number of kids taking daily P.E. has plummeted â?? from 42 percent to 25 percent from 1991 to 1995 alone, according to a Surgeon General's report.

Only one state, Illinois, now requires daily physical education for all its students. New academic standards have necessitated more class time for traditional academic subjects â?? so, administrators reason, why not cut down on gym?

Three years ago, Tim McCord was beginning to wonder himself. After two decades at Titusville Middle School, he had plunged into a gym teacherâ??s version of existential angst.

"I was a drill sergeant," he says. "For 19 years, I taught the same way. We were your basic everyday phys-ed program. The athletes dominated. The kids who were not as talented skills-wise, or as physically gifted, basically fell by the wayside. How much good was I doing those kids?"[Earl's italics]

Then McCord went to a statewide workshop where he discovered a little piece of technology that resuscitated him â?? and ultimately transformed P.E. in Titusville into a curriculum that breaks down barriers between students, rather then creating and reinforcing them.[Earl's italics]

It starts with heart-rate monitors. Mounted on a band that wraps around a studentâ??s chest, monitors track the heart rate during a workout; a wristwatch displays the results as the level of exertion rises and falls.

Using the monitors, students and teachers can determine individual target heart-rate zones â?? basically, the studentsâ?? ideal levels of exertion, based on their aerobic fitness at the beginning of a semester. Then teachers can tie grades to how long students are exercising in their personal target zone.

The upshot struck McCord as positively revolutionary: "Using the monitors, every kid could be successful in P.E." Goodbye, tribal ritual.

"Weâ??d always based grades on whether kids dressed for class, how they did on skills tests, and a totally subjective idea of whether they were working hard," McCord says. "But I couldnâ??t really tell. How did I know whether a kid was working hard? Now, here was a way to know for sure."

Of course, you had to get them moving first â?? and that meant rethinking the traditional activities of P.E. as well. It would do no good to strap a heart-rate monitor on a 12-year-old who was going to spend 40 minutes standing idly around a volleyball net.

So as he plotted his strategy for buying monitors â?? they go for $140 a pop, hardly small change for a public school in a cash-strapped district â?? McCord studied innovative ways to turn gym class into perpetual motion. His research led him to the patron saint of the New P.E., Phil Lawler.

Fifteen years ago, Lawler went through his own gym-teacherâ??s crisis. "When P.E. was being cut, we were forced to look at our offerings and say, â??What do we offer thatâ??s of value?â?? I mean, I canâ??t stand there in front of my school board and say, â??Hey, I teach volleyball, basketball and football skills. You canâ??t cut my funding!â??"

Determined to make P.E. a subject "of value," Lawler ended up transforming his junior high schoolâ??s gym in Naperville, Ill., into a high-tech fitness center whirring with exercise bikes, stair-steppers and rowing machines â?? anything, basically, that would get every kidâ??s heart pumping for an entire period. Now Lawler is National Institute director of PE4Life, spreading the gospel to angst-ridden ex-jocks like McCord.

"Now, fifteen years later," he says, "Iâ??ll go head-to-head with someone from any curriculum and defend ours as the most important at the school."

Parents appear to agree. For three years running, theyâ??ve ranked P.E. the best class offered at Naperville Junior High.

Lawler estimates, perhaps optimistically, that as many as 30 percent of U.S. schools are "moving in the direction" of New P.E. Some have begun to emphasize movement over team-sports skills, with activities like dance and aerobics.

Others, like Titusvilleâ??s middle and high schools, use heart-rate monitors in fitness centers packed with aerobic equipment. Full-blown exemplars of the New P.E, like Roosevelt High School in Seattle, supplement the fitness centers with non-competitive, sweat-inducing activities such as roller-blading, rock-climbing and mountain biking.

For gym teachers struggling against cuts in time and funding, the New P.E. can sound prohibitively expensive. But, as Lawler says, "It costs nothing to get kids walking, or jumping rope." And McCord adds, "Hey, Titusvilleâ??s rural, out in the middle of nowhere. If we can do it ... ."

It took the re-energized McCord only a matter of months â?? and $30,000 for the monitors and fitness equipment â?? to transform Titusville Middle School into a New P.E. showplace. He quickly sold Titusvilleâ??s school board on the link between aerobic fitness and all-around well-being.

The kids didnâ??t take much convincing. Principal Jez still marvels at the way their attitudes changed after the wellness center opened. "Before, we had a lot of girls, especially, who just wouldnâ??t dress for P.E. They would just come and sit in the office and say, â??Iâ??m not going.â??

"Now we donâ??t have kids refusing to dress," she says, still sounding a tad surprised. "They enjoy P.E."

Above his busy desk, on a wall students see when they come into the locker room, Tim McCord has hung a sign that expresses his newfound philosophy: "Physical education is the only subject which by the very nature of its content has the potential to affect how a person will feel every moment of every day for the rest of his or her life."

With his hard jawline, flat buzz cut and shiny track suit, McCord might seem like an unlikely philosopher. But his wisdom is in heavy demand. At least 40 other schools have visited Titusville since it became the "Little P.E. Program That Could." McCord carries his success story to workshops all over the state and country.

Not that he doesnâ??t meet skeptics along the way. "I remember this teacher at a workshop telling me, â??We can teach our kids a lot about the real world in P.E., a lot about survival of the fittest.â??

"My response was, â??Why is it that physical educators always have to teach their real-world lessons in a negative way? Why canâ??t we take a positive approach?â??"

McCord has already written out the dayâ??s activities on an erasable board. Itâ??s a Wellness Center workout day. Theyâ??re to strap on their monitors, pick up their heart-rate watches, jog three laps and start working out. McCord doesnâ??t like to waste precious time calling roll and barking instructions.

"After the beginning of the semester, when they learn what to do, I become non-existent," McCord says. Heâ??s exaggerating, of course. Once the boys have done their laps and started pedaling and rowing and stepping, McCord has a very important role: manning the boombox.

"Mr. McCord!" hollers Josh, a broad-shouldered boy whoâ??s already broken a sweat. "You got that CD with â??Born to Be Wildâ?? on it?"

"Yeah, but you have to promise to sing."

As the boys pedal and row and check their watches, McCord cranks the old Steppenwolf tune. Twenty teenage voices bellow the refrain: "Born to be wi-i-i-i-i-ld!"

A few minutes later, "Hand Jive" comes on and elicits a similar response â?? along with a hand-jiving demonstration by McCord, the ex-drill sergeant.

Compared to the orderly rigors and glacial pace of Old P.E. ("Everybody behind that line â?? alphabetical order!"), the New P.E. looks like chaos. In this narrow, L-shaped room â?? originally designed to store nets and balls â?? youâ??ve got 20 adolescent males in constant motion.

It would seem like a recipe for tension, aggression, boiling over. Instead, cooperation rules: The boys move fluidly, cheerfully, from one machine to the next. If they have to wait a minute, they jog in place, jump, chat, sing.

"Youâ??ll notice they donâ??t hang out in groups of athletes and non-athletes anymore," McCord says, flipping through his CDs. "The kids talk to each other now. They donâ??t worry so much about being different."

Gym class used to be an incubator of difference, tape-measuring and certifying athletic superiority â?? which so often translates into social privilege outside the gym. Now, what emanates from Titusvilleâ??s P.E. classes is just the opposite. "Thereâ??s not so much tension between the groups," says John Wiley, P.E. chairperson at Titusville Senior High. "The athletes and the techies work together."

Incidents of bullying have decreased in Titusville.[Earl's italics] But with the New P.E. in just its third year, itâ??s too soon to measure its broader impact on the schoolsâ?? social climate.

For anecdotal evidence, you could turn to Ryan McGarvie. Two years ago, Ryan was a wheelchair-bound 6th grader who wanted nothing to do with P.E. After all, how was someone with cerebral palsy going to fit into a gym class?

"With a walker and a heart-rate monitor," McCord says, stepping out into the gymnasium where a few of the boys continue to jog laps and jump rope. "Once Iâ??d convinced him that he could make an A, that he could do just as well as the other kids if he got himself into his target zone â?? well, look. Ryanâ??s out here in his walker, challenging the other kids to races."

"Hey, you want to see me pull myself up?" Ryan says. "Iâ??m very good at it; Iâ??ve got a lot of upper-body strength." With a steadying hand from Lea Roseman, his educational aide, Ryan slides out of his walker and lies flat on his belly before hoisting himself slowly back up, gripping the rails of the walker.

He checks his monitor. "Oops, too high!" he says, flashing a toothy grin. Two years ago, he couldnâ??t lift up like that. "Now, Iâ??ll tell you a secret," he says, leaning forward confidentially. "Sometimes I lay down on my bed and prop up the mirror so I can look at my muscles."

Today, Ryanâ??s classmates include a kid with a cast on his leg, huffing away on a rowing machine; another boy with a sprained ankle is working his arms on a weight machine. Nowadays, instead of medical excuses, doctors are asked to fill out "Can-Do" lists, checking off activities injured kids can safely participate in.

"OK, thirty seconds!" McCord bellows, clicking off the boombox. The machines grind to a stop. The kids circle around McCord, unstrapping their watches, checking their times. "Todayâ??s an 18-point day," he tells them. Points are awarded for each minute a student stays in his target heart-rate zone; you have to stay in your zone 60 percent of the period to make an A.

McCord calls the boys forward and collects their watches as they report their times. "Twenty-seven!" huffs the red-faced boy who spent most of the class jumping rope.

"Sixteen," Josh reports.

"Five," says a tall, athletic-looking kid who turns back to the locker room with a sheepish look on his face.

Thatâ??s one of the more startling things about the New P.E.: Now the athletes have to struggle. Not that they, or their parents, always appreciate the new egalitarianism.

"The only complaints we get now," McCord says, bustling back to his desk, "will be from parents of athletes who call and say, â??My kid has to work too hard to stay in the target heart-rate zone.â?? " But the point, he tells them, is that the kids who excel in the New P.E. are all working equally hard â?? from different starting points, with different physical histories and abilities.[Earl's italics]

"I see a level playing field now," McCord says, making a quick check of his voice-mail while the boys dress for fourth period. A TV reporter from Erie wants an interview. Thereâ??s another request for a presentation about the New P.E.

"Hey, Iâ??m just this little podunk guy in Titusville," McCord says, punching the buttons on his antiquated answering machine. "Whatâ??s going on here?"

"Um, Mr. McCord?" A bespectacled head pokes tentatively into the office. "Did I do OK today? I mean, I wasnâ??t sure."

Ronnie Manzini is understandably worried. A brand-new transfer from a local private school, he just had his first dose of New P.E., and heâ??s never seen anything like it.

McCord forgets about his voice-mail. "Did you do OK?" he says. "Did you do OK? Hey, listen: You got a 19. Youâ??ve already got an extra-credit point. You did a lot more than OK!"

The new kid grins and shrugs, pleased but embarrassed, then turns and sprints away to his next new class.

Notice any difference between mandatory sports-based P.E. and the PE4Life program, dear reader? For the sake of our children's health and well-being, I certainly hope so.

BTW, last year, I did a 9-mile hike through Cuyahoga Valley National Park with one of the hiking clubs I'm in, over some very rugged terrain -- not to brag, but I don't think that's too bad for someone who was the "spastic" and declared in the "unfit" category on my high school gym fitness test! I'd love to have some of those baseball, football, and basketball players from high school do that same hike with me now at age 40, and see just how well they'd hang with me and my fellow hiking enthusiasts!

I'm delighted to see that you've been vindicated. Likewise, slowly but surely I'm building up my physique at my health club as I continue to work with a personal trainer on a bodybuilding program. Was bodybuilding or any other fitness program offered by any of the mandatory P.E. classes that I had the misfortune to endure when I was a boy? Of course, not. Who would ever consider such a thing as a fitness program in a P.E. class [sarcasm]? If the incompetent psychologist who sent me to a judo instructor who epitomized machismo had sent me to a gym to be trained in a bodybuilding program instead, I would have benefited immensely. It would have given me a lot of self-confidence, which would have even improved my grades. I recently saw a news item on TV about a court trial in which one of the parties was represented by an attorney who was a former high-school classmate of mine and had played on the football team. He excelled academically and went to Yale, I believe. I didn't know him personally or know anything about him. He might have been a nice guy. (Before I say any more, let me say that I do not chortle over anyone's misfortune.) Anyway, he was so fat that he was as round as a beachball. I felt sorry for him. So much for sports teaching healthy habits. In the meantime, I'll do all that I can to become ripped so I'll be able to sit back and thumb my nose at all the people who defend or perpetrate the negative and mindless aspects of the sports culture.

Finally, I thought I'd copy and paste the following comment that was submitted in a blog that is also included among the links of the "Links" section of this website.

http://mydadaisms.blogspot.com/2007/01/ ... es-me.html

Ha ha! Thanks for your brilliant blog. I'm a guy who hates wathcing sports too and those embarrasing questions are all too familiar! Ironically, I'm a "man's man", go to gym every day and am phyically very fit, while the guys asking the sports questions are usually out of shape. While I mumble through my sports ignorance, I keep in mind that on Saturday afternoons while they watch sports, probably without their women, I'm usually getting it on with my wife of 14 years. I think that's way WAY better than watching sports on TV!!

Down with the old P.E.!

[i_like_1981]

In volleyball, he told the class how to do a "hit the spastic" drill, as he called it -- he said to find the "spastic" (the worst player on the team) and always aim the serve toward them. During one practice, I hit a ball backwards and out of bounds, and the gym teacher laughed and said, "I guess you guys found your spastic!" and then all the jock kids started calling it the "hit the Chris" drill.

I only just found this extract from your post now, having read over Earl's response to the individual statements. That is probably the most appalling thing I've heard on this site in a long time, and believe me, there are a lot of stories of suffering in sports on this site that appall me. Do you know what, my personal experiences suddenly seem so much easier now. The coaches over in the USA, from what I have reached, actually seem to condone bullying - no, not just condone it, they WANT it to happen. They WANT to single out students and bring suffering towards them, and it is absolutely unacceptable. Here in Britain, if a PE teacher was committing abuses like this, I wouldn't be surprised to hear about it in the news. Yet over in the USA, I have been made to believe this is a common thing. You could, and should, have sought representation from other figures of authority and got that guy sacked for abusing his authority. I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd gone up and smacked the guy in the face with a hard, blunt object in the vicinity for treating you that way. You know, back in high school, I went through a lot of shit in PE lessons but the teachers never supported it. They were pretty passive, yes, and didn't tend to pay much attention to their students, but they never took the side of the bullies and supported them in humilating me. No. I'm telling you, enough of that sort of thing is enough to drive some people to suicide. This has angered me. Is it any fucking wonder why fewer people are doing physical activity outside of school and are more willing to just hang around the house on the computer in their free time when their efforts to participate in competitive sports are being met with this sort of abuse FROM THE DAMN TEACHER? Disgraceful.

Best regards,
i_like_1981

[recovering_fan]

@ChrisOH,

That was one of the more disturbing posts I have read at this site. You would spend an entire class just copying notes, and then they'd give you the exams to look at in advance? That "find the spastic" story was pretty awful as well.

Some of the stories I read at this place seem like they come from a reform school or prison, rather than mainstream American or British high schools.

[Earl]

Recovering_fan, the worst place a nonathletic boy can be is in a mandatory sports-centered P.E. class. And I speak not as a sedentary guy, but as an active member of a health club pumping iron! If you think these stories are bad, you should check out http://www.democraticunderground.org -- which caught my attention not because of its politics, but because of its many anti-bullying threads. If you conduct site searches at that website on "jock bullies," "p.e. bullying," and "phys ed bullying," you will see page after page after page of links. Some of the links obviously are not relevant, such as those referring to shock jocks; but there still are many links to posts by DU members who either underwent some of the worst bullying you ever heard or witnessed such in mandatory sports-centered P.E. And to think that some people can't understand why we aren't sports fans!

To make a positive comment, though, as I've just indicated in what is my longest post ever submitted at this website, I have found the alternative to all this pointless, unjustified suffering: PE4Life. But do the majority of sports fans support this innovative program? NO! Do you think Cycloptichorn and kuvasz would support it? NO! Pardon me for using a racist epithet for the sake of effect, but nonathletic boys and nonathletic men are the niggers in the world of school sports. In other words, we are viewed as being inferior and deserving of contempt, not respect as fellow human beings. (Well, I didn't stay positive for very long, did I? )

[Fat Man]

Good morning ChrisOH:

Sorry I didn't respond sooner.

Also, I remember in junior high, on a *science* test, the teacher (different from one above) had a bonus question about who won some college basketball game, tournament, whatever. I also remember getting criticized by some other students for "blowing the curve" (getting too high a score on tests and reducing the grades of others). I later came to realize why "grade curves" were instituted -- so that the sports stars would be able to get barely-passing grades and stay eligible! Same way with the bogus extra-credit questions.

Yeah, all the school subjects are getting dumbed down to make it easier for the jocks to make passing grades.

I'm 59 years old, so it was back in the late 1960s when I was in high school. My mother went to high school back in the 1930s and back then, a student could not get on the football team unless he was making at least a C+ or B- average.

Now they only have to make a D average, which is still passing, but just barely.

By being among the better students, you're still engaged in sports.

You're in a vertical tug-o-war game, because when you are scoring high academically and pulling up the grade point average of your class, the drooling moronic slack-jawed knuckle dragging monkey boys in sports are tugging on the other end pulling everybody else downward.

Yeah! A vertical tug-o-war instead of horizontal.

God forbid that you should score high academically! OH NO! We can't have that now, can we!

Our schools only care about a high score on the scoreboard in the gym or out in the field.

I also took an astronomy class in senior year, and the teacher had arranged to do a presentation at the local public library about some recent scientific news and discoveries, and he encouraged all of us to come if we were able. About a week before, he abruptly announced he had to cancel the library presentation. When someone asked him why, he replied that he had to hold a game, practice, whatever, for some sport (he wasn't a sports-minded guy at all). He told us he wasn't happy about it, but the administration had told him that coaching sports was part of his job, and he needed to put that ahead of any other programs or commitments he had, including the library presentation. Never mind that the presentation was *in his field of study*, and that giving an intelligent talk at the library to the public (who, by the way, *pay taxes* for the both the library and the school) would have been an excellent opportunity to promote the school and its *academic* programs. But nooooo....sports was way more important than all that! I sure got the message the school district was sending.

A few years after graduation, I saw my former astronomy teacher working in a computer software store, and he recognized me, so we chatted a little. He said he was managing the store now and loved it, and that he was no longer in teaching. Looking back, I can't help but wonder if the school's promotion of sports over academics influenced his decision to leave the profession, and also how many quality teachers our country may have lost over the years precisely because of attitudes like this.

WOW! You actually had an Astronomy class in your high school?

When I was in high school, we didn't have any Astronomy classes. We had General Science, and the textbooks would have only one or two chapters on Astronomy, but that was it. They were also outdated textbooks with a 1952 copyright date on them. My high school science textbook was almost as old as I was.

But my science teacher (as I had mentioned so many times before in these forums) was also the school's football coach, and he was usually too damn busy coaching his team of pre-frontally lobotomized baboons to be teaching in the classroom, so he would set up the movie projector and then turn off the lights and go out the door leaving us all sitting in the dark watching stupid cartoons. That was my science class.

Perhaps you might be interested in reading one of my earlier topics about my experience in school.

THE HORSE THIEVES AMONG US!
http://www.sportssuck.org/phpbb2/viewto ... f=1&t=4425

Last night I did some re-editing, correcting some typos.

Also, be sure to see my second forum post under the above mentioned topic.

There I talk about how the Kennedy Administration helped to fuck up our educational system when he shot off his big mouth about Americans being out of shape and suggesting that we should all go on 50 mile hikes.

Be sure to read that one.

Yeah, right away, all the PE coaches felt it was their patriotic duty to whip all the students into shape by humiliating anyone who didn't do well in the gymnasium.

When I was in the 4th grade, I was suspended from school because I failed to climb the rope. Never mind that I was passing all my other academic subjects, and never mind that I had a crippled up left knee, the result of a car accident when I was 4 years old. As a result of my knee injury, I was unable to run and I walked with a limp, so I was harassed by the other students in the gymnasium and by the coach.

Back in the 1960s, it was our patriotic duty to be good at sports, and anybody who didn't like sports was a "pinko" or a "commie" or Un-American!





The only good thing President Kennedy did was to promise to put men on the moon by the end of the decade, which we finally did back in 1969, and one would think that getting to the moon would encourage high school students to take an interest in science, but Kennedy blew it when he shot off his fucking big mouth about the 50 mile hikes. That's when he fucked up big time!

And while I had this one teacher would would not allow me to check out Astronomy books from the school library, and while I was getting beaten and humiliated in the gymnasium, we had some Fascist Nazi scum-bag piece of dog shit by the name of Author Rudolph who was working on the Saturn V booster for the Apollo moon mission.

The only reason why the USA beat the Soviet Union to the moon was because we had . . . . .

THE REICH STUFF!!!

And of course, here in the USA, we decided that it was much cheaper to put up new basketball hoops and buy new football uniforms than it is to buy new equipment for high school chemistry, physics, and biology labs.

Hell, we don't need to educate our children. Just teach them sports, because we can always import nerds and techno-geeks from overseas to keep our wheels turning.

YEAH RIGHT!!!



This is what has become of the American Dream!

One is lucky to have a pot to piss in and a window to throw it out of!

[Ray]

BTW, last year, I did a 9-mile hike through Cuyahoga Valley National Park with one of the hiking clubs I'm in, over some very rugged terrain -- not to brag, but I don't think that's too bad for someone who was the "spastic" and declared in the "unfit" category on my high school gym fitness test! I'd love to have some of those baseball, football, and basketball players from high school do that same hike with me now at age 40, and see just how well they'd hang with me and my fellow hiking enthusiasts!

They probably couldn't do it. Both my sisters married football stars in their high school. Both of these guys are HUGE now. One is morbidly obese and the other one is just incredibly fat. I'm glad i was born naturally skinny!