Sports Related Problems in Your Day

[HugeFanOfBadReligion]

Hello everybody. I started this thread for people to post any bad situations that occurred recently to you that were caused by sports but are not really significant enough to start a new thread about. I apologize if a similar thread exists. I suppose many of the members likely won't have much to say because a lot of them are out of high school and are done dealing with immature jocks, but I suppose some of these people still face occasional problems caused because of sports.

Well, today, as I mentioned in another thread, we were playing baseball in gym class, which is a sport I really dislike because it forces you to bat while everyone in the entire game is watching you, so if you mess up, you are ridiculed and even physically assaulted just because you aren't as good as the rest; also, as Earl mentioned in another topic, you get very little physical activity in the sport, and exercise such as weightlifting can provide much more physical activity. I was standing somewhere between 1st and 2nd base when the ball came towards me at a very high speed and I failed to catch it, which caused the ball to continue far away. I even sprinted to retrieve the ball as fast as I could, but the teacher was so mad that he yelled at me and made me run laps around the track for the rest of the class. I ended up running at least 6-8 km with no stops just because I wasn't that good at the game. The reason why he was so upset is because in games, usually one gym class faces the other, and my gym teacher was tired of losing so he took his anger out on me just because I wasn't as good. This teacher was my science teacher last semester. I got the best mark by far in his science class, and he knew I was a hard worker, yet just because I failed to catch a ball I had to run a very long distance. He never made anyone run laps in his science class for missing an answer on a test. I guess I preferred running laps instead because I did actual physical activity without doing a humiliating sport (even though being forced to run laps was also quite humiliating), but still, I felt it was quite unfair. I was even tempted to grab my bag and just leave for the class because it was unfair punishment, but I decided it wasn't worth it. When the class had to run an 800 metre lap around the track and the vast majority walked while I ran around the track and was even the second to finish even though I was one of the last to start, the teacher did not yell at his favourite athletes in the class who were walking, yet even though he knew I ran as fast as I could around the track at the start of the class, he still punished me for not catching a ball in a pointless sport.

[Earl]

HugeFan, you bring up a subject that has distressed me for years; and that is the long overdue need to reform mandatory P.E. (For critics who want an excuse to bash this website and say that Iâ??m living in the past, the reason why Iâ??m preoccupied with this issue is because I donâ??t want kids today to have to go through what I and other nonathletic â??Baby Boomersâ? went through when we were required to take sports-centered P.E., which was the bane of our existence.) What youâ??ve just described is a perfect example of what is wrong with the traditional sports-centered approach to P.E. as a mandatory class.

Some of the long-time forum members no doubt will be bored by what Iâ??m about to say, because Iâ??ve said it so many times before. Iâ??m even getting tired repeating myself. But, anyway, the traditional approach simply does NOT promote physical fitness for nonathletic students, who are the most in need of exercise programs.

HugeFan, as youâ??ve just described, the traditional approach sets athletic students against their nonathletic classmates and even promotes bullying, sometimes with the approval of coaches who look down on nonathletic boys as supposedly not being masculine (a demonstrably false assumption) and therefore not deserving of any respect (which is a shameful attitude for any teacher to have toward students who are not being disrespectful towards him). Frankly, your P.E. teacher is a jerk; and if I were your principal, I would have him severely disciplined short of being fired. As an adult and a grown man, he should know better than to act like an immature punk. That's absolutely appalling.

The traditional approach seems to have been conceived by numbskulls. The fact that different students have different physical fitness needs seems to have been overlooked from the very beginning. Forcing nonathletic boys to participate in sports with athletic classmates is like transferring basic math students to a calculus class and expecting them to pass it. I still remember the claim that was made in 1960 in the United States when the unsupervised recess period that I had enjoyed when I was in the third grade was replaced by mandatory P.E. (minus a gym, of course, in elementary but not in junior high and high school) when I started the following grade. The claim was made that the purpose of mandatory P.E. was to promote the physical fitness of all students, but that was a hypocritical lie. The physical fitness needs of the nonathletic boys were completely ignored. There were no exercise programs. I didnâ??t even know what an exercise program was until I was no longer required to take P.E. (Thankfully, I was exempted from having to take P.E. in high school because I was a band student. This was quite fortunate, as I heard tales of how hellish the P.E. classes at my high school were for nonathletic boys who werenâ??t exempted as band students. Again, is this the way to encourage nonathletic kids to become physically active? Ridiculing and bullying them is going to accomplish this purpose? Well, sports fans?) There wasnâ??t even any remedial program for those who werenâ??t good at one sport or another. Hardly any instruction about sports was provided in any of the P.E. classes. The assumption seems to have been made that every boy was an athlete. Now, before someone misunderstands me and starts screaming mindlessly â??Anti-sports!
Anti-sports!â? let me make myself perfectly clear, as President Richard Nixon would say. I have no problem with retaining traditional P.E. for the athletic boys and others who simply want to participate in sports AS AN ELECTIVE. If genuine physical fitness classes are not to be provided for the nonathletic students, then I say leave them alone or tell their parents to send them to a health club. Just dispense with the hypocrisy and go about your business of promoting sports without being coercive about it. Donâ??t use what really is just a form of recreation as a tool to bully children, for crying out loud.

HugeFan, please check out the following webpage to which Iâ??ve posted a link below. I would have copied and pasted the article, but I donâ??t know how to do it. (Actually, I could have copied and pasted the article piece by piece; but it would have taken me way too long to do it.) The article is about PE4Life, which is a rather innovative program that promotes physical fitness for ALL students and does not just cater to athletes as the chosen few. I think you will be impressed when you read it. In fact, you'll be surprised. It made a believer out of me. You would definitely NOT be forced to deal with baseball. After you read it, you might recommend that your P.E. teacher read it for himself; that is, if he is capable of any reasoning or empathy. You might even want to inform the principal or the school board about this program, if you think such efforts would be conducive.

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