Discontinue all competitive sports at all educational levels - Page 2

[Greaseball]

I go to Oregon State, but I'm sure it's not the only school that does this.

Well, here is what I thought of school PE:

I went to a small redneck school in Alaska for 8th and 9th grade. In 8th grade PE we had to run a timed mile and were graded on our time - 10 minutes was an F, 9 was a D, 8 minutes was a C, 7 a B, and 6 an A. My time was 11 minutes, so I became the joke of the class. I practiced after school and got my time up to 9 minutes, so I ended up getting a D in the class. I really think they should have graded on improvement and effort - 11 minutes to 9 minutes is a good improvement! There are some things that certain people just can't do physically and I don't think that should be punished. When I was in the best shape of my life it still took me 8 minutes. I could also bench press 115 lbs but could not do a chin-up.

Then came 9th grade PE - because I failed in 8th grade, I had to take the remedial "general sports" instead of fun stuff like weightlifting. The girls in the locker room suddenly got meaner by high school, calling me fat and ugly as I undressed (I was neither!) so I decided to undress in the bathroom stalls. They followed me, stuck their heads under the doors, stole my underwear, laughed at me, and told stupid stories of secret video cameras that the principal watched all the time. Finally I just decided to not change for PE - I would go in my regular clothes. Well, that was not allowed, so I spent every PE class sitting on the bench, making me the joke of the year once more. I got an F that year.

Luckily by 10th grade I was in a different school and could take fun PE classes where I was graded on effort and the people were a lot nicer.

I think students should be able to choose the kind of PE they want to take - I don't like team sports and am not good at them, but there are other kinds of exercise I do like and enjoy. And a better effort should be made to stop the kind of thing I had to deal with, which years later I learned was SEXUAL HARRASSMENT.

[sohj]

Originally posted by Greaseball
I go to Oregon State, but I'm sure it's not the only school that does this.

Well, here is what I thought of school PE:

I went to a small redneck school in Alaska for 8th and 9th grade. In 8th grade PE we had to run a timed mile and were graded on our time - 10 minutes was an F, 9 was a D, 8 minutes was a C, 7 a B, and 6 an A. My time was 11 minutes, so I became the joke of the class. I practiced after school and got my time up to 9 minutes, so I ended up getting a D in the class.

That's so outrageous and I am so sorry. If that kind of garbage had been happening in my grade school, I KNOW the parents would have been up in arms. We had to run the timed stuff for the President's Physical Fitness Test, but we weren't graded on it. We were graded on (1) promptness/punctuality, (2) preparedness (ie: do you have your gym clothes?), (3) did you try at everything, and (4) were you a gracious winner/a graceful loser. AND it was only Pass/Fail. : And if my son's school pulls what yours did...I'm gonna hit the roof, ESPECIALLY if he's good at sports. Well, actually, no matter what. But that just totally seems opposite to what I think sports are doing in a school curriculum inthe first place.

Originally posted by Greaseball
Then came 9th grade PE - because I failed in 8th grade, I had to take the remedial "general sports" instead of fun stuff like weightlifting. The girls in the locker room suddenly got meaner by high school, calling me fat and ugly as I undressed (I was neither!) so I decided to undress in the bathroom stalls. They followed me, stuck their heads under the doors, stole my underwear, laughed at me, and told stupid stories of secret video cameras that the principal watched all the time. Finally I just decided to not change for PE - I would go in my regular clothes. Well, that was not allowed, so I spent every PE class sitting on the bench, making me the joke of the year once more. I got an F that year.

Those kids should have been HEAVILY castigated, penalized, reprimanded and maybe thrown out of school.

And what in blazes is "remedial sports"!?!?!?! There's no such thing. You do what you can with your ability.

Life was far from perfect at my school; but in comparison, I must have been at some sort of paragon of Platonic and Socratic ideals.

(For what it's worth...at my grade school I was nearly the shortest in class and always got chosen last for teams and put last in batting orders, etc. by whoever was captain that day until we started having tryouts for extracurricular teams (4th grade) and it was discovered that I was a hell of a lot better than the "popular" girls. Suddenly everything changed. However, I never got tortured like you did. It was just being ignored. And I was having fun on some coed teams outside of school, so I didn't care anyhow since I already was whupping the guys on my own time and in games far more fun for me than rounders...I've always enjoyed contact sports that move fast...like ice hockey)

[Greaseball]

Yeah, I remember that last-picked thing. Some teachers thought the answer was to just assign kids to groups one at a time, but if the group wasn't happy about it they would just groan and protest, so it wasn't really any less shameful.

I think most PE is graded on pass/fail. Come to think of it, that whole school had weird grades for everything. Like in math, they had this rule that you had to tell the teacher in advance what grade you were trying to get. If you got your expected grade, that would be your grade, but if you got a lower grade, you received an automatic F and if you got a higher grade you got an A.

So if someone said he wanted to get an A but ended up getting a B, he got an F, and someone who said they wanted to get a C but got a B instead would be given an A.

This was just a regular public school...I don't understand how they can do things this way. Maybe it's just different in every state.

[sohj]

Originally posted by Greaseball
... Come to think of it, that whole school had weird grades for everything. Like in math, they had this rule that you had to tell the teacher in advance what grade you were trying to get. If you got your expected grade, that would be your grade, but if you got a lower grade, you received an automatic F and if you got a higher grade you got an A.

So if someone said he wanted to get an A but ended up getting a B, he got an F, and someone who said they wanted to get a C but got a B instead would be given an A....

(Ya know...we've gone totally )

[Lilg127]

Maybe I'm viewing this differently because in my school Athletes didn't get preferantial treatment. I loved sports and was a very good athlete. Far from the popular type by any means. I was picked on all the time in school and to me sports was the one thing I was good at. I got decent grades, did terrible at the musical instrument I tried to play but excelled at Soccer, basketball and in high school once they started the team tennis (Especially tennis) I personally got so much out of it. It helped my self esteem, my physical health, I was in shape, I worked harder at school because I wanted to play sports and be involved so my grades were better than they would have been. I do think that sports vs. drama vs. music vs. arts is stupid. Different people have different talents and the programs should be funded equally or based on interest and need. Example if 60% want sports, 20% of students want music and 20% want drama than the funding should be done to provide the right amount of equipment necesarry for each one. I know it was in my highschool and everything worked fine. Either way I will say that if my son were unable to participate in an activity he wanted to do at school because some people thought it wasn't necessary and it lost funding I'd be very upset by it. I don't see how drama and music are more beneficial than sports. I think they be more beneficial for some people and sports more beneficial for others. It really depends on the person.

In NY state you have mandatory PE every year 2-3 times per week. We were graded on effort. Some of the least athletic students got A's in PE. Some of the most athletic people I knew got lower grades because of their attitudes. We did have to do the mile runs and all the Presidental fitness stuff. For me the mile run was the hardest thing to do and I often scored really low on it and I got teased for not doing good at it... (Even if I was the best at sprinting, pullups and other things) I also got teased for being the worst Viola player in the Orchestra before I gave up on it in tenth grade. So no matter what activities if kids aren't the popular ones they'll be picked on.

Getting rid of sports or any program isn't the answer. Changing the system in the schools where its happening is. It didn't happen in my school so I can't speak from experience but I can speak from the experience of how much being on competive team helped me not only socially but accademically and it definatelly brought up my self esteem. I hope that weather its sports, music drama, art or whatever else when my son reaches school age he has the oppurtunity to have an activity of that nature that benefits him the way being on the Tennis team benefited me.