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I think PE classes are a waste of time anyway. No one takes them seriously except the teachers...and that's not even always the case. The fact that one gets a grade on how well he/she performs a sport is ridiculous. I don't have a problem with a health class that teaches kids healthy eating/exercise and lifestyle tips. But requiring physical activity in the middle of the day...and then have to return to class...so pointless!
Kids who want to participate in sports should do so AFTER school, whether on a varsity team or just a pickup game. That's how it works in many other countries...and consequently many other countries have lower childhood obesity levels. That way they can sweat all they need and go home and shower.
I never took gym class seriously, rarely sweated, and NEVER showered in gym. The floors were too gross.
Luckily, it didn't come up as an issue for me, but there is absolutely no way I would have taken a shower with classmates in a school locker room. I would have transferred schools or dropped the class. Worst case, I would have complained to the school board and/or considered legal action.
The whole group shower at school thing is creepy and disgusting.
This attitude is in no small part why our education system has gone to pot. Far too many people want what they want, and no one, or system is going to tell them differently.
Going along to get along has become it is my way or I will sue to get what I want.
Sadly, the old school system administrators are gone, that would stand up to those type of threats. Now anyone can do anything, with the threat of a lawsuit just a phone call away. So no more mandatory Pledge of Allegiance, no more corporal punishment, no more punishment via peer pressure by sitting alone in front of the class, etc.
Heck no more PE in many schools, and what they do have for PE now is a joke. No wonder so many hyper kids are being diagnosed with ADD, and drugged up since they have no way to burn off excess energy during PE.
God forbid your same sex classmates see you naked in the shower, thus your façade of a perfect self image can be maintained.
Heck, many college dorms have communal showers, so how does one avoid taking showers in such situtions? Waiting until everyone goes to sleep then sneaking a quick shower so no one sees you naked?
One wonders how our parents, grandparents, and all the previous generations who built this country and managed to get by, compared to the whiney me generation of today.
I think PE classes are a waste of time anyway. No one takes them seriously except the teachers...and that's not even always the case. The fact that one gets a grade on how well he/she performs a sport is ridiculous. I don't have a problem with a health class that teaches kids healthy eating/exercise and lifestyle tips. But requiring physical activity in the middle of the day...and then have to return to class...so pointless!
Kids who want to participate in sports should do so AFTER school, whether on a varsity team or just a pickup game. That's how it works in many other countries...and consequently many other countries have lower childhood obesity levels. That way they can sweat all they need and go home and shower.
I never took gym class seriously, rarely sweated, and NEVER showered in gym. The floors were too gross.
So when exactly are the kids suppose to get exercise?
School is not only for the mind, but the health of the child as well. We have no trouble mandating proper nutrition at school because some kids don't eat well at home. Why not mandate exercise like we use to when this countries obesity rate was not an epidemic.
Heck now days with all the social media and entertainment choices with 500 TV channels and video games, when are kids going to get exercise if not for a mandatory 5 hours per week?
When I went to school even the fat kids got to play and get their heart rate up. Believe it or not, some even enjoyed it and they got a sense of what it was like to be part of a team, if only for a brief few hours per week.
As to your floor comment, yes the bathroom floors might have Athletes foot germs, but that is why many people wear shower shoes like flip flops.
I think PE classes are a waste of time anyway. No one takes them seriously except the teachers...and that's not even always the case. The fact that one gets a grade on how well he/she performs a sport is ridiculous. I don't have a problem with a health class that teaches kids healthy eating/exercise and lifestyle tips. But requiring physical activity in the middle of the day...and then have to return to class...so pointless!
Kids who want to participate in sports should do so AFTER school, whether on a varsity team or just a pickup game. That's how it works in many other countries...and consequently many other countries have lower childhood obesity levels. That way they can sweat all they need and go home and shower.
I never took gym class seriously, rarely sweated, and NEVER showered in gym. The floors were too gross.
I actually disagree with this. It is good mentally to take a "movement" break during the day, and a lot of the kids need to get that energy out and actually concentrate better afterward.
Also, I was never a kid who joined any after school activities, I didn't have that much interest and I was not ambitious enough to stay after school...BUT despite that, I can hold my own if I jump in on a beach volleyball game, I know how to hold a bat for an impromptu softball game with friends, or dribble and shoot a basketball when I go over to visit my nephews, because I learned enough of the basic rules and techniques thanks to gym class. I am glad I was exposed to these things and have that knowledge. Other kids in after school pick up games wouldn't have shown me where to put my fingers on the basketball to shoot. Also many kids don't discover a love or talent for a sport such as volleyball until they are exposed to it in gym.
I will never understand though why we had to learn square dancing in gym though, lol. Was this just a 70's thing, or did other kids have to do this in gym too? "Swing your partner!"
Luckily, it didn't come up as an issue for me, but there is absolutely no way I would have taken a shower with classmates in a school locker room. I would have transferred schools or dropped the class. Worst case, I would have complained to the school board and/or considered legal action.
The whole group shower at school thing is creepy and disgusting.
Assuming one is a male, do you wait until a sit down seat is available to urinate or use the stand up stalls? I am not going to wait 15 min to do my business.
As someone who spends a lot of time around high school students and in schools...I understand why it isn't mandatory anymore as somebody would have to monitor the kids and adults around naked children today opens up too many opportunities for people to be accused of all sorts of things.
That being said...I had mandatory showers (males did, females just had to change clothes) in the 90s from 7-10th grade. We all survived and got over the modesty quickly. We smelled better too. At the schools I see today...the kids don't even change clothes anymore. They stink so bad after PE and no--coating one's self in body spray doesn't help. It's like pouring cologne on a steamy pile of dung. The kids smell like a nasty combo of Axe and BO. I wish they at least changed clothes. That would help immensely if showers cannot be logistically available. Guys out there...you know running around for an hour in the heat makes one shall we say...unfresh...change those clothes at the very least.
I will never understand though why we had to learn square dancing in gym though, lol. Was this just a 70's thing, or did other kids have to do this in gym too? "Swing your partner!"
Could you have gone to school in Virginia? That is where I went to school and we did square dancing once a year in the 90s. Docey doe!
I think the idea of public school-that education should be available to all-is one of the most important things provided by our government. I learned each item you are decrying the lack of in a public school. It is all there, if the student chooses to look for it.
I appreciate your even-keeled reply, which one cannot take for granted over the internet... but I have to say I don't believe public school is necessary for much that is genuine knowledge - in fact it is detrimental thereto by what it leaves out, and by the dramatic *emotional* experiences that it brings with it, and the reflexive behavioral responses that it engenders.
Learning is a built-in fact of the human experience, as a child learns how to walk, to speak his native language, and to get dressed in the morning, all before setting foot in kindergarten. So education is available to all by default. We don't need school for that.
Meanwhile the government's real-but-unadvertised role with respect to societally-shared knowledge ("the things we can all agree upon") is primarily to weaken the underpinnings of that shared knowledge by poisoning the public's concept of religious perspectives as something deservedly alien, leaving people blind to the most important but most subtle facts about who they are and why they are alive. When a people is convinced to abandon its history, especially its religious history for any reason, self-destruction is the logically necessary result. The big con on the part of the state is its pretense to have found, or to be finding, a third way around that necessary self-destruction; the pretense essentially goes, "Let us make school the best we can make it, as our common project," as if the state hasn't just destroyed the foundation of what it's claiming to do.
We'd have an easier time with our social self-destruction if the state would just admit the practical logic of what it's done and get out of the way while events run their course.
Of course, the state does not do that, because the state is engaged in a power play. It believes it can hold up the collapsing building forever by inserting its own scaffolding, and so it forces its scaffolding into you whether you like it or not. The idea is to turn you into - what else? - a perpetual-motion money machine with an empty soul, made to order by John D. Rockefeller, who was never good at keeping his hands off things.
Could you have gone to school in Virginia? That is where I went to school and we did square dancing once a year in the 90s. Docey doe!
I did.. Prince William and Fairfax county schools.. Both of them did square dancing.. The 'required' showers were only at Prince William County (Stonewall)..
Quote:
Originally Posted by midgeorgiaman
As someone who spends a lot of time around high school students and in schools...I understand why it isn't mandatory anymore as somebody would have to monitor the kids and adults around naked children today opens up too many opportunities for people to be accused of all sorts of things.
That being said...I had mandatory showers (males did, females just had to change clothes) in the 90s from 7-10th grade. We all survived and got over the modesty quickly. We smelled better too. At the schools I see today...the kids don't even change clothes anymore. They stink so bad after PE and no--coating one's self in body spray doesn't help. It's like pouring cologne on a steamy pile of dung. The kids smell like a nasty combo of Axe and BO. I wish they at least changed clothes. That would help immensely if showers cannot be logistically available. Guys out there...you know running around for an hour in the heat makes one shall we say...unfresh...change those clothes at the very least.
It's like spraying lemon scented air freshener in a bathroom after someone takes a dump.. Makes it smell like someone took a dump in a lemon grove.
I did.. Prince William and Fairfax county schools.. Both of them did square dancing.. The 'required' showers were only at Prince William County (Stonewall)..
It's like spraying lemon scented air freshener in a bathroom after someone takes a dump.. Makes it smell like someone took a dump in a lemon grove.
Must have been a state requirement. We square danced in Portsmouth too.
Lol...the lemon spray and bathroom analogy is spot on. :-)
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me generation of today. 
