And sometimes in XC, even if you don’t score, you are fast enough to displace another teams runner that does score, making that team have a worse score.
I just read through this read sort of skimming, so maybe I missed this… I read that being consistently picked last teaches some life skills. How do the kids that are never picked last, that are usually picked early on, how do they learn these life skills that are so necessary for the ones always picked last to learn?
I like the route my high school took. Anyone who was on a sports team or even in some kind of organized athletic activity outside of school was exempt from PE. The result was that most PE students had little athletic ability, so they were able to laugh with each other instead of at. Everyone still hated PE but it was nothing like the ridicule described above.
That’s exactly how it works at my kid’s private high school. The only available classes for those not on a club or varsity team are yoga, weightlifting/conditioning and “walking” (lol). Most of the kids at the school look pretty fit too. Still, though, I think it is a waste of resources to pay someone to teach “walking” but I guess it’s only the parents paying and not the taxpayers, so no harm no foul.
At my kids’ prep schools the kids have gotten to choose their sport. Most kids choose competitive team sports but some do dance, yoga, strength and conditioning, rock climbing, team management (which includes a requirement to work out with the team if they’re not injured) or other sports where the kids can take a more individual approach to health and fitness. There’s also the option to perform in the play or be on tech crew one season. Students are required to do one of these activities all three seasons so the school doesn’t have PE at all. This is the model all the area prep schools follow.
One of the classes I enjoyed the most in college was gym. Because I took sailing, crew, and fencing.
My only real positive experience with PE was from senior year. I was looking forward to something interesting (can’t remember what, lol), but the schedule was rearranged so that I had a choice between badminton and weight training. I was thoroughly sick of badminton so I chose weight training. I think I was the only girl, but the class was very supportive.
It was strictly a contract, so if you do x work, you get y grade. The teacher encouraged me to set a bench press goal, and I remember vividly the happy and encouraging faces of about 10 people in the class leaning over me when I finally did it. Strange but true.
Nietzsche famously wrote: “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Sounds great!
It’s very appealing to think that adversity makes you a better person. And, perhaps for some people, it’s really true. But, as many posters on this thread have demonstrated,“what doesn’t kill you” can actually leave many/most people resentful, bitter, and damaged.
Interestingly, dementia and strokes at 44 (and on) didn’t kill Nietzsche (he lived to be 55) but they certainly didn’t make him stronger; he did not produce any significant philosophical works after he physically and mentally declined.
I recall being graded in PE on written tests on the rules or principles of different sports. In HS we could choose different sports and I did weight training and volleyball etc. The worst was the required marking period of swimming. I always seemed to have PE for first period and then had to go thru the rest of the day with dripping hair which turned into a frizzed out head of hair (and it was the 80s so my normal routine involved lots of blowdrying, hot rollers, and hair spray, all of which was for naught the minute I got into the pool)
True story:
I knew a kid in high school that was an all-around great guy, but not athletic, in the least. At our high school, you had to play and excel at football to be popular. Knowing that he couldn’t fit in, in this way, the kid volunteered to help the football coach keep statistics at the games (passes attempted/completed, yards run, etc.). He was a valuable asset to the team, on the sidelines.
Nevertheless, this kid was bullied relentlessly by the football players. (It seems that some high schools boys need to establish a pecking order, a hierarchy. And this kid was definitely at the very bottom.) One of these football bullies, in particular, was the classic high school jerk – incredibly egotistical and mean-spirited. He bullied the nice kid relentlessly.
Thirty years later, we had a high school reunion… The kid that was bullied went on to become a police officer, a captain. The bully, ironically, became a high school principal… The bullied kid and the bully both were at the party. The bully approached the bullied kid and extended his hand, but the bullied kid (police captain) refused and he berated the bully (high school principal). “You were such an a**hole in high school! Such a jerk!” The bully, at that point, could have effusively apologized, but instead he pretended that the abuse had never happened. “Oh, c’mon! It was nothing!”
I like the scene in the original movie “Flatliners” when the Kiefer Sutherland character seeks out a black girl that he had bullied in middle school and attempts to apologize. At first, she pretends not to remember, but then she (as I recall) accepts his apology. That’s the way it should be. Own it.
From post 100–." How do the kids that are never picked last, that are usually picked early on, how do they learn these life skills that are so necessary for the ones always picked last to learn?"
At my 20th HS reunion that person was a personal trainer and owned a gym. 
Guessing he learned to put talent to good use. He was one of the nicest guys in the school too.
So obviously then, the personal trainer didn’t need to experience the wonderful value of abuse and rejection.
Sounds like way too many have been traumatized by something that should have been fun.
This is my rant and like others it goes beyond dodgeball…My memories are more along the lines of a stupid teacher taunting a kid to do something they were afraid to do–dive into the shallow end of the pool. I was there.
The girl took that dive as a sophomore and didn’t walk again until graduation when she took a couple steps out of her wheel chair.
I really learned something that day.
“So obviously then, the personal trainer didn’t need to experience the wonderful value of abuse and rejection”
Actually, he wasn’t the best in English class and the teacher often gave him a hard time but his wit and easy demeanor still made him the class favorite no matter what. Yeah, nobody ever dissed him.
As a kid I loved dodgeball. And I really like the movie of the same name.
I loved German dodge and shambattle and played at the summer day camp every summer for years. I was a pretty decent player. It was NOT PE and folks just chose their own teams and there was no ridicule that I recall.
Even when one manages to find some “positive” from an experience, it does not justify or ameliorate that experience. Some posters here are advocating for the benefits of outright bullying.
@whatisyourquest , perhaps the worst thing about that story is that the bullying principal is HIGHLY unlikely to be sympathetic or constructive in bullying situations at his school now. Good for the other guy for letting him have some reality therapy. Let’s hope it sank in after the fact.
I shudder to think how he has treated bullied kids in his school.
^You never know. Some people grow up. He may honestly not remember having been atrocious to the later police captain. We tend to remember hurts done to us in a way that someone who at the time saw it as “guys messing around” wouldn’t. It’s a much more salient experience for the former than the latter.
I know a guy who was the typical jock jerk all through elementary, middle and high school, and even into college (we went to the same schools). Take the worst of 80’s movie football jock stereotypes and that was him. We now live in the same community as adults and he’s a lovely man with a wife I love and nice (football playing) kids. I don’t know if he recognizes that he was an a-orifice in high school because we’ve never talked about it. We didn’t really run in the same crowd, and being a girl I was never a target of that group.
ETA: He and my husband coached soccer together and he was a kind and patient coach with all of them, even the kids who couldn’t kick a ball to save their lives.
If I ever cross paths with the kid who lived next door to me and tormented me on the bus and on the walk home from the bus stop throughout middle school, I won’t be shaking his hand, that’s for sure. He could be the “nicest” guy in the world now–though I doubt it–but that wouldn’t change how I feel. It takes an extraordinary lack of empathy to be that high-level cruel. I’m not interested in how he might or might not have changed.
@garland, I can understand that. I don’t think life demands that we forgive people who treated us horribly when we were kids.