Totally agree that life only got better with every year past first grade!
HS reunions are fascinating! I have helped organise all of them just to make sure they happen (we were a tiny school with a graduating class of 34 or so). It is amazing how much people mellow out once they have to strike out on their own and have to develop new social niches and personalities. It was noticeable after 5 years already. I tend to be told that I am one of the few who appear to have materially changed in personality - one said: “wow, you’re totally nice, I never knew!” I promise I never bullied anyone…I was merely the resident über-geek, socially awkward and usually overlooked, merely respected. Maybe having really good friends, good marriages, kids, basically being happy, really changes you the most for the better.
In line with post #151, D said when she had some pretty miserable times, she would fondly recall idyllic preschool and her happy home life and soldier on. She also knew that I had a very miserable time from 2nd-6th grades but made lifetime GFs in middle school.
Shortly after she started HS, she told me that she thought she had met some of her lifetime friends, like the ones we as a family have been close to for decades that I met in middle school, “forever friends.” So far they’re all still pretty close and they graduated from HS nearly a decade ago.
Back to the PE point, I think @lololu really nailed it. It is meant to be education, NOT organised sports, but the teachers who end up doing it probably were the ones who loved those and excelled in them. Jocks looking out for jocks again.
What irks me is that where I live at least, becoming a PE teacher is a 4- 5 year program up to masters level and another two years of training with experienced teachers on the job, and they are STILL not able to manage to overcome their inner jock and actually educate, as opposed to coaching those they deem worthy and bully the rest.
I had a friend who struggled in law school, former track star who loved supporting all his friends at anything athletic and couldn’t walk through a forest without waxing lyrical about how well the ground was suited for running practice. I asked why, if he hated law school so much, he didn’t switch to PE. He said that having to motivate kids who were poor at Sports and hated it day in day out would drive him nuts, so he’d make a horrible teacher.
I wish others showed this much insight.
Elementary was uneven for me–sometimes okay, sometimes dreadful. Junior high was unredeemably bad. High school was much better. I mostly ghosted my way through because we were on double session and I worked all the time I wasn’t there, so no one knew me until senior year, when I finally made friends with the lit magazine crew.
When I was 13 I wrote in my journal, “There is nothing crueler than a 13 year old girl.” From what I saw when my daughters were in middle school I think I got it right.
" He said that having to motivate kids who were poor at Sports and hated it day in day out would drive him nuts, so he’d make a horrible teacher." (Good for him but if he hates law he won’t be a good lawyer either…)
I would have been easily motivated to do sports if there wasn’t some over expectation by a PE teacher that I had to be really good at it from the start to be worth their time of day. That very attitude by an authority figure leads to sanctioned bullying.
I don’t remember middle school as being horrible at all. I went to an all-boys school at the time, and 8th grade (Second Form, the oldest kids in middle school) was a lot better than Third Form (the youngest kids in high school). It wasn’t bad for my kids, either. Their school had a really gifted middle school principal who spent a great deal of time, effort, and thought on creating a nurturing social environment for 12-14 year-olds. When I came into contact with him for the first time, I was outraged at the ratio of what I considered psychobabble to focus on core academics, but by the time my oldest child was in 8th grade, the core academics were going fine, and I was a raging fan of the principal for his ability to create a world in which cruelty among tween-age girls was practically unknown.
I am ambivalent about the main message of this thread. I was the geeky academic kid who was terrible at sports, always the last one picked and the first one out, sometimes with tears in my eyes. It was easy (and apparently funny) to get a rise out of me, so people did that. Yes, it was bullying. But I was well aware that I was in a culture of mens sana in corpore sano, and that academic kids who tried to get out of PE or who hid in the group shower were seen as morally tainted and incomplete. I acquired status with teachers and administrators at least by taking my dodge-ball lumps as long as I was trying hard.
And it was essentially part of the social deal that there were all these kids whom I beat up in the classroom – not on purpose, just by being there and outperforming them every day – so it was right and just that I had to spend time on their turf, where they ran circles around me and showed me up as incompetent. I admired them and respected them there, which let them resent me less the rest of the time. It’s not like that made us best friends, but it made us people who acknowledged one another, which was a good thing.
At our 30th high school reunion, TWO bullies came up to me separately and told me how much they had admired me in school! One said that he made honor roll only one time, in seventh grade. He remembers going up on stage, thinking, “Wow, I’m on stage with MLH!” That was a surreal experience. I probably should have said something about how horribly they’d treated me, but I didn’t.
I DID get a lot of satisfaction out of the fact that I was a social butterfly at the function - I’m not a wallflower anymore. On the other hand, our former quarterback, who actually played with the Toronto Blue Jays when they won the World Series, stayed off to himself and hardly talked to anyone. Ha!
As someone who wasn’t very tall in early adolescence, or very physically tough, I don’t have much regard for those who pick on others, or who gratuitously abuse those weaker or less able. I especially don’t think much of adults who encourage it without seeing it for what it is.
One thing I’ve decided over the years of observing is that the best coaches, teachers, and managers are the ones who cause their charges to believe that they can become better–even really good!-- at things. The most motivating thing is the vision that you can become great at something. It causes you to be engaged and energetic, and to work long and hard. The worst group of coaches, teachers, and managers (maybe I should throw parents in here too) are the ones whose overriding message is that you are deeply flawed, and can only become half-decent by working your tail off, and doing exactly as they say. “Here’s what’s wrong with you today”.
@gouf78 no quibbles there. He did drop out eventually to become an occupational therapist. We are not in touch anymore but last I heard he was treating adult patients teaching life skills, so no exposure to unathletic kids.
I honestly never had a problem with any of the PE and/or physical stuff. But just to bring it up I was forced to “sing” and try toplay an instrument even though I have ZERO musical talent. I think everyone faces their own version of being forced to have thing thrown at them. For me standing up, even in a group and singing is far far worse than getting hit with a ball where you can at least try to protect yourself. Guess it really does depend on your own experience. And I have worked in jobs where getting publicly humiliated and berated is absolutely part of the deal, FWIW.
I want to come to the defense of PE teachers a little. According to a career psychologist I know, there are way more men who are the huggy/everyone gets along types who head into PE than the militaristic ex-jocks. My PE teachers were outstanding but they could only do so much.
It’s the opposite for women in the profession. They tend to be the aggressive ex-jocks.
On another point, a lot of the changes in children’s activities have not helped the corpore sano half of the saying. When we did pull-ups in sixth grade only one of 25 boys could not do any. We were all embarrassed for him. He was a good athlete but grew early. When S1’s PE class did pull-ups, only three of the 25 co-ed students could do even one.
Remembering junior high and high school PE there absolutely was the picking of teams, same kids picked last, etc. and everyone on both sides of the equation knew that people were “uncomfortable” being picked last but it was the world we lived in and in a way it did teach that “hard lesson”. However the school day did not start and end with PE.
I also remember geometry class where everyone had to write out and explain proofs, on the board, in front of the class. This was uncomfortable for me (and I was good at geometry) so I can only imagine the embarrassment many of those “jocks” felt, again a “hard lesson” was learned by those students.
Two things stand out to me where I learned that “hard lesson” in school and was embarrassed and humiliated and neither came in the gym. The first was junior high chorus, a mandated class. The teacher decided that each person would have a solo at some point in a performance. I can not sing or carry a tune and was mortified, as were my parents having to sit there while their friends and neighbors watched me embarrass myself. It was only about 3 lines in a popular song but it was just as unnecessary as picking teams in PE and much more public.
The second, also in junior high, was art class, also mandated. Each project was displayed throughout the school and obviously we had to sign our work. I have no artistic ability and my drawings, paintings, etc. looked very preschoolish. The fact that all of my peers, school visitors (parents of friends), and other teachers could see how inept I was, was mortifying. Both of these had very public elements to them rather than the safety of just the PE class.
To get back to the original post, are these really life lessons that need to be learned? I vote yes. We all come upon situations in life where we are not comfortable, can not perform to the level of others, etc. and do not have the opportunity to opt out of the activity. Be it public speaking at work, designing a presentation, being picked from a public group for a special project (or being left out)etc. we all have to do these things and learning how to cope with these uncomfortable situations is critical. Gaining that ability early has huge benefits, as opposed to being 25 years old in your first job and having that be your first humiliation, in a real meaningful environment.
“To get back to the original post, are these really life lessons that need to be learned? I vote yes. We all come upon situations in life where we are not comfortable, can not perform to the level of others, etc. and do not have the opportunity to opt out of the activity.”
I vote NO. I especially disagree on the opting out part. As an adult you have choices even if they aren’t easy ones.
If you want to do public speaking and want (NEED) to pursue it, you go to toastmasters to improve your skill.
If you can’t sing and need to–go take some private voice lessons. If you still can’t carry a tune–quit–go find something you can do.
If you find yourself in a job that you hate because it has a ton of elements that make life and you crazy–find another job that suits your abilities and style. Maybe you hate all your co-workers–you can choose to leave and search for a better working environment (many of us here have done exactly that). Not easy but you CAN.
Can’t stand that toxic person in your life? Erase them essentially from your life.
We can “fire” our boss or a toxic person. A kid can’t “fire” their teacher(s) (although many parents essentially do it for them by transferring their kids out).
The GOOD lesson you learn as an adult is that you DO have options. As soon as you start college the options appear for a student–drop the class, get a new professor, change your major. Find something at which you are good and go after it. No wonder so many bullied kids loved college and bloomed. You finally have some semblance of control.
The HARD lesson is that the options often require work and nobody is handing it to you. But YOU decide if the goal is worth the effort (extra study, tutoring, lessons, long practice, " powering through", extra job for extra dough) But the final choice remains yours.
Kids don’t get those options or any choice usually.
Did you make sure your kids got an appropriate dose of these lessons growing up, in the event that they were not in any of these situations you are revering?
I’m not saying it is easy being a junior high/high school student, there are plenty of cringe worthy situations everyone faces. What I am saying is that no one has the monopoly on being embarrassed/humiliated and there is something to be learned from each situation. I am also saying that to make PE a “safe space” without these difficult situations while not doing the same in the more traditional academic environments places one subset of students “rights” above other students.
In my examples from above, if PE were to change would they also change Geometry so that students did not have to present proofs in front of the class? Would they change 7th grade chorus so those that can’t sing don’t have to? Make art class anonymous so no one knows who draws like a 5 year old?
As easy as it is for you to tell those that can’t sing to get lessons, or don’t like to speak publicly to go to toastmasters it is just as easy to tell the unathletic to see a private trainer/coach to get better. There is no need for any of that, we all have things that are more difficult than others that we will be presented with, it is better to learn to accept our inabilities gracefully (whatever they are) than to ban those items altogether.
Almost every post on this thread has been about how the “jock mentality” has ruined the junior/senior high school experience for the academic. I’m just trying to point out that every coin has 2 sides and the “high performing student mentality” can have the same affect on other students but no one apparently wants to see that side of the coin. I again vote that there are life lessons to be learned by everyone and that it is much better to learn them in a more or less safe school environment than in the less forgiving “real world”.
I have no problem with PE. Especially a PE class that teaches life time fitness. I’m okay with playing a bunch of sports I’m no good at. Though I did like that my high school had choices - so after trying out tennis, field hockey and lacrosse, I eventually settled on doing modern dance as my sport. But I didn’t learn everything from having my ears ring from dodge ball. That game is cruel.
These are two very different things - one thing is doing worse than others, realizing it yourself but having a path to improvement, and another is doing worse than others and having this pointed out in a mean and/or humiliating way.
if you’re getting hit in the face in dodgeball, clearly you’re playing it wrong. Stand in the way back where half the throws will barely reach you. Unless of course you’re playing this girl…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8StxnSe1cCM
“In my examples from above, if PE were to change would they also change Geometry so that students did not have to present proofs in front of the class? Would they change 7th grade chorus so those that can’t sing don’t have to? Make art class anonymous so no one knows who draws like a 5 year old?”
YES, to all of those examples. I would change them all.
If you can’t do the Geometry proof there isn’t a need to prove to everybody that you can’t do it. You can LEARN from someone else so let the brave one tackle it at the board. I didn’t say the “best”, I said the “brave one”.
I will say that given the right circumstances and a willing “victim” that a great teacher will coach someone to do better which inspires everyone…(I did have a math teacher like that–it was never about the person or their lack of ability–it was ALWAYS about how to solve the problem.)
I don’t know anywhere presently that signs up kids to sing in front of the class when they can’t or don’t want to, although I don’t doubt your story in the least. No, I wouldn’t do that to any kid.
I would encourage music appreciation in a lot of different forms though. And if I had a great singer in my class or even not the best singer, I’d encourage applause.
We signed our art on the back! But if you wanted to plaster your name on the front? Go for it!