I live in Illinois. A suburb of Chicago, to be exact.

I have to go to P.E. every day all 4 years of high school (Except for when I'm a sophmore. One semester is devoted to Health Ed.).

The other day someone said something about how in other states you do NOT have to take P.E every day of your high school career. Is this true? Why is that? Do any of you elder people have anything to say about it?

-a disgruntled niv

Back in the dark ages (a.k.a "The 90's") when I was in H.S., we had compulsory P.E. for the first two years, and then could elect to take "advanced P.E." (a.k.a. bowling, archery, and other miscellanious excuses to escape the campus) as juniors and seniors.

The two years that were compulsory were split 50/50 into Health and Gym. So, the total amount of compulsory P.E. I took in High School was 1 year. I elected to take summer gym my sophomore year, so I dodged the compulsory P.E. bullet during the school year, which was fine with me, because I had dance rehersal and tennis practice every damn day anyway. :)

In my school years I had an hour in the gymnasium twice a week at one school, and exercises plus sport, compulsory, every day at another. My feeling is that the individual knows how much exercise is good for him or her, and we are all different.

Pe. Freshman year. Pe. Three days a week. Health class two days a week. Swimming on Fridays.

Why would it be a problem?
Hating PE is unique to american nerds I think
Everyone loved it when I was in school, jocks, nerds, druggos and fat kids alike.
It was just like an extra lunch period, you play games. It's fantastic.

Ahh...P.E. One class where my fat ass was an excuse for being far below mediocre.

Liked it I did.

I wouldn't know about American P.E., but I only had PE 2 hours a week until fifteen, 1 hour a week until 17, and thereafter none. I'd have to agree with Lou in general, but that's probably 'cause I wasn't in the top group, where you were expected to know lots of tactics etc. - we just got to play a sport for an hour.

Swimming on Fridays was kinda enlightening. The boys and the girls would swim together and it was funny how there was always a certain group of girls that absolutely refused to swim. They knew how to swim but they were fat and ugly and I guess they somehow thought that swimming would highlight their disgusting nature. I imagine maybe one or two couldn't swim, but I doubt it. I know that most could swim. I'd seen them swim before. On occasion.
Instead of swimming they'd walk laps around the pool.
What fun. I never understood them. Who wouldn't want to swim? Even when it wasn't a free swim (which it usually wasn't) it was still better than walking laps around the pool.

Anyway. I was pretty much indifferent to pe. It was neither here nor there. Just something to do before lunch.

Anyone here know that kid that refuses to take a shower? Either ashamed of their tiny dick or maybe the lack of hair on their pubes or god knows why, but for whatever reason these little pansies refused to take off their clothes and take a shower. One in my class even tried having his mom write a note saying that he was allergic to water.

To water.

God, people can be so weakly disgusting sometimes. Or is it disgustingly weak? Maybe both.

Edit:

Or how about the hairy guy? Taping his asscheeks together with athletic tape. The screams and cries as he ripped it off later. God, kids are cruel.

And the towel fights.

Shit. PE was kinda fun, come to think of it.

And health was easy. We could always distract the coach by asking him about masturbation or the classification of schools. Two topics which he could pontificate on for hours on end.

I live in Illinois. A suburb of Chicago, to be exact.

I have to go to P.E. every day all 4 years of high school (Except for when I'm a sophmore. One semester is devoted to Health Ed.).

The other day someone said something about how in other states you do NOT have to take P.E every day of your high school career. Is this true? Why is that? Do any of you elder people have anything to say about it?

-a disgruntled niv


I live in Colorado. I only have to take P.E. 1 semester my freshman year, and no more after that. But you can take it as an elective though.

I went to a private Catholic high school (unfortunately). I took P.E. twice a week my freshman year. I didn't have to take it again, ever.

I hated gym with a passion. I think Jerry Seinfeld said it best:

Any day that you had gym was a weird school day. It started off kind of normal. You had English, Geometry, Social Studies, and then suddenly you're in Lord of the Flies for forty minutes.

You're hanging from a rope, you have hardly any clothes on. Teachers are yelling at you, "Where's your jockstrap ?" Kids are throwing dodge balls at you, snapping towels - you're trying to survive.

And then it's History, Science, Language. There's something off in the whole flow of that day.

When I was in highschool, I had to take it until my sophomore year. I had hated it so much that I took Navy ROTC to get out of it. That sucked too, but not as bad as gym.
The irony is, by my senior year I was an obsessive cyclist who rode at least 100 to 150 miles a week. In my twenties a standard day would be a thirty plus mile ride before work, then riding to the gym right after work, lifting weights for an hour and a half, then riding home and doing it again the next day.

Gym classes here are run much the same way as prisons are. And the mentality is much the same as well. Fitness is still a part of my life, but that is in spite of my years of physical education, not because of them. If I hadn't discovered cycling, gym class might have forever soured me on being physically active.

In Oregon, it's a graduation requirement to have one credit, or a full year, of P.E. At least one half of a credit, or a semester, must be taken Freshman year. Classes other than P.E. that satisfy the requirement include Weight Training and Self Defense (Ju Jitsu).

Since it's being mentioned in this thread as well, one also needs a credit of Health, one half (Health 1) taken during Freshman year, and the other half (Health 2) taken during Junior year.

Woden did I hate all of it! But it's all out of the way now, so I'm glad.

I went to a small, alternative highschool. We had gym classes, but they always clashed with my schedeule, so I just did shit out of class and got credit for it: mostly biking 100 mile weeks or rock climbing.

I still have to take a PE test to graduate from highschool, though.

Yeah we didn't get all that crap.
We litterally got the key to the sports shed and got to screw around for 40 minutes or so. Sometimes we'd even drag out the high jump mats and play wwf wrestling.
I think in the senior years there was an advanced one where people who did it had to do things like swim laps of the pool wearing full tracksuits, but all in all PE was just the uber-bludge subject.

In Alberta (hey, we're almost a state) we've got to do one semester of PE. However, the governments looking into making it a compulsery thing - something to do with too many fat kids. I used to hate p.e. when i was younger (i even took Dance to avoid it - but dance was fun. great way to meet girls) but then i started lifting weights. There are plenty of option courses like that to take around here.

well for the last4 years of highschool i had 2 2hours of PE every six days, yet now it is up to 4 Hours and it sucks ass, i really dont see any point in "PE" when we dont learn anything due to the teachers shitty techinque, and we dont have any fun because the teacher drags 5 minute lectures on into 2 hours

I'd give anything to just be allowed to walk laps. I'm not allowed to take walking days because I failed the Pacer test due to an asthma attack.

Now I have to get 14 CV (cardiovascular) days done before the end of the quarter. Or I fail.

But why Illinois?! Why are we stuck with gym EVERY F***ING DAY FOR ALL FOUR YEARS?!

Sorry, I'm very passionae about this issue.

-niv

I'm assuming that by 'PE' you're all talking about Physical education in grade school. If that's the case, then of course it should be mandatory. Ultimately (though moreso in Canada then in the States), we all pay the price for people who are sick.

Hey, i have to take Physical education every year of my highschool life. I enjoy P.E more than anything else, except science of course. And i've come to realise that without p.e, our whole population would be a bunch of fat pigs. I have 7 hours of p.e a week. And i love it lol

I went to high school in the 1950s. We had four P.E. classes every week. (All of our classes were like that. One "rotated" to a different hour every day to fill in the gap of the missing one. After a couple of weeks we could follow our schedule without looking at it. Would you kids today do that?) When I went to college P.E. was compulsory but you could take ROTC (Air Force) instead. I actually did that for half a year, but I decided it was even worse than P.E. so I signed up for "body building," something I really needed because I had never been athletic. Then in my sophomore year they abolished compulsory P.E. and I dropped it immediately.

Looking back, I'd say that P.E. in college was a good thing for me and I'm sorry I dropped out. It took about fifteen years for me to care enough about fitness to finally get in shape. But high school P.E. was horrible. "Lord of the Flies," yes. I wouldn't read that book until college, but that's what it was. (Today you read "Lord of the Flies" in high school and people say it's been dumbed down since my day???) The teachers were all wannabe coaches so they were totally unprepared and indifferent to the guys who didn't have the jock attitude, so I never got anything out of it at all.

As for childhood obesity, the seeds of obesity are planted long before they hit school. By that time it's been programmed in and there's nothing the school can do about it even if they tried.

However I think we're just near the far end of one of America's trademark cultural pendulum swings. Being fat is OK. It's a medical problem. Be proud of yourself. If you lose your self-esteem and go on a diet you're still allowed to eat most of your favorite high-fat foods.

This will blow over and the pendulum will overshoot the center in the other direction, but the amplitude will diminish and seek its center. Eventually people who are only somewhat overweight will not be judged. And no woman on Earth will have to cultivate a butt like a 12-year-old boy to fit the clothes that the gay fashion designers make for them.

Fraggle Rocker -

I did LOTF twice in HS . . . once in a 'normal' class, where it was pretty dumbed down, and once in an AP class where it was great!

I've had a couple of teachers who tried to run the class like a team (this is what they mean when they say don't set yourself up for faliure!) but on the other hand I've had some really great PE teachers who were just there to have fun. And then i took weight training and wound up with a 6'5" ex-Marine drill sergant. His name was Richard, so one day a buddy of mine called him 'dick'. He made the class run stairs for teh rest of the period. Ten minute into it, he decided that we weren't going fast enough, so he chased us.

That all being said, i love the fitness part of PE, but it pisses me (adn apperently everyone else) off that meatheads excell during PE.

at least i am safe in the knowledge that im pulling of 85% in PE, although it is my lowest scoring subject only 1 out of 8 unit satndards are physical. i have yet to get below a 90% test score in any other subject

I'm not against fitness, I know it's great. I just don't get why most other states don't make it as mandatory as it is where I go to school. Is it cause they're breeding us to be farm laborers? :eek:

Hey, it'll keep down obesity levels a bit.
Here in wales Yr10s that didn't take PE have 2 hours of PE a forthnight, and there is a lot of fat people around here. Next time I'm in school I'll count the fat people I see. I can think of 6 off the top of my head. That said, the school canteen could do more. They could stop serving chips and burgers and hot dogs, but then people would only have baguettes filled with curry. We can't win. School food is teh su><0r.

Here in Alabama you got two choices. One semester of PE to graduate or one semester of band. They count as the same thing. Being in the drumline, Ive never taken a day of PE since the 8th. grade.

I started School at the age of four and a half and was first put into a class called 'reception' The teacher was miss Wallace. We had in those days what was called 'Music and movement' and we had to pretent to be trees and stuff. to this old biddy singing on the radio.
We also had to do this in black shorts and white t shirt.
One day I forgot to bring this kit in to school and kicking and screaming was forced to strip down to my underwear in front of the whole class, and carry on with the lesson.
I'm British and therefore not one for therapy but just thinking about this time makes me think about it!

Ever since that day I've had a morbid hatred of anything physical and competitive.

Fortunately I'm naturally slight :) There is a special place in hell for Miss Wallace and I hope she roasts there for all time!

That said I love swimming :D

my highskool we have to take pe one smester as a freshman and freshman health and then take oen more smester of pe thru out our 4 yrs and as a Jr. we have to take Jr healt and thats all.. i think its good to have to take pe makes it so peopel are healthyer and not obeases