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Comment by bittermang | Hacker News Reader

I think the worst thing about gym is that I didn't learn anything there.

I didn't learn about calories, or healthy eating. I didn't learn about basic cardio, why it's good for you, or how often to do it. I didn't learn about how to build muscle, what reps or sets were.

Gym amounts to mindless busywork. Do stuff or you get an F. It could serve as a foundation of knowledge to set yourself up for healthy habits for the rest of your life. Instead, it has the opposite effect of training you to hate fitness.

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That's because personal health & fitness is treated as a completely personal endevour in society, much like most of what we call "parenting," at least in most parts of the US. You could design the perfect curriculum based around teaching holistic personal health habits at specific age-appropriate levels, but the first time the fat kid goes home and says "hey maybe we shouldn't have mac N cheese or casserole for the 4th night this week" you get the fat parents making a fuss over their kid making them feel bad or just for questioning them at all.

"School" is a product that must be sold to the parents, the people "signing the checks" with their local tax money. It's kinda like enterprise software. The users are not the people making purchasing decisions, so you're always going to end up with a bad incentive structure for the quality of life of end-users (students) if the decision-makers aren't fully aligned with the users. How many fat parents are going to be on board with the school teaching their fat child a healthier lifestyle?

Right now, it appears that parents want a product that gives them the _feeling_ of caring about their child's long-term health habits, without them personally needing to make any changes to their lifestyle or parenting style.

It can go beyond just not learning anything, and into learning negative habits. For me "Gym" was the most dreaded part of my life as a young person, and was one of the few things in school I really hated. I was generally out of shape, and have some issues with my vision. Given that, all gym taught me was how to handle being belittled and insulted both by my school peers and by adults in authority roles, and I learned that I should avoid situations involving exercising and sports unless I wanted to be subjected to that. It's taken many years, and my need to deal with resulting health problems, for me to try to un-learn all that.

What really bothers me is that I actually enjoy weight lifting and a number of solo cardio exercises (rowing machine, exercise bikes, swimming laps). I knew this when I was young too. But with only a few-weeks-a-year exception, these were not a regular part of "gym". I feel like these kind of activities are far better to learn, as the can provide a life-long basis for regular exercise, and should be an all-the-time option. Combine that with the other health focused skills you mention, and you're going to have much better life-long outcomes then you will get by yelling at the fat kid who can't do a hand-stand.

It seems to be getting worse. At least it used to be "do something with physical activity." You might do half-assed basketball or running or something. Now, at least in the part of California I was formerly in, they were not able to require kids to actually do anything. Kid wants to stand around? Ok, go for it. Then you toss in required testing and metrics, and now gym (aka P.E.) has written tests on stuff. Not sure what stuff as I stopped paying attention.

I gained a deep, searing hatred of team sports due to a combination of forced participation and being a physically awkward teen in the middle of an epic growth spurt. Being graded on ones ability to complete a mile within a certain time constraint, as opposed to being graded on effort, is utter madness. The whole thing put me off physical activity for most of my adult life. Only in the last couple of years have I started exercising again, but on my own terms and for my own reasons.

There is a huge difference between "because you have to" and "because I want to".

> Being graded on ones ability to complete a mile within a certain time constraint, as opposed to being graded on effort, is utter madness

How is that different from being graded in other subjects in school? You don't get an A in calculus because you tried to answer the question, you get a grade based on how good you answer the question.

This concept also applies to most things in adult life living in modern society. Results matter. You don't get a Series-A-for-effort in business.

Yes, you do. Let me just say the word "Color". Well, except it's not effort, it's connections.

Ok, you got me on the connections part. Not sure what you mean by "Color" though, I must be out of the loop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs

If you think about it - you had to do pretty well in social/communication “subject” to earn those connections. Just showing an effort to get connections without actually providing any value will lead you nowhere as well

You don't get picked on by your teammates for getting a B or a C in calculus, usually (there are contexts where it happens, but it's much much rarer).

You typically don't get full marks in calculus for a correct answer with no working shown, and an incorrect answer due to a minor mistake where the working/method is correct generally gets a substantial portion of the marks.

The equivalent would be grading the running technique, pacing etc.

There's the slight difference that calculus does not depend on your current hormonal situation, while sports does.

Growth spurts wreak havoc on coordination ability, and it's entirely beyond the person's control.

(We're not even talking about the fact that you don't get a grade based on how well you answer the question in calculus, either. You get graded on understanding, and steps involved, even if you get the wrong answer. Or at least you get graded that way in sane school systems)

> calculus does not depend on your current hormonal situation

What if your testosterone wants you to run, jump and play with your friends instead of sitting and reading calculus books?

This is a good part of the reason girls tend to do better in school than boys. I don't know if there's a great answer; if you don't find effective coping strategies then you will suffer.

Calculus isn't a required course and as such has less of a pressure to "pass everyone". You don't get an A in pre-algebra either just for trying, but since everyone has to take it if you're trying then you're unlikely to get held back on that class even if most of your answers are wrong.

I'm fine with coaches grading on performance. It's a proxy for effort + talent like a lot of things, and as non-geniuses know effort extends outside the classroom proportional to your talent. If you can't even get a 20 minute mile, you're going to have to put in more effort outside the classroom, which might involve refusing to eat 100% of mom's delicious huge dinner or doing "exercise studies" (i.e. working out outside of class).

Whether gym class should be required is another discussion. I don't think it should be (and that easily filters out most people complaining about being graded for performance anyway) and it's a pretty poor attempt at managing rising obesity rates.

I was giving calculus just as an example, I was referring to a general subject in school where you have to study and do your homework in order to get good grades. I am pretty sure most of those who got low grades in gym classes did not bother to do any "homework" to make themselves prepared to the next class (e.g. practice catching the ball, do pull ups etc). It's the same with kids who had bad grades at subjects that required thinking, they did not bother to do their homework and were not really interested in reading, studying etc...You should look at the issue from both perspectives

I would think that the ultimate objective with physical education is to engender in kids a lifelong fitness habit. Given that once you leave school there really isn't much nowadays forcing people to get regular exercise, the only thing that really matters is that it's fun and rewarding.

I don't know why you'd grade kids at all on anything but their participation. Punishing a kid for being weak or poorly coordinated serves only to make them resent getting exercise.

Because there are some factors that are simply out of ones control that affect athletic ability. Should students also be graded on how much weight they can lift? How flexible they are? How far they can hit a softball? Is it fair to let that affect their GPA in districts such as mine where three years of PE (or a team sport) were a graduation requirement?

Back to the time constraint. Some teachers would FAIL students who were consistently unable to complete a mile in under 10 minutes. Effort was irrelevant. I wasn't a heavy kid, but routinely crossed the finish line bright red, gasping for breath, and light headed.

So yes, putting your student's future academic and career prospects in danger due to lower than "average" athletic ability is utter madness.

It's been 25+ years since Ive been subjected to PE and I dont remember it being graded on ability, but more on participation and effort. It was really hard to not get an A. You basically had to refuse to even attempt the day's activity to fail.

Anecdotally, PE in US wasn't worse, compared to Japan. (Where I have been for first 6.75 of school.)

Grading in Japan was fairly black and white; whether you can do certain thing or not. It sucked even worse being thrown into some team sports with no briefing on rules.

At PE classes in US, where I spent most of middle and all the high school, I think the problem was more of how compatible I was with the teacher. Some graded very strictly on the outcome (which sucked), but some other graded on efforts (which was more reasonable) -- some had good balance while others were worse.

Problem of physical fitness is that there are quite a bit of genetic that plays huge role. You can only improve your athletic ability so much to meet some standard. Thus, unless you are training for the Olympics, it really should be graded based on how much you improve over time rather than whether you can reach certain goal that may be unrealistic to some.

>it really should be graded based on how much you improve over time

This is really just grading on how much courage you have to sandbag in the first lesson.

Maybe that's fine. Still better than forcing students to go for practically unattainable standard. But then, maybe it's just as good as grading them based on efforts...

> it really should be graded based on how much you improve over time rather than whether you can reach certain goal

Agreed. After my first year of regular P.E. I signed up for a class focused entirely on strength and fitness. No team sports. Two days on the track, three days in the weight room. Physically it was a far more demanding class, but it was taught by a far more reasonable teacher. Despite being among the slowest when it came to running the mile, I still received an A for showing effort and improvement.

I have a lot of complaints about the rural Michigan school I went to, but we learned all those things in middle school PE.

Yeah, same here in WI.

Same in rural (or “exurban,” really, especially by the time I finished high school in 2005) Minnesota.

I went to school in the north bay area, slightly rural. PE taught all of those things, the teachers were great at teaching proper form in weightlifting, the mile "times" required were easy for anyone who didn't walk. I really am not understanding why every comment but yours seems to think PE is possibly the worst experience of their entire education.

In my high school, gym was a practical course. We could even elect to be on a team, practice a real sport and not be in the “general” fitness class.

We also had a theoretical “health” course where you learn about healthy eating, calories, etc.

But in all honesty there is a disconnect between the theoretical and practical, no continuity whatsoever between the curriculums. Not like my teenage self would have listened anyway...

I dunno I wasn't a big fan of gym but in high school I remember learning the rules to most of the major(and weird obscure) sports played here, how to stretch, how to use weight lifting equipment, how to dance and general stuff about fitness. There wasn't really any testing though. You pretty much passed as long as you showed up and participated.

I fucking hated the mile and half run though....

I liked gym when it was an every day sort of thing, and we only did the mile run once a week (though you were docked points if you walked and didn't sprint for the final section). Then came 9th grade at a different school that was already doing A/B days (to match high school -- for me 7-9 was Jr High) and we did a mile run every class -- except unlike my 7th/8th grade counterparts the coach didn't care if you walked most of it. It was also funny that at this school no one wanted to shower after, I wondered if that's because they weren't basically forced to in 7th/8th grade like I was at the other school and so never learned to get over any embarrassment.

Anyway I rather liked gym class before 9th grade, mindless as it was, after that I took one of your hybrid health education + mild exercise courses (mile run every month? could walk the whole thing if you wanted) in 10th grade that did nothing for either (lol food pyramid -- a subject also repeated during a cooking class and a general health sciences class) and fulfilled my final PE requirement with an online bowling class during my final term that required (with no verification) about 10 games and scores to be submitted with the testing which I did in one or two sessions.

It always irked me that in gym you were asked to do things without any instruction. Kick this ball, get a grade.

But then it occurred to me that is how most kids felt with maths. Ie. Mindless busywork to set you up for a lifetime hating it.

Exactly. It's called Physical Education most often, but there's very little eduction involved. There could be, and that would have made it more accessible for me--I'm thinking weight lifting and mobility paired with kinesiology and anatomy--what a fantastic class that would be. Instead it was half-assed team sports, punctuated with the occasional fitness test, which we were never prepped for. Oh, you want to test how many pull-ups I can do now? Because this is the first time I'm doing pull-ups this year ...

"These 2 weeks we're doing volleyball"

"I don't wanna play volleyball, can I get some guys and we'll play floor hockey instead?"

"NO"

Well, fuck gym I guess.

"These two weeks we're doing trigonometry"

"I don't wanna learn trig, can I get some guys and we'll do algebra instead?"

"NO"

...et cetra

Except the goal of gym is to get kids active.

And one of the methods to do that is to expose kids to a variety of sports so that they'll hopefully find one they like. You might not like volleyball but for someone else in the class that forced participation might be the start of a lifelong love of it.

Also, I'm glad I learned the basics of tennis, soccer, baseball, flag football, volleyball, table tennis, badminton, archery, and so much more in school. I don't play any of them frequently, but when they do come up (like as a social activity at a company offsite, or a leisure activity when vacationing with friends), it's nice to be able to actually do them.

Badminton is fun.

2 weeks of badminton. 2 weeks of hockey. 10 weeks of boring shit I have no interest in and don't participate except to avoid an F.

And thus the reason I even enjoyed badminton. I thought it was dumb and I'd hate it. Turns out it was fun. Probably haven't played it since high school though... All well. Maybe when I have kids, lol!

And most likely they didn't even teach you the rules.

We played football, not to an insane degree, but I always found it weird that they assumed everyone knew the rules.

Personally I don't think gym and music should exist at part of the school day, at least not in larger cities. Instead it should be required that everyone takes lessons in at least one instrument, and practice at least one organised sport after school. Then children are free to pick something they care about. Any fees should be paid by the city or government.

This would be nice in theory, but most organized sports are seasonal with the majority occurring over the summer break. They'd need to subsidize for year long programs, and that doesn't seem financially feasible.

Also, certain sports cost more than others, so certain families getting more money because their child picked a more expensive sport doesn't seem fair.

I grew up in Australia where it was assumed that everyone automatically knew the rules to every sport. I fumbled my way through cricket and soccer for years. I tried finding books in the library that would teach me the rules, but couldn’t. Still don’t know how to play either of them.

My middle school class had so many menaces that the gym teacher normally just let us play what we wanted as long as everyone who wanted to play could.

This normally devolved into some quantity of boys playing basketball and most of the girls reading on the side.

You did learn - or, you could have. You learned how to run, how to endure being sweaty and hot, how to jump, etc. Many athletic abilities are learned. You can tell someone with a modicum of physical training from a novice easily - even decades after any learning.

I learned how to handle being belittled and insulted both by my school peers and by adults in authority roles, and learned that I should avoid situations involving exercising and sports unless I wanted to be subjected to that. It's taken many years, and my need to deal with resulting health problems, for me to try to un-learn these "athletic abilities."

Just because "gym" could provide valuable life skills, does not mean it does in the form it currently takes in many schools.

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