Guess the speaker: “Physical education was not my favourite subject. I hated having to change into those stupid bloomers and when the bloomers finally disappeared, there were those ugly polyester shorts. I dreaded baseball because I was completely hopeless at it.
“I was a child who was easily embarrassed and stressed by new situations. In PE, I experienced embarrassment at my lack of skill in sports and stress when trying sports and skills that were new to me.
“With time I became more confident and began to excel in some areas, though I remained markedly awful at gymnastics and dance. Having PE almost every day kept me healthy and pushed me to overcome my shyness and embarrassment.”
Olympian Silken Laumann is talking in her excellent book Child’s Play (Rediscovering the Joy of Play in Our Families and Communities) about the dilemma of mandated physical education. Gym class is the source of painful childhood memories for many overweight and/or athletically challenged students, especially women.
Having listened to a Radio Noon call-in show about the subject I know that for some people, PE combined the worst of both psychological and physical torture, especially if you got a jock teacher who chose to embarrass you because you were missing the volleyball or the field hockey gene.
Despite the above, today is a red letter day for Ontario because mandated phys. ed. is back in elementary schools. Of course, in many buildings with enlightened administrators, it never really went away.
Anyone who works with kids regularly, or has been a parent, knows of the blissful benefits of exercise for children. A little running around takes the mickey out of so many kids, allows them to burn off all that excess energy and, most importantly, means that they focus much better on whatever task awaits them when they return to their desks.
Dr. Mark Tremblay of Active Healthy Kids Canada,(http://www.activehealthykids.ca/) which has been championing the return of phys. ed to schools, has been in Mississauga several times to speak to this issue. He was at St. Vincent de Paul in January 2004 when Premier Dalton McGuinty launched the Activ8 program.
Dr. Tremblay debunked some of the myths about mandatory phys. ed. Rather than damaging academic achievement by adding to the overcrowded curriculum, research strongly indicates that performance is enhanced, even when students have less time for formal studies, especially in math. “As you increase physical education in a classroom setting, the learning rate seems to proceed at a faster rate than if you don’t,” he said. Study after study has demonstrated the benefits of exercise in improving intellectual development and standard test scores.
Not only is getting the blood coursing through your veins good for kids, I’ll bet it’s good for teachers too.
There will always be some people for whom phys. ed is torment but the Ontario government is on the right track with this initiative.
They shouldn’t stop there either. They must train teachers for the job they’ve given them and make Phys. ed mandatory all the way through high school, not just in Grade 9.
“We need to understand that gym isn’t a luxury,” says Laumann, the first-ever recipient of the City’s highest award of citizen merit for her heroic efforts to overcome injury and win a bronze medal in Olympic rowing. “It is a time when kids are strengthening their bodies, developing motor skills and building the attitudes and habits that can lead to lifelong well-being.”