It's bound to be days like tomorrow, physical education final test. The idea of getting kids out of the classroom each and every week to exercise their bodies is a good, or even noble, idea; but in practice, it had become some kind of a nightmare for me. The reason: I suck at PE, badly. As much as I'm concerned, I could bear with team sports because the attention will be on someone else. In such circumstances, I don't mind being "ignored" at all. On the other hand, I'm totally pwnd in individual sports, especially in and almost specific to floor exercises. And it makes me question the saying that goes "mens sana in corpore sano".
As a background, I never had the interest in forward and backward rolls, handstand, headstand, and such. I really had a hard time doing these stuffs: I wasn't able to do a forward roll until I was like in 4th grade. Fortunately, the overall success rate of hand stand among students is low, so I didn't make a fool of myself in that area. But in the end, every floor exercise session, like many other sports, results in public humiliation on my expense. Nevertheless, I'd like to thank my PE coaches for all this time, from elementary school to high school, for their understanding and being extra patient with me. I just realized that they had to frustratingly endure my failings year after year with no improvement.
Back to the problem (but never "back to the laptop", Tukul is waaay overrated), I never grasp the idea of how doing rolls will lead to a healthy body and therefore to a sound mind. Does a sound mind dwell in a frequently twisted body? I've seen sick people with more sanity than our government. Don't even mention that "someday it'll be useful". Unless you're Jackie Chan, gymnastics is very rarely, if ever, used in real life. Get real, have you ever used any of those moves to get through an obstacle? Normal people find a way around obstacles, no need to get all stuntman-ish. Until this day, obviously I've never been in a situation that requires folding my body like a Chinese acrobat. To me, PE is basically a chance to escape the classroom and enjoy a friendly chat or two or many with others.
Please note that I'm not saying that PE is useless: the benefits of sports are proven, there's no denying that. I'm just making my point that in the current system, PE is not even close to reaching its ideal purpose of improving our health. PE will only do so if it is made as flexible as an elastic gymnast. To each his/her own, that should've been the principle. Let students pick what they want to do: football, basketball, softball, gymnastics, or anything under the sun. It'll make PE interesting and unnightmare-ish, which will then increase participation in PE. There's no real importance of taking scores in PE, lest it'll be a burden. I'm fed up with the comparisons with other students.
I'm all for physical and mental health, but not for the exhaustion -and humiliation- PE causes.
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