Consider the likelihood of the following scenario:You are twenty-five years old: college medical student by day, in search of a job by night. It's Friday morning - the very beginning of a productive weekend - and you have a job interview at St. Jude's Children's Hospital. You are nervous, excited, perhaps a little nauseous as you step inside the building. You feel small as the walls envelope you. You feel big in your brand new suit, ready to take on the harsh reality of suffering and sorrow, or so you think. The interview goes less than smoothly when your now not-so-potential boss calls you out on using a few too many fallacies in your discourse. Pale from embarrassment you slouch in your chair and hope for invisibility; intentions were good but perhaps relying on sentimentality is not the way to go. Your interviewer shakes your hand and says, We'll call, but you think in your head, You won't. A last minute question is asked, last chance to regain some dignity. Somehow, you say the right thing. Your brain spills some answer about the regeneration of cells in the human body and you're in. He hires you on the spot, gives you a position you weren't even applying for, a much better position than the one you were applying for. You think to yourself, If it wasn't for that four years of gym in high school I would have never gotten my dream job.
Many of the events created in the above scenario are quite plausible. I'm sure somewhere there must have been a med student - perhaps not exactly 25 years old - applying for a job at some well known and influential hospital. Perhaps their interview didn't go well, not all do. Perhaps there was one redeeming question that caused them to get their job. the probability of this is low, but it is not a complete stretch. The overstretching occurs in the last sentence. How possible is it that someone will utter those words after high school? How relevant is Physical Education to its students' futures? Does it serve a purpose besides being a 40 minute slot filler? In most cases, the answers to these questions are negative. Because most students learn absolutely nothing of use in gym class,they should not be required to take all four years of Physical Education in high school.
Gym class is, in all honesty, a joke. Students walk into the locker rooms, most of them late, and if they are there before the bell, they take their time getting changed. Eventually, the teacher is fed up with waiting, marches in and herds them out. Amount of time wasted: approximately 6 minutes. As soon as all (or most of) the students gather in the designated area of their class, the teacher stumbles through the process of attendance. The class is dispersed. Girls are standing around talking about the latest gossip or the latest test they bombed. No one is where they are assigned to be. Teacher does nothing to direct or discipline them. Amount of time wasted: approximately 5 minutes. Finally, the class begins. The teacher attempts to achieve full participation in warm ups. Participation usually reaches a high of 5 out of 40 students actually trying. Amount of time wasted: about 9 minutes. Before you know it, you have 20 minutes left in the period, not including the time you need to change back into your regular school clothes. You have worked out enough to break a sweat, but that's about it. If gym classes were organized more efficiently and had a more rigorous curriculum more students would at least be able to appreciate and understand the reason behind the class.
Because the classes are run the way they are, students view gym negatively and perhaps may take it a step further and view all types of exercise negatively. If one does not have experience in team sports and/or individual activities it is easy to get the wrong impression of this concept. Even the ones that do participate in sports find gym to be a waste of time, especially because they have an idea of what real exercise is and how it is achieved. Would it not, then, be a wise decision to allow students to opt out of a gym class for perhaps, an AP class they've always wanted to take but could never fit into the schedule, an elective that will challenge them intellectually or creatively, even a Study Hall to get some work done.
Education is meant to prepare students for their aspirations. Perhaps my earlier scenario could be true if the man were to say he learned the information thanks to AP Biology. We'll never really know. It is easy to create scenarios and manipulate them to prove a point. But as a high school senior, taking her fourth year of gym, I can confidently say that the other evidence speaks for itself. The idea of physical education is appealing and reasonable, but its application in the school system is less than desirable. Students should have the option of taking other, more challenging classes instead of gym. Give us knowledge or give us death!
