PE standards vary from sports to summer school

Last year, I wrote a piece on PE, and how it was unfair that students who participated in school sports still had to get a PE Credit. The general argument was that PE and Sports are different because PE has a curriculum and required elements of teaching, including being able to maintain a healthy lifestyle, etc.

I would be fine with this if: 1) There weren’t sports like Marching Band, JTOTC, and Dance that counted as a PE Credit, and 2) The Summer PE experience hadn’t been a complete failure and a waste of my time.

I took PE over the summer for $300  to get a full credit. My argument here is still going to stand that I am paying six times the fee to get the school year credit (50$), or the cost for one sport in order to get a credit(50$), which is simply too much.

Relating to the cost, is time. Since summer PE is one month for a credit with four-day hours, and sports are two-three month activities with one to two and a half hours of practice (not counting games), sports and summer PE are about equal and then it would be equal to the cost of a regular school year PE credit.      

But the main issue wasn’t the cost, because I can deal with extra cost as long as I can take extra classes. However, my experience this summer was one of the worst I have ever had. I’ve never been in an environment where the teachers seemed to care so little.

I would do nothing in between 20-30 minute activites and one session of notes. I know what you’re thinking. ‘You still took notes, didn’t you?’ This is a very loose definition. We took notes out of a packet, no teaching. And the notes weren’t on how to live a healthy lifestyle, as the guidelines would suggest, they were on Sports.

Here’s the real kicker, though. We got two grades: quizzes and participation.

Participation is nothing, because as long as you were standing up, you got full participation points.

Quizzes were also nothing because we got to use our notes on the quizzes. Yes, you read that right. We took notes out of a packet, and then we used those notes on our quizzes.

I know that PE is meant to be easy, and it’s a necessary evil and it is a good way to force kids to move, right?

The thing is, when we’re forced to do something, we are less likely to do it at all, do it well, or enjoy doing it.

My Cross Country Coach sends me articles on how to eat right. He tells me to get sleep, teaches me how to stretch in the right ways for the pains I get from running, and pushes me to work harder.

My PE coach told me that the packet was over there.

My main point here is that I was told that Sports can’t count as PE Credits because they don’t incorporate the informational aspect. Summer PE didn’t teach me anything, and instead of teaching me how to live healthily, it made me hate the idea of working out