Why do you think that physical education is suffering during a time when fitness and sport are booming?

Question

Why do you think that physical education is suffering during a time when fitness and sport are booming?

Answer 1

Because sport is being taught in times which are termed as physical education. Also fitness is mainly booming among the older teen's and adult's whereas the children are not being taught fitness stuff (which is basically what PE is) at school. They are however doing activities outside of school which are sports which they see as fun.

Another problem is that most students don't like PE mainly because of the activities they are doing or the teachers

Answer 2

In the Atlanta area, many schools do not have the money in the budget to have PE or music classes.  On the other hand, many schools do not have the space due to school overcrowding. Personally, I wish every school had PE more than once or twice a week (depending on the school and school district).  

Everything boils down to the NCLB Act.  They are too worried about getting funding and teaching to the test than they are worried about overweight and unhealthy children in my opinion.

So sad.

Answer 3

It's not an area that is tested.  No testing results in the paper mean that it is on the educational back burner.  Parents aren't demanding it either.  One of the reasons they scaled back on it years ago was the overcrowding in schools required PE space to be used as classroom space.  Furthermore, it is often difficult to find physical education teachers.  The courses required for physical education certification are not easy - kinesology, advanced biology and chemistry, etc.  Students who are successful in these fields often pursue higher paying medical degrees.

Answer 4

I think as the school day gets shorter (my kids go 7:30-1:40) they schools do not have enough time to fit everything in. My kids only have a 20 min. lunch, 20 min. recess and PE once a week. When I was a kid we had 20 min. morning recess, 1 hr. for lunch and recess and 15 min. afternoon.

While I am sure some would say that they are here to learn not to play I believe we are neglecting areas of our kids development. As a parent of boys I think that need more time to just run get the jitters out. My youngest has a LD. He works so hard during the school day that his heard HURTS when he gets home. I would think that if the day was broken up a little more it would help. For the record, they take 5 min. of recess time away from him to go into a small pull out group.

We (parents and administration) push the kids to excel academically from a young age. We make sure the are introduced to the right sport, music lesions and etc. I am not sure if we actually just let them play, explore their creativity (unless it is an art class) or be a kid!

I guess in 20 years I will know if we did the right things!