This morning, while checking the news, I came across an article from the BBC about girls and PE classes. The article makes the argument that schools should offer more "feminine" sports such as rollerblading and Zumba in order to get more girls to participate in fitness activities.
While I agree that schools should offer a wider variety of fitness activities, I don't think that schools should only offer them to girls.
I remember when I was growing up, I loved sports. I loved being able to compete (and beat) the boys at boys' sports. Flag football, lacrosse, basketball, softball. You name it, I loved it. I competed in gymnastics and was on my junior high's dance team. PE was awesome to me.
However, I remember most girls didn't think PE was so awesome. They thought I was crazy for wanting to sweat and to show up the boys. They didn't like running or doing any activities, so they essentially failed PE.
When I look at most of those same girls now, unfortunately they are all out of shape and I am positive they don't have any fitness routine. I think that's a shame. We should be helping young girls find some sort of fitness activity that they love and will stick to for the rest of their life. We should be instilling in them that fitness is fun and doesn't have to be a chore, and that it's ok to sweat.
I'm definitely for adding more variety to PE classes, like including Zumba and rollerblading. But what about pilates or yoga? How about tai chi? What about martial arts? Obstacle courses? And I definitely don't agree with seperating the classes based on gender. What if a boy wants to try pilates or zumba? Or a girl, like me, wants to play flag football or lacrosse? Let them all try the new activities, but don't force them.
So I'm gonna go into a "what if" of if I was a director of the PE department at a school. I would say three days a week, let them have the freedom to make a choice from a selection of 3 activities. For example, for a whole week, offer yoga, flag football and Frisbee golf. Offer these same 3 for the whole week. For the other 2 days, do some sort of running/walking activity. The goal is to just have the kids move, not to make them hate fitness. Some kids will run, some will walk. As long as they are moving a lot, that's what is important. For the whole year, rotate through a list of activities, giving the kids lots of variety.
I believe that adding more variety and letting kids try new activities will help set them up for fitness successes later in life. The current system is failing the next generation.
What are your opinions or ideas on this article and on girls and PE?
excellent observations lovely!
ReplyDeletetwo things:
1. the other issue with separating classes by gender: what about those folks who don't identify or feel like they fit into the rigid social roles of "boy" or "girl". we learn how to be both of these labels and there are some people (officially called queer or transgendered) who don't identify this way. You think growing up not fitting into assimilated categories is tough? Try breaking them up and being completely invisible.
2. As you said above, boys and/or girls may want to or not want to participate in a variety of sports and activities. Dividing them up only exacerbates the "need" for different activities for different genders. Blech. Please! Maybe instead we need to look at why and how our culture breeds competition and aggression and activity in men while discouraging it in women...and then change that. because it translates into a whole other sect of problems in the world beyond school including work place issues, nationalism, war, and sexualized violence. but that's another post.
....hello, my name is kristy and i'm a women's studies major. haha.
XO!
Thanks for your comment, Kristy! I completely agree with both your points. If they did separate PE classes based on gender, I would have missed out on playing flag football and lacrosse, two sports I really enjoyed beating the guys at. I also know of several guys who like to go yoga and they would have missed out, too.
DeleteIt would be interesting to do a study with your second point, on why in our culture it's ok for men to be competitive, but it's not as ok in women. Hmm... research project? :)