PE at school

I liked Sports Day and Games lessons but could not take part in any after-school inter-school matches as I lived 25 miles away with a poor bus service and my parents did not own a car.
Wasn’t fond of the knickers as sports wear, but we were allowed regulation tracksuits if our parents could afford them.

We had excellent PE - lacrosse, hockey, netball all winter, plus cross country running. In the summer field tennis, athletics and gymnastics. I did netball in the winter and discus in the summer. We had special tennis lessons for those who couldn't play. We also did country dance as an extra for the very wet weather. We even played rugby for a while! We all got tested in everything, and had to do a certain amount of everything but were allowed to concentrate on the the things we did best.

Trampolining was the worst.
Bouncing up and down like that.

Physical Education is still included as a basic subject in the French Bac.
Pupils are marked over the year on different activities changing each term. It could be swimming, street dance, cross country, skiing, track running etc. depending where the school is or has.

One of my DDs had horse riding and another sailing, when they started secondary school, this is rare though.

I remember those awful PE pants with short navy skirts & Aertex shirts. Playing hockey in the freezing cold and doing cross country in our hockey boots, the good thing was we ran through really lovely countryside. I enjoyed Netball and rounders on a summers day. I think it was being forced into the awful communal showers that put us all off PE, they were cold, smelly old fusty showers, we would say we had verrucas to try and get out if it but the teacher soon got wise to that and would check our feet. My friend broke her arm doing the Fosbury flop during athletics, it was a terrible break & that put us all off for a long time. Swimming wasn’t much better, apart from the tyrant of a teacher we had to wear those awful tight rubbery swimming caps and horrible black regulation cross back cossies. There was never time to get dry properly either before having to rush back to school for the next lesson.

Aveline

I'm back to huge navy knickers again. Lovely and comfy. Never understood the pocket in school ones though.

That was for your hanky!

We had divided skirts down to our knees they had to touch the gym floor when we knelt thick navy knickers underneath. Communal shower stood me in good stead when as a student I had to share a room and washing facilities.
I managed hockey but the other ball games, not a chance, I was later found to have something wrong with my vision, I was the one who stuck her racket out right and the tennis ball went left and everybody laughed.
As sixthformers we were given a choice and could do cross country instead[all on roads] we cheated and got lifts with a van that passed each week. Of course we were found out and the sadistic P.E teacher got her own back by making us run in front while she slowly drove her car untill one girl sat down and refused and the rest of us joined her. She pointed out it was illegal to heard animals with a car and the teacher had to conseed. I think it was the first time I realised the power of mass protest.
As a teacher of Infants I never made anyone do whet they were frightened of or hated. What is the point of putting people off physical exercise.

varian

I think one problem might be the attitude of PE teachers, who seem to assume that because they love sport and exercise, everyone else should too.

Maths teachers generally understand that not everyone loves maths and they must find ways of engaging children in maths lessons by taking away fear of failure and explaining things clearly. PE teachers in general don't seem to do that.

Yes I agree. PE teachers just didn't seem to understand that not everyone was naturally sporty, and made very little effort to make their classes interesting for everyone or to cater for different abilities. I presume they weren't properly trained in the teaching side of things whereas other teachers all had to do a teaching diploma on top of their primary degree.

I was absolutely useless at PE but quite enjoyed the break from other lessons! I was a little uncoordinated thing, and lost every game of tennis I ever played. I didn’t succeed at learning to swim till I was 13, and that was thanks to a student teacher on teaching practice.
I liked cross country, as we got to jog around the park opposite the school, chatting with friends! Hated the showers though.

I hated every minute of PE, we had one session in the gym and all of Friday afternoon was games outside - hockey in the winter and rounders in the summer. If it rained we had to go into the gym and learn dances such as The Saint Bernard’s Waltz and The Lancers, the whole of the year together, the girls had to sit down and wait to be asked to dance by a boy, of course all the boys we wanted to dance with were in the years above ours. This was a time when we were all learning to jive outside of school.

We had to wear the most ghastly tunics and matching bloomers for indoor PE but our sports skirts were rather nice, burgundy red pleated skirts like kilts.
Much nicer than the rest of the school uniform.

My GD does cheer leading at her school. It's not like the American version with the pom poms, but involves dance moves and gymnastics to music and she absolutely loves it. I hated PE myself unless it was rounders or cricket, but I think I would've loved cheer leading.

Ah, we had the divided skirts. Mine was below my knees in first year and micro length in the Upper Sixth, as was my school gabardine. I was only a contender at climbing ropes and hurdling, for some bizarre reason. I used to choose to be the goalie in hockey, because half the lesson would be taken up with strapping on the pads and lumbering up to the pitch. Being sub was even better - we’d be sent off to run round the field while waiting, and often managed a sneaky Benson & Hedges hidden from sight in the sand of the long jump pit. In the sixth form we could choose to do golf, cricket or fencing, which I loved, instead of team sports.

I used to think I’d have liked the chance to try cross country, but I’m sure now that I’d have hated it!

When I was in the fourth form, now Year 10, there were 28 of us, so when hockey teams were picked, I was always in the group not chosen. We were expected to practise on the side of the pitch, and were swapped in for a few minutes towards the end. So boring.
We also did netball, gymnastics, dance, athletics and occasionally cross country. Only the elite did tennis. It was all horrible, especially when it was cold. Showers were the worst thing. I still hate showers as a result.
Someone suggested streaming. We were a talented lot generally, but there were always 5 or 6 girls who were not so good at something. About 20 of us were in the choir or orchestra, most of us were bright academically.
Streaming is all very well, and generally works well, but there will always be a few who don't fit the mould, whatever the subject, be it PE or Music or French.

Gosh, the gym strip... we had heavy cotton rompers with elastics around the legs. I was thin and the elastic would bite into my thighs. Ours were red.

It seems to me the school year was divided into sport seasons; volleyball, basketball, field hockey, etc, to track and field in the early summer. The thing is that I was never really good at team sports because I'm not very physically competitive.

Our children's gym curriculum followed the above, but they included some other sports occasionally, such as tennis and golf. I did hear complaining that the only kids that got good marks in gym were the ones that made the basketball team; our town is basketball crazy. I remember speaking to a gym teacher, that if you learned all the rules of the sport, participated with some enthusiasm and were a good sportsman, then you should get good grades. It can be demoralizing to know you are not the best at something, and kids can be easily put off sport.

Meanwhile as an adult, I love hiking, running (slowly now), skiiing, kayaking, etc. There are plenty of other ways to enjoy being physical without joining teams.

Sadly I disliked sport at school, mainly due to the light cotton tunics and big green knickers. A track suit was only worn by the teacher. " Come on girls, run about and get warm. " oh yes?
My friend and I used to be in opposite teams. She was left half and I was right wing so we could have a chat. Then we had a little sprint if the hockey ball came near, before resuming the conversation. Misery.

I do wish they'd had dance (still can't dance) and yoga back then. I loved tennis, athletics and swimming - but really dreaded hockey, in the cold, muddy field, where the 'rules' seemed to involve getting your shins beaten black and blue. Cross country running was a pain too.

The communal showers and changing were a complete nightmare for the 'well developed' girls but ok for us skinny 'string beans'.

I had the problem of irregular periods that sometimes went on for more than 7 days. Not allowed, apparently - so I was, therefore, suspected of 'avoiding swimming' (lying) although I was good at it - and loved it.

Quotefiorentina51, thank for the poem. I was that child.
My convent school was full of very sporty pupils, who excelled, favoured by the bully of a PE teacher. Her favourite trick was to hit you round the ankles with a hockey stick.
I dreaded PE lessons.
However, we had tennis courts and I loved playing, especially when I found I was surprisingly pretty good at it.

P.E teachers were trained properly in P.E in a lot of colleges. In the 60's and onwards and I presume before. When I trained as an Infant teacher a quarter of each year intake were what we called P.E.Wing.
We all did an academic subject for part of the week and they had to as well, then we did what was called Education lectures which prepared you for the age group you wanted to teach and we all joined for psychology and sociology lectures. This might have differed in training places. We did P.E with the same lecturers but it was meant to match the age group you were going to teach the theory was fine but acting like an infant in a dance lesson etc. usually ended up as an uproar we must have frustrated them as well.
I think another poster summed it up very well when she said the P.E. teachers loved the subject and could not comprehend that others didn't. Whereas a teacher who taught an academic subject knew where pupils had weaknesses and tried to help.
Out of 7 years at school we had one really good P.E teacher who encouraed aand adapted thing for us all to have something we enjoyed taking part in ,the others were bullies.

When we were in about what would be Y8 or 9 at my all girls' school a new PE teacher joined the school. She was young, enthusiastic, attractive in a scrubbed way and we all fell madly in love with her
We'd have done anything to please her including running round a cold damp hockey pitch pretending to enjoy it ?

I hated sports and PE at school and actually got in serious trouble for hiding in the toilets with my friend in another part of the school to avoid it. We were forced to have communal showers, which was horrible.

Some parts of PE I enjoyed, such as trampolining, but the thought of using the actual gym equipment in a cold gym, tiled floor in bare feet, still make my blood run cold!
We had to do circuit training but I always got stuck on anything involving climbing (like the wall bars) or having to roll over a bar - I always got stuck - as I wore specs, I was always worried they would fall off my face and get broken!
For one lesson we had a trainee teacher and we did dance - the head of PE came up to me as we were walking out of the gym and said that I looked as if I enjoyed it - then I explained that I had been doing ballet since I was 6 (I was then 16) so dance was second nature!
She looked really surprised probably because for most other things we had done, I had been useless!

Big navy blue knickers; grey split skirt, quite short; bright green Aertex shirt and navy school jumper. I loved the knickers that stopped my bottom showing. Mum bought me some without elastic with baggy legs. I just refused to wear them.

Gosh this talk of Gym kits!! When I was at school, as long as you wore knickers and a shirt, that was your kit!! There were no showers, just a communal dressing room. I hated PE, didn't mind netball. I could shin up the ropes, but couldn't get down from them. I was asthmatic so usually got note from my mum to excuse me from hockey. Yuk Yuk Yuk!

We did, or were supposed to do, lacrosse. Lacrosse sticks were big clumsy wooden things in the 1950s, very unpopular on buses.