Why current practices in education forecast a disaster for boys.
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Once at Opening Day at a local community college, the keynote speaker made a comment about physical education being neither physical, nor education. Everyone laughed, except for the athletic coaches I was sitting with.
PE has become a joke in our educations system. My son’s second grade class gets 30 minutes of physical education per week, which is often rained out or canceled.
PE has become a joke in our educations system.
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I used to supplement this lack of exercise by playing with my son after school. We would play basketball, soccer, wall ball, or tag. At the beginning of this year, however, the principal came out and told us that we were not allowed to play on school grounds after school. This was a city wide ban fueled by fear of law suits.
In his TedTalk on play, Peter Gray explains how the consistent decline in free play for children correlates to higher anxiety and depression in children. “Children are more depressed today than they were during the Great Depression.”
“Children are more depressed today than they were during the Great Depression.”
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Taking away physical education and free play is especially detrimental for boys. In Raising Caine: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson state, “the principle of allowing boys to exercise when they need to during a school day is a powerful one.” They continue, “Boys need space for their jumping, their energy, their exuberance.”
Ignoring the physicality of boys in school spells disaster for the future of boys in education. At a recent education conference one of the speakers said that researchers are predicting the day when there will be no more boys in college.
…researchers are predicting the day when there will be no more boys in college.
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Claudia Buchmann, author of The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools claims that “at every level of cognitive ability, boys are getting lower grades than girls. It is not about ability—it is about effort and engagement.”
In contrast, the head of one small private elementary school in Pennsylvania said to Kindlon and Thompson, “It is amazing how much work boys will get done when going outside is the reward.” The solution seems clear—to help boys engage in school more allow them to be physical.
Unfortunately, at a recent parent/teacher conference the teacher said that my son has a tough time sitting down and listening. My suggestion to put him in the back row and let him stand and move a bit went right over her head and into the trash bin.
I’m already seeing the effects of this no-child-allowed-to-exercise mentality. Last month, three boys had anxiety attacks on the same day. My own son has said, “I hate my life. I want to die” when he got overwhelmed with school work.
I’m not taking these warning signs lightly given the rise in suicide and school shootings in the last 10 years. I can’t do much about changing school policy without the help of others. I’m asking you to put physical education back on the agenda. Make space for boys to express their high activity levels. To quote one of the best boy movies of all-time, “Let them play. Let them play.” [Bad News Bears]
Photo: Flickr:WoodleyWonderWorks
We must “move away from the false genetic models” – one which says, boys are naturally more active, and begin looking at the true cause for the activity and lack of academics. We must begin to redefine our average stress as many layers of mental work we carry with us even at rest, from past, present, future – experiences, problems, fears, preparations for defense; and a host of things our minds are working on. Using this more correct definition of average stress, we can then begin to look at how the much more aggressive treatment boys receive from their first… Read more »
I have conducted myself hysterically in this thread instead of engaging in a dignified, respectful exchange. My deepest apologies to everyone for my shameful display.
Bill
No worries, Bill. Consider it a form of play. We learn how to play nicely by making mistakes. Thank you for the candor and passion in your comments.
Thank you, Kozo! You know how important the issue of boys and education is to me, and I’ve written about it many times on psychologytoday.com and the Good Men Project. To me, it’s not so much a question of exactly how and why boys and young men are getting shortchanged in school, and the ways in which they are struggling, but rather that public awareness be heightened about this. So many times I’ll tell someone a statistic, such as the huge gap in suicide rates for boys and girls, and they’ll be shocked to hear it. This should be common… Read more »
Thanks, Mark. My article was obviously informed by all the conversations we have had on the conference calls. I take a different approach, but our concerns are the same. I am inspired by your leadership.
Besides the very important physical side of this question, there’s also a very important creative side. Play is not just about burning calories or learning to cooperate. Play is also about creativity and discovery, trying new ways of doing things, strategizing as you go along, and sometimes making things up as you go along. The decline of recess is happening at the same time the arts and music are disappearing. Just about the only thing left is memorizing standardized things for standardized bubble tests, where creativity is the enemy of success. This is another reason kids get so depressed —… Read more »
Yes, Wellokaythen, Peter Gray covers this in his Tedtalk. If we include how art and music programs are being dropped in public education, then the problem expands exponentially.
This is part of an even larger problem that defines boys and men as inherently dangerous. Boys and men being physically active is now equated with them being predatory animals. We now equate being a student athlete with being a rapist, and lifting weights with being in prison. The paranoia seems to be that if boys get too much exercise they’ll lose whatever strict hold society has over them and they’ll revert to the natural little beasts that they really are.
So true, Steve. There is a mistrust of boys and their physicality. The irony is that when we don’t let boys be physical then they often become the “predatory animals” that we fear.
I think what is being expressed here is that boys and girls need time to play without adult intervention. The book , “The Last Child in the Woods” takes this concept head-on. Kids used to be able to go outside with other kids at recess or afterschool and when they did this they organized their own games like hopscotch, or tag football or tag, or whatever….they solved their own problems, made their own rules, and when it wasn’t found “fair” they changed it or the game broke up in disgust with the ones who wouldn’t change. This is how we… Read more »
Yes, Tami, play without supervision. My sons rarely ever play for extended periods of time without supervision–too many helicopter parents. We learned so much playing with our peers growing up. My sons’ generation is being robbed of this wisdom.
In my own research, I’ve learned about an excellent PE program called PE4Life, which was created by a PE coach named Phil Lawler who recognized that nonathletic students were being kicked in the teeth by the traditional “sports only” approach. If all those who support – nay, demand – mandatory PE were truly concerned about physical fitness instead of just promoting sports, they would advocate the reform of PE; and they would support a program such as PE4Life. But that is not what I’ve seen at all. No, I don’t favor removing team sports from the schools. All I am… Read more »
There are also lots of boys who are simply not athletic in a traditional sense but are not naturally sedentary either. They may enjoy exercise and physical activity that are just not the most common team sports. I think we need to expand our definition of physical education to include things that don’t include balls hurled at your head. Just think about all the boys out there who hate PE class but who ride bikes, skateboard to school, practice pro wrestling moves with their friends, do live action role playing, juggle, climb trees, etc. According to most schools, these boys… Read more »
I completely agree, Steve. That is why I included tag and wall ball as activities that my son and I play after school to get exercise. I know some kids who will play wall ball for hours without stop. If that is not exercise, I don’t know what is.
As for my own boyhood experience, I never got any exercise in mandatory PE! No exercise programs were ever provided; and even though we were forced to play team games, no instruction was ever provided about any sport! The PE coaches seemed to have assumed that all boys had an athletic background. My experience was not an aberration. I’ve been amazed at the stark difference between the constructive attitude of the personal trainers at my health club and the negative attitudes (indifference or contempt) that ALL of my PE coaches had toward nonathletic boys. I’m sick and tired of the… Read more »
“Do many math teachers ridicule students who have a math block?” In my experience Bill, YES! I was made to feel pretty stupid by maths teachers when I was at school and I believe that their attitudes towards me have held me back both academically and psychologically. Especially one teacher who had me come in to her classroom while all my friends were out playing in order to recite multiplication tables to her to prove that I could memorise them. The only thing that resulted was for me to be bullied for years afterwards about having been singled out. It… Read more »
I’m very sorry this happened to you. I have a great deal of sympathy for anyone who suffered bullying as a child. There are still many people today who defend bullying in the schools. (I could make a political comment in that regard, but I won’t.) The teacher you mentioned should have been fired. Any teacher or coach who misuses his or her position of authority to bully children should be kicked out of the profession. Incompetent teachers should also be given the boot. When she was in high school, one of my daughters had a calculus “teacher” who actually… Read more »
Just a few more comments, and I’ll be gone and put this thread out of my mind: “Sports only” P.E. should be retained as an elective for the students who want to participate in sports. I’ve never looked down on any guy for participating in a sport. Too bad I can’t say that most of the athletic guys I went to school with had the same tolerance for nonathletic guys. Nonathletic kids have long been the “nonpersons” of mandatory P.E. Historically, in fact, they have been discriminated against by the phys ed establishment, which showed preferential treatment of the athletic… Read more »
What a jackass I am! I submitted this post at the wrong place. I meant to post it somewhere else.
You say PE has become a joke in our educational system. Traditional mandatory PE has always been a joke played on nonathletic boys, and a rather cruel one at that! A boy who is slightly built or is overweight can look forward to nothing but misery in a mandatory sports-centered PE class. Bullying has always been a problem. I appreciate what you have said on previous occasions in this forum; but with due respect, I would suggest you do some research on bullying in mandatory PE. The following article would be a good start: http://www.athleticbusiness.com/more-news/study-kids-bullied-in-gym-sports-avoid-future-activity.html Please do some research on… Read more »
Thank you for pointing this out, Bill. I agree that sports only PE was traumatic and counterproductive for boys in the past, but PE for boys in elementary school is different than middle school and high school. I just want boys to be able to play and get some exercise.
P.E. can be a nightmare for many girls, too! My memories of P.E. mainly involve being pushed around and mocked by the athletic boys. Frankly I was terrified of P.E.
Let kids play outside, yes. Organized “P.E.” has always been a waste of time and has caused untold trauma for generations of children.
You have my deepest apologies for not mentioning girls. I limited my comments and observations to boys because the OP addresses the issue of the problems boys face in the schools. You’re absolutely right! I’m very sorry what happened to you. The athletic boys who pushed you around displayed an appalling lack of manliness. Their parents should have been ashamed. Do any of those in the “macho” crowd have a problem with this? Do any sportswriters and sports columnists ever mention, much less discuss, the issue of sports-related bullying? The issue has been ignored. There have been a small minority… Read more »
But what is your solution to the problem? Because it sounds like what you’re saying is to give up on P.E. I can verify as a current high school teacher that traditional sports-based P.E. classes are on their way out. My students have options to take half semester classes in long-distance running, power lifting, crossfit, etc. Also, the sample size of the study your article is based on is ridiculously small, and does not represent a good cross-section of American students, regardless of class, region, race, etc. I’m not saying that bullying isn’t a problem, just that the study isn’t… Read more »
Oh, give me a break! For generation after generation, mandatory P.E. has made the lives of nonathletic kids miserable; and next to no one has spoken out in their behalf. I’m all for exercise. (I’ve been pumping iron at a health club for years, remember?) But historically the phys ed establishment has neglected the physical fitness needs of nonathletic students. Many mandatory boys’ P.E. coaches look down on nonathletic boys as supposedly being inferior (“sissies,” “wimps,” “queer bait,” etc.) because their physiques are less than ideal or for some other superficial or stupid reason. One word: machismo. Courtesy of the… Read more »
As a 64-year-old man who has type II diabetes, I deeply appreciate the need for exercise. Several years after I was diagnosed, I joined a health club for the purpose of starting a bodybuilding program. I’ve spent a small fortune on personal trainers. My health club experience has been quite beneficial physically and even psychologically. I certainly agree that boys need to be physically active. I agree completely that free play should be allowed in the schools. I also agree that a period should be reserved during the school day for boys who want to play sports. I hear people… Read more »
It’s not just the school system. Society has given up any pretense that the purpose of boys is to support the success of girls. I’ve read many of those lists from liberal / feminist / progressive parents on the things they would instill in boys about relations / love / sex with girls. These lists are dominated by how he should treat, respect, and view his female partner. What is lacking is how he should expect to be treated by his partner and what treatment he should not accept. This isn’t people talking to someone else son. These are parents… Read more »
Thanks for the comment, John. I agree that boys have taken backstage to the concerns of girls and I understand how this came about, but totally ignoring the needs of boys is not good for anyone.