The Adventure of the PE Repugnance

In which I discuss a hatred of Physical Education...

I hated PE at school. I suppose there was a time at primary school that it probably was quite enjoyable but I found over time it became less and less fun until the point I reached secondary school and actively hated it. There's lots of dyspraxic reasons for this which I'll go into but I come from a family of sport lovers and have always spent huge amounts of time outside so it feels to me that actually I could really have grown to love PE. 

First of all, you'd have to get changed. When I was very young I was very slow at getting changed as I attempted to put things the right way round and struggled with various fastenings. Often you'd have to wear some sort of footwear with shoelaces and that immediately led to a problem for someone who couldn't tie their shoelaces until I was about seventeen. Most of the time I'd get my Dad to tie them at home and then just slip them on and off at school without touching the laces if I could. School PE is also the only time in life when you are forced to get changed in a ridiculously short space of time. School made you wear shirts with many buttons and a tie yet then told you off because it was taking too long to change the very clothes they'd forced you to wear. 

Communal changing was also really unpleasant. As an adult if you don't want to get changed in front of other people you don't have to. But at school you are forced to and for someone who, especially as a teenager, really struggled with body confidence this was deeply uncomfortable. We were also shut in a room and most of the time the teacher wouldn't even enter so it was a time when you were shut in with bullies and absolutely no adult authority around.

Eventually you'd be changed and head to the location of the PE lesson. Every half term the sport we were doing would change. For most of secondary school you had no choice of what sport you'd be doing- boys would mostly do football, rugby and cricket and girls would mostly do hockey and netball. We'd only mix for the occasional time for things like swimming and athletics. I don't know if this is still the case though I suspect it is but it strikes me now as quite a sexist approach. Nearly all sports are actually played by both genders and deciding the sport you be playing based on your gender seems absurd. 

Often these sports were split into ability groups. I am not totally against the idea of ability groups but I don't think they are the best approach for every subject. Besides, it was pretty downgrading to be sorted into three ability groups at the start of every half term and every half term find yourself in the bottom group. 

Most lessons would have a few minutes where you'd work on a skill and this section would on the whole be tolerable because I'd basically stand around chatting with a friend and occasionally kick a ball or throw a shotput when a teacher looked in my direction. Generally a large portion of the lesson would then be a game of some sort. First of all they had to sort you into teams. This would happen by the teacher choosing their favourtie two students, basically the ones who were the most sporty, and they would take it in turns to pick people to be on their team. It would either be a popularity contest or a ranking of perceived skill level but either way, you could pretty much guarantee I'd be one of, if not the very last, people to be chosen. 

This meant I rarely actually had a role to play in the team. I was only in the team because I had to be, not because anyone wanted to be there. So generally I would find a way to stay out of the way. In football I'd try to ascertain which team would be the best. If my team was the best I'd quickly opt to go in goal or be a defender and if my team was the worst I'd be a bit further forward. I would then stand around for the duration of the game and usually not actually have to touch the ball at all. In cricket it was easy to stand in a fielding position that no-one is every likely to hit the ball towards and therefore once again not have to touch the ball. Unfortunately I couldn't avoid batting and I'd inevitably hit the wicket with my own bat. Rugby didn't require any great tactics to avoid being involved because in the unlikely event that someone threw the ball to me I'd immediately throw it to someone else and there my involvement ended. 

It's not that I didn't want to play. Occasionally I'd attempt to play the game properly but I lacked any skills and more often than not any effort I made was derided by my team so I'd quickly lose confidence and give up. It was also really frustrating that I hardly ever got to play sports I actually liked. Give me a racquet sport and I'm at least semi-competent and I could always run fast so athletics wasn't too bad either. PE was often fun in primary school because we'd play games that aren't really proper sports and no-one was an expert at playing them. 

Sport can mean a huge multitude of things yet huge chunks of PE was playing football and the vast majority of the time the sporty types who didn't really need any PE lessons where allowed to totally rule them. Most PE teachers were the sporty types who ruled PE lessons and so the cycle just gets passed from one generation to another. 

Losing a love of sport and exercise has lifelong consequences. If I had been nurtured instead of tortured I could have developed into someone who at least likes exercise and has a decent level of fitness. I do my best to stay relatively healthy but fitness for me is an utter chore and not the pleasure that so many people get out of it. It shouldn't have been this way.