Clearly some people don’t really know what they are talking about here.
I lived in Illinois where four years of PE was required at the high school level. It was a total waste of time and contributed very little to my physical fitness. I got far more valuable experiences playing volleyball at the park district and beach with my friends and running and biking the bike trails on my own. My kids are not missing out on anything because they miss public school PE. They get plenty of exercise on their own. They play team games at youth groups and camps. They play ultimate and spikeball and disc golf with their friends. It’s not like public school is the only place that offers physical activities or team comaraderie.
True. And you can get good at sports without public school PE or teams. (Not every sport, but certainly some.)
We are in the States on sabbatical for 6 months and we worked it out with the local public school for my daughter to run on the cross country team. Prior to now she has done all her own training and not competed. But just today she got 7th place in the district meet running varsity, so clearly her lack of training in public school PE class and lack of prior experience with public school sports have not hindered her development as an athlete. People should send their kids to public school or homeschool because it’s the best educational choice for their kids and family not because of “socialization.” There are many ways to be involved in social activities that do not depend at all on your schooling choice.
Somewhat tangential, but one of my grandfather’s friends (and his sister) in high-school usually did very well in cross country. I believe my grandfather said his friend was typically running 4:20 miles. This was due to a somewhat atypical off-season training: bear hunting. For bear hunting in the blue ridge, what you did was to have a group of dogs chase the bear, and the people find a road that the bear would cross. However, you needed one person to run with the dogs. That was my grandfather’s friend, followed by his younger sister. So from about October to February, they were long-distance running up and down mountains once a week.
I can’t imagine what a physical education teacher (or major) feels upon reading this! Just because you find a subject useless and a waste of time doesn’t make it so. My church runs a superb boarding school for choir boys. They have a very demanding schedule, but learning team sports is a requirement.
I’m not saying physical fitness is useless. I work out daily. My kids get exercise. I’m saying my experience in Illinois public school PE classes was not particularly beneficial to me. Your insistence that public school provides these magical experiences so homeschooled children are obviously stunted and deprived because they miss out on them just reveals your bias against homeschooling. It isn’t describing a real problem.
Also, please note this thread is the homeschool forum and is for contributors supportive of homeschoolers. If you are not going to be supportive of homeschooling here, don’t post.
I never accused you of saying physical fitness is useless. You did say that your four years of PE required at the high school level was a total waste of time.
My high school PE class was definitely just for jocks, dear sister. High school PE for me consisted almost exclusively of sports, and the teacher let the students pick the teams, which means the teams were very unbalanced and based entirely on popularity contests and peak athleticism.
I’m with Christy. My high school PE experience was at least mostly a waste of time, not because of the subject matter but because of its design. Maybe it’s different in the UK.
Not when I when I was at school at least. Thankfully, it has changed a lot since then. For example, my eldest son has been doing golf and samba, among other things, this term.
Thanks for informing me, brother! I don’t think we should ever assume that things are the same for other places as they are for us.
The thing is, I’m simply not that into sports. The one sport I had a remote interest in when I was in grade school was football–and no, I don’t mean the American sport but the one that everyone else calls football–but because of the way things were set up in my PE class, I rarely got to participate the way I wanted to. I would always get placed on defense, where I had to remain in the back, or as goal keeper, which is actually a valuable position but not what I wanted, and not because they thought I was a valuable player.
But I digress–this is about books on why Christians should homeschool. I haven’t read any of those, but if you have any interest in my personal reasons for planning to homeschool (my son will be 5 in February so it’s starting soon), I’d be happy to share them with you.
Physical Education should be for every child, not just for the jocks. I’m sorry your high school wasn’t better. I remember we did field hockey, gymnastics, dance, etc. I loved gymnastics the best. I never played on any teams or anything, being busy with music. But I enjoyed physical education classes. Plenty of kids hated P.E. but plenty of kids hated math, science, foreign languages, or even school in general.
Gymnastics was my mother’s least favorite, due to being unable to do most of it. (Not very flexible or coordinated).
We have tried to get me to become competent, if not exceptional, at a variety of sports. The homeschool PE class I have been in usually has ~10-16 students in my age range. We have done football, flag gridiron football (tackle football wouldn’t work very well with one student [me] who is 198 cm tall and 130 kg, and the next largest about 80 kg), basketball, volleyball, kickball, and random things at the ends of the semester. I have also taken golf lessons, and enjoyed them.
