Physical Education?

Why the question mark? Well it's a label that is different in meaning to what actually happens. As this counts as my main subject I better discuss this first.

Here education has a massive overlap with health. I work with the general ideas that prevention is better than cure (medical), and that getting things right first time (business), or the beginning is everything (philosophy). Another idea is the importance of habits and working towards the positive and away from the negative ones. Trying to correct a problem say in adults is harder, more expensive (time, money etc.) and a lot less successful than early in life.

I will take two perspectives with PE. The first is for the majority. If 9 out of 10 adults do not exercise enough and half not at all, is that a measure of success for PE and education. They do not have positive habits and any result less than half, cannot be seen as a measure of success. This measure must be given to PE (and others) to improve. Not exercising and being inactive is one of the major factors in many bad health outcomes. 3 out of 4 people die of Heart Attack, Cancer and Stroke. Exercise is positive in prevention/delaying these and actually generally many illnesses, and of course death (hopefully this registers as serious (grave)). Exercise has been found as positive even in people suffering from many illnesses and conditions. It also has been found to help other areas.

But it's not just the most common causes of death (these do not come cheap!). The most common reason for taking more than 3 days of work is back pain, a big factor is incorrect lifting technique, if only there was a sport/activity called weightlifting (boy am I holding back so much sarcasm, well most of the time!) where these skills could be taught. Many sports/physical activities have essential skills that are not even attempted to be taught let alone corrected and developed. Many sports injuries (well they get a good habit and then go and ruin it) are bad technique especially the exercise (fitness) element, running and weight training are classic destroyers of joints. Competitive sports have as the number one cause of injury as 'foul play'. Too busy competing and not actually improving or learning (the E in PE stands for education).

These are all quite visible and clear. Mental health is greatly influenced by physical health and hence physical activity. What's the best stress relief – No it's not alcohol, unhealthy food, smoking, drugs (illegal or medical). Of course if you thought of one so far unmentioned thing, I am counting that as physical activity, but will not be including that within physical education, although that course may be more popular and commercially successful.

As many people hated PE at school they were not catered for at all. Making PE educational, and enjoyable will improve participation in adults (work allowing), improve their life (less ill health and problems) and cost the nation less.

The other end (another perspective) for PE is the elite level. The recent sporting success for Britain (Olympics etc.) has mainly been by privately educated (7% of children but over half of medals) and outside clubs and facilities.

So the question is what is PE in education doing? Well I can tell you teachers are working many hours going to many meetings, covering other areas, completing paperwork. They are not educating children, giving them positive experience and preparing children for life. Actually many PE teachers come from team sports backgrounds and their preparation for coaching skills and exercise is often lacking especially outside their sport. Some can do but many follow official lesson planning and bureaucracy. Encouraging and helping children not like them, the PE haters, is a difficult jump. Preparing long term excellence is not possible in classes of 30, 40 plus. So they are good (or not) at crowd management and problem avoidance (from above).