What Is Wrong With Physical Education?
Physical Education and Lifelong Contributions
Introduction
Physical Education is a requirement for all students in the United States. In efforts to help students be healthy and physically fit, it falls short due to the lack of relevant and modern exercise science application as well as old misleading assumptions. In California alone there are over six million students, all of which will or have gone through physical education classes. (Fingertip Facts on Education in California. 2021) Aside from physical education simply being courses that just about every individual who has gone to school will have to complete, it is also extremely important for students’ health outside of the class. “High-quality physical education instruction contributes to good health, develops fundamental and advanced motor skills, improves students’ self-confidence, and provides opportunities for increased levels of physical fitness that are associated with high academic achievement.” (Physical Education Model Content Standards. 2021) This is correct and as some studies will reveal later on in this paper, physical activity plays an important role in executive functioning, mental health and physical health. However the understanding that the course is needed is present, the execution and presentation of curriculum lacks the realistic and holistic approach to health and fitness.
As an online fitness coach, I work with many clients who are new to the fitness environment and simply want to lose weight and/or just feel healthier. Most of these processes of losing weight or building muscle are relatively simple and understandable. Through the assumption that all of these individuals went through some sort of schooling and also went through at least one physical education class, they were not properly taught any of this. Another very common feeling is that the individual feels uncomfortable in the gym because they don’t have any idea where to start. So the curriculum in physical education lacks the ability to provide students with real long term sustainable life habits or enough background to even get started on their own. The reason this topic is so important to myself is because I have been in the same situation when I wanted to start on my own fitness journey. Reflecting back on my own experience in physical education I remember learning to play badminton, running a mile once a week or playing basketball. All of which are great activities and got us moving but they did not have any carryover into life and health outside of getting a participation grade. They did not teach me how to workout in a gym, how to lose weight in a healthy way, the importance of nutrition nor the difference between training styles. Due to this, I had to spend a lot of my time and money educating myself and filtering through hundreds of fitness influencers and people trying to sell you products rather than educate you with correct information that will help you.
A deep dive into the effectiveness of physical education in providing students with holistic approaches to physical health and the connection of it to mental health long term and into their adulthood will benefit the overall health of the population. A physical education curriculum that provides students with the knowledge and ability to create healthy habits and lifestyles will have a great impact on the “gym-intimidation” factor that prevents many individuals from feeling comfortable enough to go into the gym and starting whatever type of fitness/weightloss/health journey they actually want to. By giving these skills and knowledge to the public population both the physical and mental health of it will increase and grow. As previously mentioned mental health can be greatly influenced by exercise as well as proper nutrition. Mental health issues are a growing statistic and could potentially be decreased by the implementation of proper physical health habits.
Literature Review
Active Vs. Fit
“Activity” is not the same thing as “fitness” and “unfit” does not mean “inactive.” Physical education, in efforts to create standardized curriculum, has revolved around fitness tests and fitness assessments as gradings and levels of success. However physical education courses should not solely be based on fitness as it is a much different term than “healthy” or “active.” In an article written by Lorraine Cale and Jo Harris titled, “A Review of Children’s Fitness Testing,” the fitness testing in physical education courses is examined to dig deeper towards its own productivity towards the overall benefits of the students. The article reveals a few negative consequences of fitness testing, which include “loss of interest in PE and physical activity, teaching to the test, student and teacher ‘cheating’ on fitness tests, undermining the confidence of students who find that, even with effort, they cannot achieve the fitness goals necessary to get good grades or to meet teacher expectations” (Cale and Harris. 217) As the authors have explained in the article, there are a lot of negative consequences of fitness testing in physical education. Youth have been given misdirection on what it means to be “healthy,” creating a false connection between fit and healthy and thus what the course should be about, creating healthy habits and lifestyles, is overshadowed.
Individual Uniqueness
Physical education needs to be individualized. Every single individual has different backgrounds when it comes to their health with an endless amount of factors that create uniqueness including; cultural background, medical predispositions, physical handicaps, mental health, injuries and genetics. The most obvious reason for the individualized curriculum is because of the physical limitations and levels of some students and the unfair concept of having one standard without taking into account the individual. In the article “Inclusive Physical Education: Teachers’ Views of Including Pupils with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities in Physical Education” sought out how educators of physical education courses approached the inclusion of physical diversity in the class. “The perceived detrimental effect on the pupils without SEN becomes more apparent when pupils with diverse ranges of ability are taught within the same group, ‘Sometimes in a lesson if you’ve got a very able and very disabled group, especially here the children get quite frustrated with a child that they can’t participate as well as them and it might put them off partici- pating.” (Morley, David, Bailey, Richard, Tan, Jon,Cooke and Belinda. 92) One of the main concerns of the educators was that the differences in physical ability of the students with SEN (Special Educational Needs) and when the lack of modification for the students who need it often leads to frustration or other students without SEN. The frustration is often taken out on the SEN student(s) causing them to withdraw from the activity and potentially withdraw from future activities. This is an important point as it can be related to students who may not necessarily have SEN and/or disabilities but simply students at different physical levels. The same situation can, and often does, happen when a less athletic student is in a group of more athletic or “fit” students and may feel feelings of embarrassment or inadequacy thus causing a withdrawal from participation.
Ethnic and Cultural Identity
Ethnic and cultural identity plays a tremendous role in every person’s life and is a factor that influences one’s approach to physical education and health which is why the classes need to adjust the class orientation focus. In the United States, and San Francisco even more so, there is a wide range of cultural/ethnic diversity in our schools. These differences in identity reflect the way students interact, broken down into two main groups; ego-oriented and task oriented students. Ego-oriented students often prefer generalized and standardized tasks and this orientation revolves around the comparison between one’s self to others, including the comparison of culture and approach (often leading to supremacy mindsets). On the other hand the task oriented individuals are often better at group working, seeing diversity and others as useful support to accomplish the task at hand, creating a better learning environment. Found by the authors of “Ethnic/cultural Identity Salience, Achievement Goals and Motivational Climate in Multicultural Physical Education Classes'' in their study, “The present findings imply that a high learning and low performance oriented climate creates the appropriate substratum to base specific teaching strategies for the promotion of cooperation and mutual respect among children of different ethnicities.” (Kouli, Olga, & Papaioannou, Athanasios G. 45) This evidence is important in the context of cultural and ethnic identity because of how we can neutralize the social evaluation tendencies of ego-orientated students by eliminating or reducing the general and standardized tasks. Doing this will create a learning oriented environment that benefits cross-cultural differences.
Mental Health
Physical education needs to include lessons on the connection between physical health/activity to mental health. Physical activity and health has a great impact on an individual’s mental health, yet this is more often than not left out of physical education classes. In “Exercise and Mental Health,” an article that investigates and breaks down the strong connection between the two firstly explaining the physiological benefits of exercise which can include “an increase in endorphin levels, body temperature, mitochondrial function and mitochondriogenesis, an increase in the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTor) signaling, neurotransmitter production and attenuation of the hypothalamic pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis response to stress.” Followed by explaining the psychological benefits that can also include; “a distraction from feelings of depression and anxiety and positive feelings associated with mastery and selfefficacy.” (Mikkelsen, Kathleen, Stojanovska, Lily, Polenakovic, Momir, Bosevski, Marijan, & Apostolopoulos, Vasso. 2017) This information needs to be included in physical education as it includes important information for students to understand as they take their health (both physical and mental) into their own hands as they approach adulthood.
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