Wednesday, June 07, 2006

We DO need some education

I wonder, what did they call the classes where you were supposed to do physical activities? Mine were often called "physical education", but I can't think of one time I ever was educated in them. The first time I ever played flag football, the other kids told me to play "safety" (the 'teacher' just said, "you're playing flag footabll today"), but nobody would explain to me what that was; the most advice I got was, "Stay in the back and try to grab somebody's flag if they have a ball." I was 26 before I learned the offsides rule in soccer (known everywhere else as football). Nowhere did anyone ever teach a sport; it was always assumed that everybody knew how to play it already, even a "weird" one like field hockey (at least, to a kid growing up in rural Appalachia, field hockey is a weird sport).

I hated gym class, by whatever name it was called, as a kid, but I think I might have liked it better if someone had actually tried to teach something, instead of having everybody run around and just do something.

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