"It's funny you should bring up PE here, because the same mechanism is usually at play there. PE classes don't focus on the kids who are bad at sports. They focus on those who are already good at it, for whatever reason."
It's been a frustration of mine for a while that P.E. stands for Physical Education, but rarely are kids educated about exercise and nutrition. Kids don't learn about exercise increasing endorphins that, in turn, elevate mood. They don't learn about cardiovascular conditioning and how it helps with some asthmatic conditions. Forget about anyone mentioning the role of stretching in our health as we age. Nutrition is neglected entirely, but learning about "carb bombing" and its effect on mood would do a lot of good. Instead they throw a ball around and get out aggression (or try to hide from the kids who are getting out aggression).
I read an interview with Anne Hathaway which discussed her training for the Catwoman role. Prior to that role, she hated exercise and thought that just because she was skinny, she was therefore healthy. (Let's ignore that she admitted in another interview to being a heavy smoker for a good portion of her life.) Once her trainer got her past the initial strain of conditioning muscles, she found she liked how she felt when she exercised. I think a lot of people developed a dislike of exercise early in their lives due to an association of exercise with team sports, which developed in PE classes. I think it needs to change.
> due to an association of exercise with team sports
And intrinsic competitiveness. I remember from my school PE classes (UK) that even distance running was always practiced as a race.
Anyone who runs knows that unless of course you're very elite, your performance vs other people is almost entirely unimportant to you. It's your own personal performance that matters, and this is as true on a solitary training run as it is taking part in a massive 'race' event such as a marathon.
Competing against yourself (trying to improve) is incredibly rewarding in a totally different way to competing against and beating other people. In a solitary sport like running, nobody gets to judge you but you, the motivation and joy that comes from the exercise and fitness improvements is almost entirely internal - to put it bluntly nobody else cares when you shave 5 seconds off your PB, but to you it's a wonderfully satisfying experience.
I always wondered why PE teachers never seemed to approach exercise and sport from this angle. They're really missing a trick as I believe discovering this would really encourage a lot more kids to keep exercising throughout and after school as a result.
As it happened I was always reasonably competent at sport, never the best at anything but good enough to be competitive at all the sports I played (at least vs other amateur kids). So for me it was OK to have a competitive element, but I can completely see that that if sport and exercise is always focused around competition, and a kid is consistently losing at everything they try, that's going to be a huge long-lasting turn off from exercise. Focusing more on 'this is intrinsically fun to do on your own' might change that significantly.
In the United States, in my experience, PE teachers are generally employed primarily as coaches for the schools' sports teams. As a result, they're not especially interested in exercise for its own sake.
Every time I've been in a public school's PE room in the last few years (since I've had my own child) there's been a board on the wall describing what's currently being done at each grade level, and at least some of the time there was information about nutrition. Whenever the kids at my neighboring school are out on the field for PE, they start out by stretching, and the teacher seems to be talking to them about preventing injury and such.
It's not perfect by any means, but it seems reasonably age-appropriate.
I'm glad it's changing. We need to establish in kids' minds that exercise doesn't have to be tedious or scary. People need to see exercise and healthy eating as normal part of life.
Foundations of Personal Fitness is a requirement for all the later gym classes and that has several of the things you are looking for:
(A) explain the relationship between physical fitness and health
(D) compare and contrast health-related and skill-related fitness;
(B) describe physical fitness activities that can be used for stress reduction;
(D) analyze the relationship between sound nutritional practices and physical activity;
etc...
Maybe there are a lot of bad gym teachers (why be a Gym Teacher when you could get paid more to be a Nutritionist?) or maybe some states have less rigorous standards. Or the standards were lower in the past. Or maybe when you were a student you didn't notice the lessons the teacher was trying to teach.
Schools are trying though. Even PE is getting better.
Those standards seem to have come into effect in 1998, although I suspect there were similar requirements prior to that. Speaking as a graduate of a Texas public high school, I'd like to point out that all of those requirements can be covered in that one class in February where the weather is horrible and the internal facilities (gym, auditorium, whatever) have been taken over for some other activity.
In any case, I'm fairly sure I know what lessons the teacher was trying to teach.
It's been a frustration of mine for a while that P.E. stands for Physical Education, but rarely are kids educated about exercise and nutrition. Kids don't learn about exercise increasing endorphins that, in turn, elevate mood. They don't learn about cardiovascular conditioning and how it helps with some asthmatic conditions. Forget about anyone mentioning the role of stretching in our health as we age. Nutrition is neglected entirely, but learning about "carb bombing" and its effect on mood would do a lot of good. Instead they throw a ball around and get out aggression (or try to hide from the kids who are getting out aggression).
I read an interview with Anne Hathaway which discussed her training for the Catwoman role. Prior to that role, she hated exercise and thought that just because she was skinny, she was therefore healthy. (Let's ignore that she admitted in another interview to being a heavy smoker for a good portion of her life.) Once her trainer got her past the initial strain of conditioning muscles, she found she liked how she felt when she exercised. I think a lot of people developed a dislike of exercise early in their lives due to an association of exercise with team sports, which developed in PE classes. I think it needs to change.