Much like everything else in this world, gym class has evolved over the years. How is gym class different now than it was in years and decades previous?
“Gym class is a waste of time and unnecessary,” senior Andrew Reppert said. This sentiment seems to be the general consensus among high school students about the value of gym class.
The motivation for this attitude stems from a variety of different reasons. Some kids just don’t want to walk around for the rest of their day drenched in sweat. Others work out on their own time. Sadly, some kids are just lazy.
If you have ever watched an old movie about high school students, chances are there is a scene about gym class. Chances are what you see is nothing like the gym class you know.
The typical 70’s movie usually shows some poor kid getting screamed at by the gym teacher while in his feeble attempts to do a simple chin up, or that same poor shmuck getting pelted by a dozen dodgeballs courtesy of the football players on the other team.
I sat down with Mr. Langsdorf, a 1977 high school graduate, to see how accurate these infamous scenes really are and what has changed.
“In all the years the biggest thing is legal issues associated with people having the right to sue,” Langsdorf said. “Society has become more litigious; you really have to be careful with what you can and can’t do.”
Other changes are the activities done in gym class. ” Combative sports like wrestling and boxing were done because there were separate classes for guys and girls,” Mr. Langsdorf said.
He told me that combative sports put kids at risk, but back then if you got hurt you got hurt, and that’s just how it was. Now, everybody complains about everything. You can walk into any gym class and chances are within a few minutes you will hear some kid complaining about something.
“Generations now have so much potential and are driven at a young age to be successful,” Mr.Langsdorf said. That drive fuels a competitive spirit, and if a student feels he or she is being put at a disadvantage, complaints of how “it’s not fair” to that student or his or her team result.
Over the years, certain legislation has limited what schools can teach in gym classes, most notably the dodgeball ban in public schools. Schools have aimed to focus gym class less on sports and more on fitness with some sports sprinkled in.
A perfect example is our gym class system at Southern Lehigh. As underclassmen, students go through a personal fitness and sports combination class. As upperclassmen, they get to choose which area to focus on, either competitive sports or personal fitness.
This is a fairly progressive step to make gym a more desirable class to go to. So, next time you complain about not wanting to do push-ups in gym class, just remember, it could be worse. You could be taking a ball to the face, courtesy of senior Brad Woroniak, pitcher on the Southern Lehigh baseball team.
