Get Rid of PE and Bullying In Schools

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"Obesity is a problem that kills people"

Research informs us that bullying causes suicide in up to 12 children per year - that's up to 1 child per month!
Can you honestly tell me that bullying doesn't kill people?
Bullying kills. Let's end it NOW!
12 24 36 48 60 72 84 96 108 120 132 144 156 168 180 192 204 216 228 232 244 256 268
Tick Tock......Tick Tock.......Tick Tock...Tick Tock...Tick Tock...Tick Tock..Tick tock..Tick Tock
How many years are you prepared to let it go on for?
Bullying kills. Let's end it NOW!
272 284 296 308 320 332 346 358 362 374 386 398 410 422 434 446 458 510 522 534 546
Tick Tock......Tick Tock.......Tick Tock...Tick Tock...Tick Tock...Tick Tock..Tick tock..Tick Tock
How many deaths are you prepared for?
Bullying kills. Let's end it NOW!
The Beds council has ambitions for 2010.
By 2010, up to 48 more children will have commited sucide due to bullying.
Tick Tock......Tick Tock.......Tick Tock...Tick Tock...Tick Tock...Tick Tock..Tick tock..Tick Tock
If we don't do something, who will?
The squirrels? The birds?
The fact is, the clock is ticking, the months are flying past and so are the years
Tick Tock......Tick Tock.......Tick Tock...Tick Tock...Tick Tock...Tick Tock..Tick tock..Tick Tock
Bullying kills. Let's end it NOW!
Jan- 1 child so far.
Feb-2 children
March-3 children
April-4 children
May-5 children
June- 6 children
July - 7 children
August- 8 children
September- 9 children
October- 10 children
November - 11 children.
December - 12 children.
Listen! Ding dong. Ding Dong. Ding Dong.
A bell rung once, twice, thrice.
Signyifing the funeral of a child.
Who amongst you can stand up and honestly tell me that you're prepared to listen to the bells of a child's funeral once per month, 12 times per year, 120 times a decade?
I know I can't.

You can't end every class that a kid can be bullied in. That's unproductive, and causes more problems than it solves. All the schools need to do is pay attention to what students are doing. Five years of elementary school. No suicides. Three years of middle school, no suicides. Four years of high school, no suicides. Did they have to cancel PE in order to accomplish that? No. All the teachers did was take steps to make sure that they knew what was going on in the schools. Tick all you want, but cancelling PE is not the end all solution.

You can't end every class that a kid can be bullied in. That's unproductive, and causes more problems than it solves. All the schools need to do is pay attention to what students are doing. Five years of elementary school. No suicides. Three years of middle school, no suicides. Four years of high school, no suicides. Did they have to cancel PE in order to accomplish that? No. All the teachers did was take steps to make sure that they knew what was going on in the schools. Tick all you want, but cancelling PE is not the end all solution.

You misunderstood me. I'm simply pointing out that bullying kills as well as obesity.
Have you ever been bullied?
The fact is, you can take all the steps you want but if those steps end up punishing the victims then it's rather hopeless.
That is what happens, like it or not.
No, it's not the end all solution but at least it's a step that doesn't involve punishing the victims like all the other steps I've seen so far.
Shall I tell you what happens with all these steps?
Person A bullys person B, class in class out, day in day out, week in week out, term in term out, month in month out, year in year out.
Person B defends themselves.
School: Person A, you're free to go. Person B, record of bullying.
Ding Dong. Ding Dong. Ding Dong.

Besides, with all the stigma attached to sucide, you really think they'd tell you if it occured?
Sorry but everyone deludes themself into thinking they're perfect now and then.
You think your headteacher's going to stand up in assembly and say "A student at my school commited sucide because they were bullied?"
If so, then kudos on retaining a "They'll always tell the truth" outlook on life.
Physicial Education,Design technology, Textiles.
Do you know what those managed -and what physicial education still manages- to do?
Highlight my differences that were evident enough already and subject me to more of the s**t that I was getting on a daily basis.
Believe me, that was a hard job.
If you had said to me before Year 9 that I was going to get more of the same s**t, I'd have given you a disbelieveing look, spat on the ground and told you that that was impossible.
I didn't realize then that it was possible.
Now in Year 10, it happened.

Besides, with all the stigma attached to sucide, you really think they'd tell you if it occured?
Sorry but everyone deludes themself into thinking they're perfect now and then.
You think your headteacher's going to stand up in assembly and say "A student at my school commited sucide because they were bullied?"
If so, then kudos on retaining a "They'll always tell the truth" outlook on life.
Physicial Education,Design technology, Textiles.
Do you know what those managed -and what physicial education still manages- to do?
Highlight my differences that were evident enough already and subject me to more of the s**t that I was getting on a daily basis.
Believe me, that was a hard job.
If you had said to me before Year 9 that I was going to get more of the same s**t, I'd have given you a disbelieveing look, spat on the ground and told you that that was impossible.
I didn't realize then that it was possible.
Now in Year 10, it happened.

You say there's much bullying in the gym how about bulling on forums. I've been bullied here.

What silliness. What on earth does bullying have to do with PE? I would love to know because I seriously doubt there's any connection. Kids can bully others in PE, similar to how kids can bully others anywhere.

Plus PE has plenty of benefits, which far outweigh the negatives. Sorry, but the effect of people getting bullied in PE is insignificant compared to the effect of thousands of people who go on to lead relatively healthy lives as a result of being encouraged to lead healthy lifestyles early in life. And these people who get bullied in PE are being bullied outside of PE, anyway. So deal with the bullying, not PE. Duh.

^PE is the single most attractive environment for bullying. I got an official reply from the PTA's national office, they share the same thougths:

"You are right that mental health is just as important as physical health, and it is our goal to make sure that students feel safe at their schools every day... PE class is a place where a lot of bullying is likely to occur..."

Why is this? PE is a place with bad teachers, it's a place where jocks are supreme, and the classes are free-for-all. The teachers don't watch, they just hand out basketballs and they go off to talk to other teachers in another area of the school. That's when bullying happens. When the teachers leave and no one really cares. It's the same way in other areas of the school, sure, but there, you have friends (usually, I guess), you have proctors who HAVE to pay attention to what stdents are saying, etc. And in other classes, you have a closed environment, so teachers have to keep tabs on the kids.

It's not just the fault of PE alone, though, it's the fault of not enough consequences, of sucky rule enforcement, of complete and total apathy.

Take this: according to a teacher I talked to, zero tolerance on bullying was set into play in our district when Columbine happened. At the middle school I went to, however, that rule wasn't put into the guidebook until late 2003, after heavy prodding from myself and several other students and their parents.

Several teachers I've talked to are slightly against canning PE, some of them are against making it an elective rather than compulsory, however, ALL of them agree: PE needs to be completely reformed from the ground up. The teachers need sensitivity training so, number 1, they can detect and stop bullying, number 2, so they know how to treat kids with special needs/kids that aren't jocks; the classes shouldn't be as free-form as they are now, and they should have to apply to several guidelines; the class itself shouldn't make as much of an impact upon GPA as other classes if it's left as a graduation requirement; the full amount of credits should be acrued even if the student fails the class (graduation shouldn't depend on this f*cking class, damnit! Colleges don't require it, the real world doesn't require it... what do we need it for? Staying "fit"? The classes don't help, they just make schools look worse by means of poor PE testing scores.); if a student is being bullied while performing a specific activity, they should be allowed to sit out of that activity (no, really, if you're stuck alone on the track and you're being bullied a lot, you shouldn't have to run on the freaking track); and several other new arrangements. If the class is to be kept (general concensus), then changes must be made. Drastic ones.

Also, I've made one important change happen: because of a discussion I had with the leader of the PE program at my school, starting next year, Modified PE classes (PE for children who can't do normal PE, basically) will be seperate, instead of 8 or 9 Mod PE kids grouped together with 50 normal kids into one class with one normal teacher. And, if you're wondering, kids with PDDs (Asperger's) are put into Mod PE, and I was in one of those classes myself. Beside that, I'm bringing that exact suggestion to the superintendant in a couple of weeks along with the reformed PE suggestion, so that the changes happen district-wide.

On the anti-bullying front, every one of the 12 teachers I talked to agrees that the punishments for PE, if even used, are WAY too lax, and need to be A LOT stronger, one even suggested that 3-day suspension or loss of parking permit on the FIRST offense! However, in order to have something to bring to the superintendant, I took the most popular suggestions for punishement and ordered them into a structured cycle: immediate Saturday School on first offense, fallowed by 2 Saturday Schools on second, 3 Saturday Schools and an After School Detention on third, 3 Day Supension and/or loss of permit on fourth, and on every subsequent offense, the same consequences as before plus suggestion for immediate transfer or expulsion. And this is not for fighting bullying either (fighting is placed under a different category, however, I'm going to adress the entire "who hit first" issue, because usually, the instigators [bullies] aren't punished because they don't hit first, even if they cause more pain.), this punishment structure is for verbal/mental abuse. That would include name-calling, non-sexual innuendo (if used for a negative purpose), verbal or mental provocation, negative annoyance, negative gestures (flipping the bird isn't one of these, that's placed under displays of vulgarity in my district), pranks, cruel jokes, etc. Also, for fighting bullying, I am going to strongly suggest coming up with punishement of some kind for "physical provocation" (pushing, shoving, spitting, throwing things at, etc.), as that alone causes many fights.

Here's hoping that if something happens in my school district, it will cause a domino effect, thus spreading the reforms around the country.

They had to tell us. School is not Fight Club. In Georgia, everyone talks. Student, teacher, or parents they always let something slip. We were a bunch of nosy little bastards. If someone was suddenly no longer at the school, then rumors would be flying all over the place and we knew where to eavesdrop in order to find out what we needed.

Source,

In most districts, they will tell you what occured but not why. If you look at death certificates, all they will say will be suicide (or the actual act such as a .22 slug in the head) for cause of death. No one will even speculate what caused the person to commit suicide. In fact, it would be interesting to see the contributing factors line for Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold on their death certificate just to see if they did say anything.

If teachers at your school are not doing their jobs by leaving students unattended then you definitely need to do something to make improvements. How many people are involved with this? Because if you're just writing letters nothing is going to be done. They'll just keep sending you replies and tell you that they're working on it.



PE at your school does need to be reformed but it shouldn't be canned. What if you're bullied in English? So that needs to be canned too, or students need to be taken out of those classes so their feelings won't get hurt? What is the point of making improvements at your school if you give in to the bullies? Which is exactly what you would be doing if you let bullies chase you out of classes and let them affect your education. How are PE classes graded at your school? Do PE classes really stop a person from graduating? The only time I've heard someone blame PE for not graduating, they were failing about two or three other classes.



I disagree with you on separating kids with mental disorders or learning disabilities. At my school some of the kids with special needs did a heck of a lot better physically then some of the normal functioning students. They made more friends in PE than in other classes because they were already separated from students in regular classes.



Do you have any cops at your school? Because they are a great deterence for bullying. How long have you been trying to do away with bullying at your school? You need to set a deadline for your school to start enforcing some more stricter rules. If they don't then you go over their heads. If that doesn't work, there is always the low blow. News stations. Schools do not like their name put into the news for bad reasons, and this usually lights a fire under their asses to get something done.

Roybertito, if that's true then that still doesn't mean PE needs to be banned. There just needs to be stricter adherance to anti-bullying policies by school staff. Seems a lot less drastic, doesn't it? And it would probably mean the PE classes would be better too. The teachers wouldn't be off talking to other teachers; they'd be helping the students, supporting them and providing supervision.

I used to think my districts were anal retentive, but you guys keep making my schools look better and better. Suicide is something that is already hard to tamp down to a solid reason, so I can't even begin to try to figure out why someone would go on a killing spree. Bullying was probably one of the factors. It usually is.

The classes that I tend to have most trouble with are the compusory classes.
Not a lot of people want to study subject A so it's made compulsory.
They don't want to study subject A because it's compulsory.
Students B,C,D, E and F take their anger out on student G - i.e. bully G.
Incident report: B,C,D,E,F back each other's lies up - making G out to be the bully. B,C,D,E,F get away with it while G is punished.
I once got accused of bullying the entire rest of the class. Those other students - backed each other up.
I'm one person. How the hell do they figure out that I can bully 28/29 other students?
If anyone knows, please enlighten me 'cos I'm plain ol' stumped.

I went to a football oriented high school- and I think that attitude carried over into P.E-all the instructors were hired as coaches-(along with most of the history teachers ).Nothing wrong with the concept of P.E.-there are non-competitive games,
and other group acitvities-but it shouldn't be a way to subsidize the sports program at the expense of other students
time and dignity.

To be honest, schools should not be subsidizing sports programs at all. I pay my school taxes so that the money goes to education, not football.

I personally think that sports should be cut off from school funding and should be forced to have to get funds from the city in their own right.