If we are serious about education in the USA, we need to work the problem from "both" ends. If we want some thing better, we normally work on just the positive items. This is what we call the "primal". What most people do not understand is that there is also a "dual" which means working from the other direction. Look at it this way. If you were looking for the Red Easter egg in a basket, you could search thru the basket just looking for the Red Easter egg or you could take out all the eggs that were "not" Red and the one remaining would be the "Red" Easter egg. I think that we all know that if we do "both", take out the ones that are not Red and keep looking for the Red Easter egg, we will find the Red Easter egg the fastest. This is called, "the primal/dual" method. This is how we need to solve most problems including education. We need to work both ends. Now, how do we do that?
Let's take PE. If you talk to kids in school and those who are now out of school, most will tell you that PE was one of the most worthless classes that they had in school. Most kids liked the PE teachers, but the class was still the most worthless. You ask them how their PE class has helped them later in life and most will just smile and wonder if you are crazy or not. Most score it "zero". Rather than putting all our efforts on the "primal" and ways to make schools better, why don't we start by eliminating the things that are worthless? Most schools have a gym with boys and girls bathrooms with lockers and showers. These are some of the most expensive facilities with in the school and produce almost nothing. The PE teachers are mostly self selected on the basis that they were bigger, stronger and faster than the other kids in school, not that they were smarter. You can look this one up too, but PE teachers have even lower average SAT scores than regular teachers while all teachers have the lowest SAT scores of all college majors. If we were to dump PE and the PE teachers from our schools, we would save money, student's time and raise the average SAT score of our teacher core. How could that be bad?
I forgot about all the fat kids and sex education. What has been the record in this area? Our kids are now fatter and we have more kids involved in sex and having kids out of wed lock. Sounds to me like the PE teachers and all the money that we have spent has not done much good. How could things be much worse if we eliminated PE and all the PE teachers?
I know that my blog readers are a good cross section and thus I ask you to think back at what important things you learned in your PE class that have helped you get thru life. I don't think you will need a very big piece of paper. If you feel that you are or were some kind of special athlete, then list down the things that your coach taught you that you would not have learned on your own. This going to be a lot smaller list than you may think. The bottom line is that we can make things better by just cutting out the worthless things. The average of what is left will be higher. That is the way it works and making things better is the name of the game.
PS----Did you ever notice that the teachers who are best liked by the students teach the easiest classes? Compare, Art, PE, Social Studies and Math and see if this is not true? Did you also notice that a disproportionate number of PE teachers become administrators? Do you think this makes our schools better or worse? PE and PE teachers are a bigger problem.than you thought.
