h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

does anyone know where i might find a nice p.e. teacher? not to keep but just to actually convince myself that they do exist. i ask this because every single p.e. teacher i have ever had has either been a megolmaniac or b****/b****** (depending on gender). are u a sports teacher? if so can u tell me whether it is necessary to have, when u sign up for the university course, a loud shouting voice (like an army generals) a healthy disrespect for all human life (especially for girls aged betweeen 14-18) and absolutely no interest in sport what so ever? this last requirement is especially true to my teachers as the only things they ever teach us is how to cower in fear. i doubt either of them have attempted (god forbid) running sice they left college. has anyone else ever experienced this? and if so what do u think? is it an epidemic or just something that merely gravitates around myself? answers on a postcard to Dark Mistress.

I have indeed experienced the same thing for most of my life. There was, however, one PE teacher who was nice, but she was only teaching for 2 weeks and she was Australian (which may explain it). There is currently one PE teacher at my school who could *almost* be described as nice. She is still a b****, but after everything she tells us to do she adds "Please darling." I suppose it's a start, even if it is a little unnerving.

kin

please darling? hmmm sounds as if you've got it easy j/k please tell me are you like me made to do cross country every winter term? p.e teachers (in my experience) seem to think that this is the best (or should it be worst?) sport for us even though we do not compete with it or have any type of school running club. the thing that really me however is that not once have they come on the run with us and last term someone fell and had an epileptic fit whilst on the course. perhaps you have found this too? i think that p.e teachers must be in the employment of the government and are used to surpress us the easy influenced youth! anyways if you have any more ideas on this i would be v. interested to hear them.
dark mistress

I'm a 49 year old Art teacher and I can assure you that PE teachers have improved considerably since I was a games/pe hating teenager many moons ago.Cheer up it isn't for much longer in your lives and then you will have some memories to mull over when you attend school reunion do's in your long distant futures.

I have been on some of those X-country s and suffered greatly. We *do* have a crosscountry team, but the same ppl have been on it for about 5 years....(the PE teacher's pets!) and not much chance of the rest of us getting on however fast we run!....Why is it that all PE teachers are so sadistic!

(and I'm sorry Incognitas, but my art teacher is almost worse than some of my PE teachers!!)

kin

i know what you mean about p.e. teachers pets. always the best runners or hockey/netball players in the school who crowd around the witches and are always praised whereas most of the pupils are shunned. all p.e teachers must have an in built sadistic chip or something. on the other hand i have found that art teachers are only eccentric not intentionally sadistic.

I was recently having one of those drunken conversations about what would you do differently in your life, if you had your time over again, knowing what you know now.

Speaking as a 23 year old Astrophysicist who's just graduated from University, I now know that it would have been quite safe to tell my PE teacher to go **** himself and never attend a PE lesson again, without affecting my chances of getting into college in the slightest.

I'm trying to remember a quote from Red Dwarf, where Holly (Norman Lovett) says he has an IQ of 1000, which is the same IQ as 1000 carpark attendants, or 2000 PE teachers. Something like that anyway

Not sure of the quote but Holly had an IQ of 6,000. They showed a episode last night on cable where Holly was replaced by an emergency backup computer who made Rimmer go on long runs around the ship every morning. And then I find this conversation.

i greatly agree with your statement of how just telling p.e teachers exactly what you think of them (when you have left school or it is the last day) will not affect anything that you do in life other than perhaps giving yourself more self esteem and pride because you have jus got that son of a ***** back for the years of torment they put you through. thankfully i still have this chance as i have another 2 years of excrucitating cross country lessons to look forward too. Believe me i'm already thinking about what to say as i want to make it as nasty as possible. they'll think that go **** yourself would be the best thing they could hope for. anyway that time will come and if you have any suggestions on what i should say or what you'd like me to say (because i believe that this world would be a better place if we have more revnge on p.e.teachers ) then post me.
oh and i think that quote your looking for is
(holly) "I have an IQ of 6000, or that of 6000 p.e teachers."
DM

I have some more requirements for your list:
-You must be able to stand in a field in dead midwinter, wrapped up in several thermal layers and big socks, telling a class of girl sin hockey skirts that it's not cold- and keep a straight face.
-You must have been in your youth one of those who picked on people who couldn't catch, run fast etc. because now you get paid for it.
-If female, you must have a hideous short blonde perm. If male- a silly name.
All the teachers I ever suffered under loved sport, and could not understand those who didn't. This also led them to assume we all knew the rules of every game and what the initials on the netball bibs meant (and where to stand). They would accuse me of not trying when I missed the ball, and encourage the rest of teh class to think I was stupid. Once a group of idiots took to throwing volleyballs at my face, and the f***ing stupid teacher sent me out of the lesson so the game wouldn't be disrupted. After tha my parents kindly gave me permission to miss PE lessons, which I was only to happy to do. There was a consolation in that all the proper teachers mocked them too.

I used to have a battleaxe of a p.e. teacher, who would insist you participated no matter how ill or injured you were, and she would back up her insistance with the phrase "just do as much as you can"

this included when I had blood gushing from the knee (which I still have a scar from), and when my sister had an asthma attack

I know what you mean. A friend of mine fell once and cut her ankle. The PE teacher insisted she continue, as a result of which her ankle became dangerously infected and she was in hospital for weeks. The doctors said if the infection had spread it could have been increadibly serious.

And I still have 3 years to go *shudder*.

kin

pe teachers are the spawn of the devil
^. .^
= ' =

I actually had a nice P E teacher once. He was kind, didn´t yell and very encouraging. Of course it was found out so he was taken away from us after about six months and replaced with one of the more normal variety.

One bad thing about PE is also it doesn´t matter how hard you try, what matters is what you do. You can put a lot more effort into it than the guy besides you, but if he happens to be playing football in his spare time he gets better grades. Also the most recent PE teachers I´ve had couldn´t remember our names after three years. Which also showed on the grades, they might as well have rolled a dice.

I remember when I was younger, I used to get stomach pains from nervousness before PE.

where do you think they send all the nice pe teachers to? is there a special government camp where they learn to be nasty or are they just exterminated as freaks of the sporting profession?
i know whhat you mean about having to play when it is cold or in other adverse weather conditions. so far i have experienced playing football in about a foot of snow (in a skirt!!!) also playing netball and hockey whilst it was snowing, hailing (that really hurts) when the courts have black ice on them (so you fall over every 2 mins) and when visability is so poor you can only see 5 yards in front of yourself. one of the worst was when we were playing hockey during a thunderstorm with it torrentially raining whilst lightning struck the ground and trees just a few hundred metres from where we were playing. it was terryfying but the teacher told us to carry on playing whilst she stood there in her fleece and overcoat with rubber wellington boots, an umbrella and a mug of hot chocolate.
anyone else had to play in conditions like these?
DM

No but has anyone here ever really seen a pe teacher do anything that seemed just remotely like physical excercise? It is amazing they can keep a straight face when they stand there telling us excercise is good for you.

no, but I have heard reports that one of my PE teachers was seen hitting a tennis ball!!! Although these reports have never been proven....

A vague school friend of mine suffered from asthma. She'd been ill, and on returning to school tried to skip PE, only to be told if she was ok to go to school she was ok to run around in the cold and damp. Several weeks of unpleasantness then passed, with her eventually having to bring letters from parents and doctor's notes before they'd let her off. Sickening.
Whenever a PE teacher told me that if I was well enough to be in school I should do PE, I was tempted to tell them that I was quite well enough to do proper lessons but didn't want to waste my energy with them.
Now we have politicians arguing for more team sports in school since it 'improves confidence, teamwork and character-building'. Have they ever watched? I know that PE went a long way to decreasing my confidence and causing idiots to mock me.
Stupid. And I do quite a lot of exercise now, just none of it team-based.

And let's not even discuss the too-tight institutional exercise clothing, showing off every strangely flabby curve and bulge. The PE teachers I had in Junior High were fairly butch (not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily, just when you're 12 and undressed, it is rather unnerving) and rather mean. We were supposed to have our names on our PE clothing a la the military, and my mom went the extra mile and embroidered my name plus a flower or two. (Awww!) When the Junior High PE teachers saw this, they laughed and one said "Jeez, I didn't ask for the moon, did I?"

As you can see, it's one of those memories that have scarred me for life...

Everyone used to leave their stuff all over the place, which meant I was always picking up someone else's identical skirt, or gym knickers (argh!) and being told off when I got home. I used to think that other people were equally to blame for not checking the names in the stuff they took.
Our school was very keen on us taking showers. The PE teachers enforced this mercilessly, using an excuse book which you'd be marked in if you were on your period. Hideous. And woe betide if you forgot your towel... they'd probably make you roll nude in the grass to get dry.