Gym Class Struggle

"Look, you see these marks?" he asked, tilting his head at me. "What do you think made them? Huh?"

"I, um, I don't know."

"Kids on skateboards," he said. "Man, I'd like to get my hands on those little so-and-sos."

As early as 1743, Ben Franklin was calling for schools to "have provisions for running, leaping, wrestling and swimming." But gym class didn't become a national priority until the Eisenhower Administration. In 1956 the old general established the President's Council on Youth Fitness, which John Kennedy changed to the President's Council on Physical Fitness, which Lyndon Johnson changed to the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, which it remains today. To some extent Ike's council was established in response to a much-publicized 1953 report that said 58% of American children had failed a muscular fitness test, compared with only 9% of Austrian, Italian and Swiss children. So America did what it does best: It threw money at the problem. The government took surveys, established councils, convened meetings. The upshot was a test that would reveal the extent of our youth's lack of physical fitness. When Ike and especially JFK embraced the test, it came to be known as the Presidential Fitness Test or the President's Youth Fitness Test or the President's Test or that President's Thing We've Got to Do in Gym Class.

Ah, nothing defined high school gym class in my era like that test, which consisted of pull-ups, sit-ups, the standing long jump (we called it the broad jump), the shuttle run, the 50-yard dash, the softball throw and the 600-yard run. In most classes, including mine, the test was conducted without proper training. Having never done a sit-up the entire year, I remember being doubled over in abdominal agony after practically killing myself to get to the magic number of 100. Determined to have the fastest time in the class, I recall taking off like a sprinter in the 600-yard run, then feeling frightened as first a brushfire, then a raging conflagration scorched my lungs; though I had played sports my entire life, I had probably never run more than 200 yards at one time. And what the hell did the softball throw have to do with physical fitness?

But the President's Fitness Test conferred a kind of official status on gym class. It reflected our national ethos: Compete, be the best, pound those Russkies into submission. If touch football on the splendid lawns of Hyannis Port was one of the foundations of Camelot, then by god we were going to play touch football in gym class. Bring your gym suit, put on your sneakers, go mano a mano, take a shower, get your ass back in here on Wednesday. That was gym. Though I have no doubt that parents, teachers, administrators and school boards took boys' phys ed more seriously than girls' phys ed—in the 1950s and '60s we did not yet know that girls could actually kick a soccer ball—females were definitely included in the mandate to improve America's physical fitness. For four years under Mr. Anderson and for all four years of high school, boys' and girls' gym requirements were exactly the same: a minimum of 150 minutes a week. And you know what? When physical fitness was evaluated on a national scale in 1965, scores on the President's Test had vastly improved since its inception in '58. So I shall proclaim 1964 through 1967, which coincided with my high school years, as the Golden Age of Gym Class.

To explain what happened to gym over the next three decades requires more space than is available here, but suffice it to say that society went through wrenching changes and gym class did, too. Authoritarian gym teachers who kept their classes outside until Thanksgiving became anachronisms. Reviled anachronisms. Title IX came along in 1972, which led to boys and girls being thrown together in gym, so teachers had to figure out something that could keep both genders occupied; the law still mandates coed classes except in the so-called "contact sports" of touch football, wrestling, lacrosse, rugby and, surprisingly, basketball. In the 1970s reading and math scores started to decline nationally, so money was taken from phys ed and put into those areas. Meanwhile, the race to get Johnny and Jill into "good schools" reached psychotic levels, and good schools were looking for kids who took advanced placement history, not kids who earned a patch in the President's Test. The same parents who would storm the school to question their third- grader's B- on a math test never said squat about the declining emphasis on gym.

Gymnasium space was at a premium, so gym classes grew to be too large. Academic options became so variegated, even in elementary and middle school, that gym class was marginalized. Mandatory showers? Not enough time. Gym suits? Administrators said there wasn't enough money to buy them, and parents balked at picking up the tab. The message came through loud and clear: Gym isn't important. Competitive team sports? Now, they're important. So, gym teachers who were also coaches began to spend more time plotting a 1-3-1 zone for their after-school studs than teaching Johnny how to climb the rope. A roll-out-the-ball mentality began to take hold, particularly in high schools. School districts started replacing gym class with almost anything—even band. "Some schools give gym-class exclusions for any activity that involves moving" says Judith C. Young, executive director of the National Association for Sports & Physical Education (NASPE), a professional society based in Reston, Va. In my day the only thing that got you out of gym, aside from an artfully forged doctor's excuse, was participation in an interscholastic sport.

The President's Fitness Test, now called the President's Challenge, reflects the change in gym. The test has five elements: curl-ups (a modified form of sit-ups); a one-mile run/walk; a shuttle run; pull-ups; and the sit and reach, a flexibility test. Its kinder and gentler nature is reflected in its four "levels of recognition." The high-achieving student can still earn the Presidential Fitness Award by finishing in the top 15%, but there are three other award levels. If you try at all, you'll get an award. When the original test was instituted, those who didn't earn the Presidential Award—which was almost everybody—could go pound sand. "The idea now," says Christine Spain, director of research, planning and special projects for the President's Council, "is for everybody to be a winner." Oh, brother.

Since the Kennedy years, setting gym-class requirements has been basically left up to state boards of education, most of which make it a low priority. A recent NASPE survey found that virtually every state has reduced its phys-ed requirements since the Kennedy years. Consider: