With so much focus on the history wars, the other battles in the curricula have struggled to get much attention at all. Derided by many as mere skirmish, the PE Wars have been intense.
Many have felt that the nation has gone flabby ever since we did away with the Vaulting Horse and the Medicine Ball and the winter’s morning Cross Country Run. Way too much time spent in Creative Dance, Yoga and Nutrition and not enough time running at a springboard and attempting to leap over a large immovable object. These attempts clearly strengthened young peoples shins – when they bashed them on the top; their ankles - when they landed awkwardly on the other side; their head – when they missed horse or springboard entirely.
Very few children in Australia stand fearfully in a queue in a school gymnasium waiting their turn at the horse anymore. And yet, this clearly equipped us so well in the trenches. We’d been trained at school to unquestioningly ‘go over the top’. When that call comes again, will we be able to respond? It’s not just the health of the nation we’re talking about here, it’s our very defences.
And what happened to hurling a medicine ball around? For those from Generation Headphone who have no idea what one is, a medicine ball was about the size of a Royal Show pumpkin and weighed about as much as a bag of cement. It was considered enormously beneficial to a child’s physical development to hurl this ball at another child. Certainly catching one might bend a finger or two backwards, or if caught on the chest might cause severe winding or in some cases if caught with head, might cause concussion and lifelong migraines, but facing the medicine ball built character and gave a child backbone. So long as it didn’t shatter the backbone.
But surely these were risks worth taking. Our place in the Empire was at stake.
To put a team of children in the middle of gymnasium and allow the other team to hurl not one but many medicine balls at them is now regarded as barbaric. But the laughs we had when the smaller boys went over like skittles, when they slammed into the wall and one another in effort to escape, when one was left and all others ‘ganged’ up on him. Mateship was born in such moments.
But now upon entering the contemporary PE class you’ll find the children playing a ball game so anemic it may as well be played with feathers. You’ll find them doing stretches, and Pilates and perhaps having a discussion on diversity. A discussion? When did PE teachers start talking? They did all the communicating they needed to do by simply yelling out names and blowing a referee’s whistle.
It was an excellent educational tradition in this country that when the PE teacher felt the frost under his or her feet as they strode to the gym, then this was the right day for a long cross country run.
Stripped to shorts and singlets, the class would leave pale and shivering and returned ruddy and invigorated. Marvellous exercise for all and gave the PE teacher a much needed break in which to smoke his pipe and get his bets on.
Watch the kiddies struggle to get on the bus in the morning. Watch them waddle like arthritic turtles under the weight of a few books on their back. Watch them collapse exhausted after a few minutes vigorous texting and you cannot pretend that we don’t have a problem in this country.
A problem easily fixed by putting a few more Vaulting horses and medicine balls in Mr Rudd’s new school halls.