Seeking to better understand how gym coaches contribute to making physical education and sports more fun for their students, researchers in Canada discovered what some of us already knew: gym coaches can make physical activity miserable.
In exhaustive self-assessments, 24 subjects explored five major areas of the physical education experience: instructors’ mannerisms, learning environment, enjoyable moments, socializing, and lessons learned from negative experiences. The research, seeking to uncover exactly how students’ physical education experiences are affected through their perception of enjoyment, fun, and happiness, revealed a strong correlation between negative experiences from aggressive gym teachers and a dislike for physical activity as adults.
The study potentially points toward an uptick in overbearing Canadian gym teachers and may very well explain why Canada’s obesity levels are catching up to ours. But it doesn’t explain why we still allow our children to be taught physical education by mean-spirited, bitter-because-their-knee-is-blown-out former professional athletes.
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