Physical education teachers claim that students are not getting enough exercise.

SPORTS clubs and schools should significantly increase co-operation so that sports-playing youths don’t come under unreasonable pressure in their everyday lives. This is the opinion of Sami Kalaja, a teacher of physical education and health from Jyväskylä. To this end he recommends regular meetings and an electronic communications system which would show the sports player’s camps, practices and the school’s P.E. classes.

“If a young person comes home late at night from a tournament, there’s no need to drag him to school first thing the next morning. If there are tests or P.E. classes scheduled at school, the sports club could adjusts its activities accordingly,” Kalaja explains.

Kalaja, who works as a lower secondary school principal, is finishing his thesis on the learning and teaching of physical education. He argues that these days sports clubs and schools follow their own schedules. This can result in overlap. Kalaja offers an example of this from a couple of years ago:

“I held a very effective weights training session for ninth graders. One of the kids involved was an ice hockey player in the national team. When the two-hour session came to a close, the boy stayed behind loitering at the gym. When I asked what was up, he told me he had weights training with the team. It made no sense at all.”

Sports schools should be an alternative

Sami Kalaja would also like to see schools support young athletes’ sporting careers with constructive solutions. He would implement the type of system used in sports-specialised secondary schools as early as primary school.

“After all, we already have music classes that begin in the third grade. Why couldn’t we also have sports classes starting at the same point with the same social support as that given to music classes?”

Kalaja feels that this type of sports school would bring talents to the fore.

“We take good care of our weakest students, and rightly so. But our system isn’t very good at meeting the needs of talented students interested in testing their limits.”

Kalaja points out that talent in sports is more often associated with enthusiasm and diligent training than genetic gifts like oxygen uptake. A working group lead by Risto Nieminen, CEO of the Finnish lottery Veikkaus, advocates a thorough shake-up of elite Finnish sports. An important element of the working group’s recommendations – submitted on 14 April – is diversity in the range of exercise offered to children and young people by schools and sports clubs.

P.E. teachers advocate more classes

P.E. teachers would like to see an increase in the number of school hours dedicated to physical education. Kari Kattelus, a primary school teacher in Oulu, would raise the number to at least four hours each week.

“The amount varies from one class to the next, but during the decisive period in terms of sports – the cusp of adolescence – it is twice a week for 45 minutes. And some of that time is lost mucking about in the showers,” Kalaja says.

Both teachers regard school P.E. as important because it offers students professional guidance on exercise.

“Recess, clubs and school trips are all added exercise. But they pale in comparison to professionally guided, sufficiently long P.E. sessions,” Kalaja argues.

Implications for inequality

There is also a connection between school P.E., sports hobbies, and the number of friends a student has, in which P.E. teachers rarely intervene. The pattern has implications for inequality: according to a thesis published in January by Päivi Berg, the most successful P.E. students tend to be those who practice sports in a sports club in their free time – an expensive hobby.

The significance of friend numbers is emphasised when the group is divided into teams. At the moment this typically involves the P.E. teacher nominating team captains who then choose their team mates in turns. Being chosen last can be humiliating. School bullying can also take place in this context, when the captains avoid choosing bullied students for their team.

This type of neglect and the resulting psychological suffering are familiar sights in school P.E. Accounting for the social implications of school P.E. in lesson planning is manifestly important, and responsibility for this cannot be left to students themselves.

PÄIVI SEESKORPI – STT
MATTHEW PARRY – HT
Lehtikuva - Roope Salonen