In the midst of the current school finance crisis, Texas public schools are wasting money on a program that has nothing to do with education - required physical education classes.
This is not Swiftian satire. Gym classes, equipment and coach salaries - if cut - would provide an immediate benefit to the students of Texas above and beyond recovered fiscal waste.
Gym class is, without exception, grueling and cruel. It is one of the few aspects of school that has absolutely no academic component and is even counterproductive to its stated mission: producing healthy students.
After all, we have an obesity problem in this country despite gym requirements. It seems that once students are no longer required to exercise, they stop exercising completely.
Anyone who's ever been unable to read a wonderful classic work of literature because they were forced to in school should be able to grasp why most people stop exercising once they get out of gym class. It is negative reinforcement at its worst.
Gym classes are horrid affairs starting with the humiliation of public undressing in the locker rooms, the needless berating of gym instructors, the endless insults (euphemistically referred to as "teasing") from peers and - in some cases - violence.
Students are not taught the value of health and sportsmanship; they are instead taught to fear and hate physical activity and the people who enjoy engaging in it.
Gym clothing adds to this problem. The requirement to change into gym clothing was so that students don't sweat into normal clothing, promoting good hygiene. But students continue to sweat, even after changing back into street clothing.
The only way to prevent this is showering - usually in groups - which is another public humiliation that shouldn't be heaped onto kids.
We are conditioned - through gym class - to loathe health and exercise. We are programmed to loathe sport except as a spectator endeavor. We are brainwashed to hate everything even remotely to do with health.
Fast food places have nothing on the "Clockwork Orange"-inspired public school system when it comes to encouraging people to behave in unhealthy ways.
And eliminating physical education would not necessarily stop physical activity.
Students seeking health in public education could still participate in extracurricular sports. If the sports remain completely voluntary and the students have fun, after-school sports should continue.
It is required physical education that is the travesty.
The odd thing is: Talk about the possibility of cutting art or music, and parents might start to get angry. Remove something as obviously useless as gym, however, and one suspects that parents would be up in arms, marching (or, with America's current collective health problem, waddling) up to the capitol.
Some problems can only be solved by funding solutions. A solution to the crisis is not going to occur anytime soon without public outcry, but that outcry won't likely occur until schools start cutting.
What better place to start than P.E.?
Boyko is a journalism graduate student.
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