PE classes should teach children how their bodies work

In this post, we discuss why physical education classes should teach children how their bodies work, not just how to play sports.

Think back to PE at school. How was it for you?

I remember a sizeable group of kids who hated it. If you had no aptitude for a particular sport, or you were embarrassed about your body, I’m sure it was hell.

I meet some of those kids later in life. They’re often driven, analytical people who assumed exercise wasn’t for them. And they enjoy it, once it’s delivered in a format they find interesting and relevant.

So how do we make PE interesting and relevant for children, so they build a positive relationship with exercise early on?

Learning how the body works

A few years ago, my daughter’s school added meditation to the timetable. It gave the girls a few quiet minutes each day to explore their inner world. As regular readers know, I’m a firm believer in understanding how our minds work through direct experience.

It made me wonder why we don’t do the same with the body.

We all have one, yet many of us have no idea how it works. I don’t mean a biology class. I mean knowing where your joints are, how they move, and which muscles move them, learned by doing rather than from a book.

Imagine a lesson where children find and name their joints, then move each one through its full range of motion. Or one where they perform a set of squats and map what they feel (burning, breathlessness, a pounding heart) to what’s happening physiologically.

At work, I see adults who struggle with pain and injury partly because nobody has ever taught them how their bodies work. They’re meeting their own body for the first time in a crisis.

None of this replaces sport, which has real value. This would sit alongside it, giving children a grounding in how to use and maintain the remarkable vehicle they find themselves in.