I remember the Presidential Physical Fitness test. I forget exactly what we had to do (this was in the ‘70s for me: ’71-’76 elementary school and ‘77-’79 middle) but I think it included pull ups, 50 yard dash, a longer distance run (like 600 yards?) the softball throw (in elementary school but not middle), the shuttle run, pull ups (girls had to do chin ups or be timed for how long the could keep their chin over the bar), the broad jump and sit ups. Basically the PE teacher assigned you a percentile from your result and a lot of the kids who were out of shape got shamed by the test (while the jocks always got an award after the test concluded) and most of us just tried to avoid being singled out by coming in last or getting a low percentile by not doing a pull up or having a slow dash time etc. A lot of kids would even skip school on the day they were testing some parts of the test to avoid it and these were the kids who would join band class in high school to avoid PE (In FL you had to take 2 years of PE in high school unless you were in the band for some odd reason). I guess the point was to promote physical fitness but it seemed to just turn some kids off from PE permanently and I am sure some insecure kids were scarred for life.
I remember the Presidential Physical Fitness test. I forget exactly what we had to do (this was in the ‘70s for me: ’71-’76 elementary school and ‘77-’79 middle) but I think it included pull ups, 50 yard dash, a longer distance run (like 600 yards?) the softball throw (in elementary school but not middle), the shuttle run, pull ups (girls had to do chin ups or be timed for how long the could keep their chin over the bar), the broad jump and sit ups. Basically the PE teacher assigned you a percentile from your result and a lot of the kids who were out of shape got shamed by the test (while the jocks always got an award after the test concluded) and most of us just tried to avoid being singled out by coming in last or getting a low percentile by not doing a pull up or having a slow dash time etc. A lot of kids would even skip school on the day they were testing some parts of the test to avoid it and these were the kids who would join band class in high school to avoid PE (In FL you had to take 2 years of PE in high school unless you were in the band for some odd reason). I guess the point was to promote physical fitness but it seemed to just turn some kids off from PE permanently and I am sure some insecure kids were scarred for life.