Phthursday Musings: More Practical Suggestions

Off the top of my head, my class schedule from my freshman year of high school:

1. English

2. Spanish

3. Keyboarding

4. Geometry / Lunch

5. World Geography

6. Gym / Health

7. Biology

And some notes on all of this:

• Yes, I can remember my class schedule from my freshman year of high school, and yes, maybe, I can remember the other three years as well, but to be fair, we had very few electives to choose from, so it’s not all that much to remember.

• Yes, I had a class called “Keyboarding”, and yes, we used typewriters, and maybe, just maybe, this is the surest way to distinguish Gen X from Gen Y.

• But, maybe not.

• I don’t know that the name of the 5th hour class was actually “World Geography”, actually, but I think it was. We did learn some geography of the world. I remember learning the capitals of Europe. It is entirely possible that all we did the entire year was learn the capitals of Europe, as I’m kind of doubting our teacher had anything much else to teach us. I believe the equivalent class at other schools might have been called “Western Civilization”.

• The whole point of this silliness was to talk about 6th hour!

So this is how 6th hour worked: Mondays and Tuesdays, we had Health with Mr. Mowen. Mr. Mowen was a big dude. He was the wrestling coach and he looked like it. He was also a Vietnam vet and he was very friendly and was one of those people who just commanded respect from everyone. Thursdays and Fridays, we had Gym with Murph. Murph was the basketball coach. (He is still the basketball coach.) There was another class which had the reverse schedule. And on Wednesdays, both classes had gym together, which tended to be an exercise video.

I have to admit that at this point, I have forgotten whatever exactly I might have learned in Health, though that might just be because I didn’t learn anything which wasn’t more or less common knowledge. I think we learned that we had lungs and could catch colds and some other shit… I don’t know. But I am not criticizing the contents of the class itself. Rather, what I am critical of, in retrospect, is how limited health education was.

Thursdays and Fridays, what I remember is running laps in good weather, and going to the fitness room most of the time. We actually learned how to lift weights! At the time it seemed incredibly silly. We didn’t play basketball, we didn’t play volleyball, we didn’t play dodgeball, we did… standing side flies and bench presses. Boys and girls both. Really.

I was at physical therapy today, as I have been twice a week for the last few weeks, on the long recovery from breaking my collarbone. This isn’t my first time through physical therapy either. I went briefly after my initial diagnosis of bulging discs a few years ago, then went back when confronted with the idea that if I couldn’t find a way to make physical therapy to work, the only other option put on the table was surgery.

After my experiences, I am a huge proponent of physical therapy. I was before the current situation, and I am even more so now.

I do not think it is that the exercises are excessively brilliant. It is instead that the exercises are eminently practical, even the super weird ones.

When you’re 13, not terribly athletic, and living in a world where there aren’t fitness centers everywhere, having the basketball coach teach you how to do squats and having the wrestling coach teach you that your skin can burn doesn’t all seem especially meaningful. I look back though and it occurs to me that… those could have been two out of maybe six classes in high school where I learned anything practical that I wasn’t liable to have learned anywhere else. If both of those classes had been a full week, if we’d learned about nutrition in more than four pages of a textbook, if we’d learned about physical fitness in conjunction with anatomy and actually internalized some of what we were doing, those classes would have been much, much more powerful. I sincerely think that if I had not had those silly sessions in the fitness room, I would have been much less comfortable years later doing some basic exercises.

I don’t know what classes are required in high school these days, but I’ll bet a lot of them shouldn’t be, at least not in the form they’re typically taught. We need more health, more actual physical education, more classes which can teach you something you’ll actually use 30 years later. I didn’t learn anything practical from dissecting a sponge and I’m doubtful I’ve ever found a real life use case for angle-side-angle triangle congruence. I’m not saying there isn’t one! But I have a real life use case for better understanding how the muscles meet in my left shoulder, and I sure didn’t learn anything about that. Health in high school could have been a very good class if it was built out to be, instead of just mumbling our way through a standard textbook.

We were at lunch this week and the topic came up that there’s a class you can take to get over the fear of flying. They’ll explain to you in detail what every weird sound is. The class works.

It occurred to me that everybody should take a class like that, because overcoming the unknown of something eminently practical like being on a flight, that has to carry lessons for overcoming the unknown of so many other things.

But as I sit and write now, it further occurs to me that in a sane world, we would all be taking practical classes on a regular basis! Not 40 hours a week, just a couple hours a week. We would all have easy access to physical therapy! We would all learn how to lift weights! We would all learn how to overcome basic real world anxieties! We would all learn something practical that would absolutely help us be better friends and co-workers and you-name-its.

That’s the kind of place I want to live, the kind of job I want to have. One where everybody is constantly learning. Where we all learn how to give CPR! Where we all learn exactly how to successfully compost! I don’t know! Where things like this aren’t unusual but totally standard!

And let’s start in high school! Fine, the kids can read Shakespeare, but let’s also have them read Income Tax For Dummies or whatever! Let’s make sure they all know how to sew a damn button back on to a shirt!

Or let’s start even earlier! Somebody please take my third grader and show him and his classmates how to properly gift wrap!

Seriously, doesn’t this sound like a nice place to live, where constant education is extremely encouraged, and it can be eminently practical, and very neighborly, and we can just all stop being jerks and learn how to be really good to each other?

In the spirit of good will to all humankind, I give you what remains the greatest music video ever created:

As Casey Stengel allegedly said: Sometimes it’s easier to understand things than it is to figure them out.