Imagine being held in an overcrowded prison. You haven’t committed any crimes and this prison doesn’t offer three free meals a day and doesn’t have a bed for you to sleep in.

Now imagine all the other inmates are 15, and there’s a good possibility that flying sports equipment will hit you in the face at any given moment. Congratulations, you are the proud senior being forced to take freshman gym just so you can graduate.

In case they aren’t already obvious, here are 10 reasons physical education. should not be a graduation requirement:

1. Not everyone is an athlete. There are all kinds of different sports taught in gym class – I get that. If you wanna learn how to shoot a basketball and make a touchdown, then fine, choose to take P.E. That’s your choice. Then there are people like me. Not an athlete in any way, shape or form. I have no hand-eye coordination whatsoever. As fun as catching a football with my face sounds, I think  I’ll pass.
2. Locker room distaste. Most students absolutely hate standing up in front of the class to give a presentation – and that’s when they’re fully clothed. So who decided that it’s a good idea to make kids change in front of each other? Yeah, let’s make the students with body image issues undress in front of other students, who will then stare and whisper to each other about said student. Because that’s not detrimental to a student’s learning environment. Not at all (said with as much sarcasm as I can muster).
3. Student athletes are also required to take it. Students who are already a part of multiple sports already get adequate amounts of physical exercise during their practices and games. Something could happen while they’re participating in the class. For example, we’ve got a football game this weekend, but Thursday in gym class, our star quarterback tripped on the field and sprained his ankle. Now he can’t play, and we’re gonna lose the game. Had it not been for the graduation requirement, we would’ve won that game. (note, there are multiple sides to this theory…some might think that if student athletes weren’t required to take it, then it would be preferential treatment of those students.)
4. P.E. does not exactly prepare us for our futures in any way, shape or form, though we would agree that Mrs. Fluty and Mr. Kistler are as good as it gets when it comes to preparing people for life. And high school does prepare us for the future. We will soon be going out into the real world. The real world has jobs. No job application is ever going to ask you if you can run the mile in under 8 minutes. A tattoo artist shouldn’t be dribbling a basketball while drawing something permanent on your skin. A doctor won’t be throwing a football around the operating room. A mechanic won’t be taking a pacer test while installing a new exhaust manifold. P.E. won’t affect our future, and therefore should  not be required for graduation.
5. Participation grades are a downfall. In order to pass the class to get the graduation credit, a student has to participate. Logic says that a student is more likely to participate in something they enjoy rather than a class that makes the student want to never come to school again. It’s just logic though. No worries. How about we appeal to the students and make education more fun to them by means of requiring classes that they are actually interested in?
6. Students may have the audacity to be different. Maybe, (I’m just spitballing here) they don’t want to throw a football around for a grade. Maybe they want to be an animation director for Disney. Which class do you think would take them further in their career? Physical education or art? Maybe they don’t have room in their schedule for an art class because physical education is taking up their only elective opportunity for the semester. Even though it would be more logical for that student to be taking art, the student is stuck taking a class that will never apply to their life.
7. Health class is already required.certain people may argue that gym is needed to teach people how to care for their bodies and stay healthy. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to learn in health class, a class that we are also required to take in order to graduate? We learn the basics in health class. Whether we choose to apply what we learn to our lives, or eat fries for every meal, that choice is on us. Being able to make the right choices is part of growing up. If we aren’t given the opportunity to make the choice for ourselves, then what are we really learning?
8. Students have disabilities. If a student has an injury or disability and they can’t participate in something the class is doing, they still have to make it up. I understand a teacher wanting their students to try, but when a student knows they are unable and still forced to do the exercise, it turns into something that’s more like public shaming. The student with the injury or disability is singled out while other students watch and wonder what could possibly be wrong with that student. That would be quite disruptive to the student’s learning environment. Sure, a student could get their  gym class requirement waived if they have a doctor’s note. Where would the line be drawn?
9. The United States Constitution gives us the “inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The word ‘inalienable’ means that no one has the power to take those rights away fro  you – not even a public school, or the government that regulates what the school teaches. There are students out there that absolutely hate physical education. The reason they hate it doesn’t matter, whether it’s because they aren’t good at sports, or that maybe they’d rather be taking band, robotics or maybe some other class that interests them. If they aren’t happy in the class, then it could be considered to be disrupting their constitutional rights. In other words, Give me Liberty or give me freshman gym (because I’d rather die than spend another day in that class).
10. The state does not require middle school students to take gym. Huh. Why teach fitness to kids while they’re still young and impressionable? Most middle school students don’t know what they want to do with their lives, so it would make more sense to have them take physical education then, to help them figure out what interests them. By high school, most kids have a pretty good idea about what they want to do with their lives. High school should be used to prepare them for that, instead of forcing them to participate in a class that doesn’t interest them. The other electives have multiple options. Why can’t P.E. be the same way?