Looking back to the two years of P.E. I took, I question why I even had to take P.E. I remember having to run under the sun’s heat and play sports with classmates who made little effort.

I feel like it was a waste of my time attending that class when I could’ve had another class that I actually needed in order to graduate or to prepare for college. P.E. is not a beneficial class.

It provides no actual learning skills. It does teach students how to play a couple of sports, but I doubt many students are going to need to know how to catch a plastic ball with a plastic scoop.

Those who have P.E. as their last period are lucky because attending an academic class after running a mile is horrible. It feels awful to sit through an academic class with your energy completely drained and with sweat on your face. It makes it hard to focus.

Obesity is a problem in America and many believe that making teens take P.E. will make them lead a healthy lifestyle, but that is not true. After running, many students head over to the vending machines to munch on goodies. We have a health class that already teaches students about health-related issues, where running the pacer is not a requirement.

P.E. class can also leave many feeling bad about how they couldn’t perform as well as others. It is a bad feeling knowing others can finish running under the amount given or are better at doing sports. Of course no one can be good at everything, but stressing over something like running isn’t emotionally healthy.

P.E. classes don’t give many options either. Students are told what sports to play and how many laps to run each week. I think everyone should do physical activity at their own pace and what feels good for each individual body. We should have specific sport classes to pick from or more than one sport offered during P.E. class.

P.E. should be an elective, not a requirement. Forcing teens to take P.E. will not make them avoid eating junk food nor guarantee that they will always be physically active as adults.

I think everyone should be able to take care of their own health and choose whether physical activity is needed in their life.