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The story
An opinion that school PE class “is nothing but an hour of humiliation for kids who are bad at sports, and should be scrapped” went viral on 5ch. PE has long been a divisive subject — in activities like distance running and ball games, rankings and skill gaps are painfully visible, making it easy for less athletic students to develop an inferiority complex. In the thread, opinions supporting PE for its health and developmental benefits clashed head-on with those calling for scaling it back or showing more consideration due to the psychological toll, and the debate escalated into a broader question of principle: should the benefit of the majority take priority over the suffering of the minority?
What people said
If you wanna exercise, just go do it on your own time.
Takasu said stamina is determined at birth. (referring to Takasu Katsuya, a cosmetic surgeon and TV personality known for eccentric claims)
Run every day and you'll build stamina.
Before whining, try running 5km a day and make it a habit.
I went to a pretty elite prep school and I sucked at sports.
*sigh*
Whether you're good at it or not, there's hardly anything else that's a guaranteed net positive like that.
Listen, everyone ends up a flabby, out-of-shape adult eventually anyway.
People who want to exercise will, people who don't, won't — with or without forcing it.
So don't force it.
Do you realize what you're saying? "Cut anything from education that I personally dislike or suck at" — that's a wild take.
What are you even on about, skinny vs. fat?
The point is that regular exercise during your growth years is a benefit.
You need it at that age to properly develop your bones and muscles.
And whatever happens later in life is just speculation on your part.
I'm saying there's no need to eliminate a proven universal benefit during the growth years just because of that.
But mocking someone who's trying hard and still can't do it well — that's toxic.
It really shapes a kid's character.
If you show you're actually trying, people watch warmly.
The uncoordinated loners are usually the ones who don't even try in team sports and mock others instead.
No wonder they get looked down on.
Same goes for studying — you can copy the methods of people who are good at something, but your body and brain aren't theirs, so sometimes effort only gets you tiny gains. Yet so many people mock others for that, whether it's sports or school.
The "arrogant cruelty of humiliation"? lol what does that even mean
Are you even Japanese? lmao (mocking the OP's garbled, ungrammatical phrasing)
Sorry, typo.
Maybe brush up on Japanese grammar first?
What word were you even trying to type?
More importantly, having your self-esteem crushed in PE and turning into a gloomy adult is a way bigger problem, idiot.
That's not really a downside, it's just a feelings-based claim with no clear cause and effect.
So what's the concrete, universal downside — big enough to justify taking away something proven to benefit everyone?
Hey, listen.
Why is the majority opinion treated as absolute?
If even one person is suffering so badly they want to die, that's a problem even if everyone else is happy, dumbass.
If you start saying that, society stops functioning.
Why should everything be set to the standard of people who don't even try?
What are you even going on about, "the majority"?
What I'm asking is: what's the universal downside — on the same scale — that would justify forcibly taking away something scientifically proven to benefit everyone?
I'm asking why forcing the abolition of a real, proven benefit for everyone else is justified, based on someone's feelings rather than facts.
If you get humiliated as a kid, you might grow up less likely to mock other people's failures as an adult.
Isn't this just incredibly mean-spirited?
You've probably never failed at anything in your life.
Laughing so hard your face scrunches up while turning someone's honest mistake, made while they were trying their best, into a punchline…
Otherwise you end up like Re: #45 — a successful person who still gets a kick out of mocking other people's mistakes.
Robbing kids of their potential is the real wrong here.
Catering to the kids who can't do it is a mistake.
It's precisely the kids who can't do it who need hands-on experience the most.
Even if you scrap PE, kids who love sports will exercise anyway.
Think it through a bit more, seriously.
"Nothing but upsides" ← uh, that's exactly why this thread exists, because that's not true ƪ(˘⌣˘)ʃ
Is there any actual downside to teaching kids sports?
Ball games and the like are basically just play anyway — most kids enjoy them as a break.
THAT'S — WHAT — I'M — SAYING
it plants a sense of inferiority in you
it messes with your mental health
Get it??????
There are endless situations in life that can plant a sense of inferiority in you — you can't eliminate all of them.
Having that inferiority complex or not doesn't really change your life much.
Your actual ability stays the same either way.
If you've got an inferiority complex, try putting in the effort to shake it off.
Getting to an average level at PE-type stuff is easy if you push yourself a bit.
Just start with running every day.
Your body doesn't lie.
Kids who get coddled growing up are more likely to turn into messed-up adults with a wildly inflated sense of self.
Even so, PE singles kids out way too much —
over stuff they can't even control.
That's basically most of Gen Z these days.
Background and Key Points of the Debate
The debate over keeping or scrapping PE class is a recurring one, driven in part by the fact that national curriculum guidelines make “physical education” mandatory all the way through elementary, middle, and high school. The thread split over a single question: which matters more — the medical benefit that exercise provides to bone and muscle development during a child’s growth years, or the damage to self-esteem caused by having rankings and failures put on public display? One easy-to-miss point is that the abolition argument isn’t really “exercise itself is bad,” but an objection to the system of ranking and comparison — yet within the thread, “we don’t need exercise” and “we don’t need PE class” ended up getting conflated partway through, leaving posters talking past each other. A difference in values over whether an inferiority complex is something to overcome through effort, or something that shouldn’t be inflicted on kids in the first place, was also part of why the two sides never converged.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread ““For kids who can’t do sports, PE is nothing but the arrogant cruelty of humiliation, so it should be scrapped” — fair point.”
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