All those who vote to make this test required for all presidential candidates say aye…
Being fit to be drafted is for the little people. Presidential candidates can just get out of it by claiming to have bone spurs.
He wanted to make sure we didn’t get left behind 😌
What does this mean?
If you can’t bend over and touch your toes, you can’t be President.
The presidential fitness test is something us kids had to do every year. It was basically doing a bunch of different exercises, and if you did good enough you got a certificate.
Things like sit ups, push ups, chin ups, vertical jump, running a mile, etc. Based on your height and weight there was an expected level you were supposed to achieve.
I believe it. I guess I was hanging out with the metal heads, stoners, and hacky sack kids during gym. That’s why I got a D. And not the gym teacher’s D… That was reserved for the underage girls that used to play with his leg hair. Right there in the bleachers of a new Hampshire school.
(Actual true story… Girls used to play with his leg hair… This was middle school or 9th grade. Larry A. …I’m looking at you.)
Knowing my town, I’m surprised that guy stayed athletic director and not a paraplegic. He must have paid someone off. 70k to be a shit town gym director??
Where I grew up school was for chumps.
The village makes the villains.
In the US, there was a thing called the “Presidential Fitness Test” that kids had to do in P.E. (not sure if it’s still a thing).
I was born in 1999 and I’m pretty sure that I never had to do this.
I graduated high school in 1999 and I definitely had to do this in elementary school.
Same here.
What does this mean?
You had to be able to do so many crunches, pushups, etc, in a certain amount of time.
1 kid failed it. Thats how we got 9/11. The president was not fucking around.
Or what
There’s like 10 challenges including running a mile, a half basketball court relay, touching your toes (pictured), etc. There was a “great job” level and a “you did well enough to not fail” level. At my school, the great job level required you to meet a higher level at only 2 challenges and meant you got a free shirt. Other than that, there were no consequences. It was the same kids who did a great job each year, so a small subset of the class would be wearing those shirts all week, then walk home with a new one.
Or you have failed as a patriot.
Shame. Shame. Shame.
I was a fat kid. If you failed, you couldn’t get Phys. Ed. credit which was required coursework. They made you redo the test until you passed. The only other way out was a medical exemption. I eventually passed, damn near keeling over from the pain my lungs were in from running the mile. It made me resent my gym teacher and cardio, so in hindsight it was a pretty shitty way to encourage physical fitness. I didn’t get not fat until I was like 19.
Damn your school was harsh-- pretty sure they didn’t fail kids at my school in the 80s for failing the presidential test. I could never pass myself despite being an active kid. I was fine on most everything, then always barely squeaked by on the mile, but I could never do any pull-ups (even though the passing number was like 2 I think).
To be fair I never looked into it whether or not that was school policy, but I do know that Phys. Ed. credit was required. My gym teacher at the time was the type to have us running track while sitting on a lawn chair and munching McD’s breakfast, so he could have just been an asshole.
Dental plan.
Speaking of crazy things in US PE classes, if you learned to Square Dance, it was because Henry Ford was a racist who was afraid of Jazz.
That might be why it was added to the curriculum at first, but that’s certainly not why it stayed, nor why we did it at my school. It’s a pretty fun activity too, so a good use of that PE time.
Man. We hated square dancing time in PE.
I had horrible eyesight and was shockingly inept at all sportball games, even compared to other hopeless nerds, so I found it slightly less awful than the stuff we usually did.
There’s usually a dance section included in PE instruction, mostly to break up hard physical activity snd allow kids to have fun. The type of dancing depends on the school and the state, we did salsa dancing in Florida.
“Allow the kids to have fun”
Should have told that to my PE teacher in grade school. I’ve never been good at dancing, and I got pulled aside multiple times in front of the class because I just couldn’t follow some of the dances we were supposed to do. These weren’t for competitions or anything, just as an activity.
That’s when I learned that not all bullies are children.
Let me guess: “if you only applied yourself, you’d get it. It’s easy (for me). Watch!”
You’re younger than I am. For my generation, it was all square dancing.
Same. I lived in Minnesota and Indiana and did Square Dancing in both.
I’m over 60, growing up in SoCal we had Square Dancing and the Maypole but also the Mexican Hat Dance, plus Tinikling, the Filipino one with two poles. Oh, and I think a bit of Hula.
(Later as a teacher I taught my 2nd graders some Russian dancing I had learned from my ballet teacher, because little kids are bouncy and kicky and we could do it inside when it rained.)
I never had dancing in PE in any grade. Can’t decide if that sucks or not. Maybe I’d have better coordination now. We did get roller skating week though.
They had to make sure middle schoolers would be ready to fight a war at a moments notice
Am I the only one who couldn’t even reach the freaking box?
I was athletic, but not flexible. Shit was humiliating.
I also couldn’t do a pull up, but neither could most kids in my class, so that was alright.
I had to do it to Impress Pres. John F Kennedy.
My efforts were to impress Arnold Schwarzenegger and George H.W. Bush.
Tell me you’re in a cult without saying you’re in a cult.
Ours had a “Which president would you impress?” scale.
Nobody even reached Calvin Coolidge.Is this some sort of PE meme that I’m too Marching Band to understand?
Marching in the elements, while carrying an instrument, while playing, god forbid you have a wind instrument. That’s gotta be more physically gruelling than a PE class catering to the lowest common denominator.
Marching band was considered a varsity sport at my high school. Because if the golf team are considered athletes, so am I.
Before going to the comments section, I was like “wtf is this post?”
After reading a few comments, I’m fully bewildered. What the fuck is up with your crazy country?
We don’t know either. It’s just fucked and nobody cares.
It’s a fitness test for students so the government can track public health metrics. That Lemmy has a problem with it says a lot about Lemmy and nothing about America being “crazy.”
That’s unrelated.
The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20 meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly, but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal. [beep] A single lap should be completed each time you hear this sound. [ding] Remember to run in a straight line, and run as long as possible. The second time you fail to complete a lap before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word start. On your mark, get ready, start.
I had to do it to impress Bill Clinton. Side note, he gave me the worst handshake I’ve ever had in my life, just competely limp, dead fish style. So I don’t give a shit if he was impressed with how many crunches I could do.
Gotta make sure the youth can be good little soldiers if needed
This is 100% fact. Eisenhower made PE a universal part of education to increase overall fitness in the case of war and conscription.
I think it was worse than that. It was to test for and increase capability for military life, but the exercises themselves are not a good way to keep a general healthy body so it actually caused physical health to decline in the US.
Fuck yeah!
This very far predates George w Bush.
This predates George HW Bush
Reagan kid here, can confirm
Yeah it was Eisenhower. He was concerned our youth would be less fit than Europeans
Eisenhower also predicted the US military industrial complex.
Man called 'em as he saw 'em I guess.
Was Reagan impressed?
Bitch didn’t even show up to give me my award.
“Oh mommy… I’ve been shot…”
What a whiner.
