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I'm going to take the opposite position and insist that schools shouldn't be wasting time on gym at all. I don't think the point of school is to provide children everything that we think is "good". Schools should not be thought of as substitute parents with a broad mandate to produce good student life outcomes in general. Schools should be narrowly focused on basic instruction in reading, writing, math, and science.
I also don't think there's any place for literature in the curricula of any non-elective classes in middle school to high school. Literature is entertainment. It can be used as a vessel to teach reading and writing, but you could just as well do that with nonfiction. So you might as well be teaching them about things that are actually true or things that actually happened. This is doubly the case for older literature (e.g., Shakespeare or anything from the ancient world), which is not something that is easy for modern readers to understand or be interested in. Frankly, I think the emphasis on it borders on snobbery in many cases.
On the first point, it'd be great if we could expect parents to ensure kids got access to physical activity. In previous generations kids for the most part were fit enough without schools intervening. But today, that's not happening. Parents should make sure their kids go to sports or are otherwise fit outside of school, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not happening. And given that fitness has such a vast variety of positive benefits, I think the government should intervene to make people fitter, and school's the best way to do it.
On the second point, I 100% agree and that's my exact belief as well.
First, I'm not convinced that childhood fitness is that important. I suspect the negative health effects of fitness don't reveal themselves until many decades later, and that fitness habits started in early adulthood should be sufficient to stave off the effects of poor fitness. Yes, childhood obesity is a problem, but I'm not convinced that's due to lack of exercise.
Second, regardless of the benefits, I just don't see how that's the school's job. What's the limiting principle? Should everything that's important and beneficial be done in school? Should schools have classes on healthy eating? Healthy social media usage? General socialization? Driving instruction? Home improvement? Taking care of a baby? Household budgeting and financial prudence? I mean, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if you'd say "yes" to some or all of those if you already think schools should basically be in the business of being parents. I just emphatically disagree. One of the things I always hated most about schools was how fucking patronizing and infantilizing it was.
Finally, once you open the door to the idea that schools should be entrusted as quasi-parents with a broad mandate to do good things for children, you're giving your ideological enemies (whoever they are) license to indoctrinate your kids. They already have too much latitude to do that with reading, writing, and science curriculum, but I certainly don't want to make it any easier for them.
I'm not totally unsympathetic to that vision of education, but I think the cultural divisions in the US have gotten so bad that there's no way to structure universal K-12 education in this way that will satisfy a large majority of the population. People understandably don't want their ideological enemies trying to mold their children in these ways. They barely tolerate it when it comes to the putatively value-neutral core curriculum.
I think the only solution in the US for an education system the way you envision it is in the form of separate school systems.
A secular education is such a no-brainer for successful civic outcomes. I'm not sure on some of your other points - I'm not sure it's 'been always thus' as you seem to imply at the end, because indoctrination has varied in kind and degree quite a lot.
America, through people like John Dewey have articulated clear visions of education, and have presumably had their influence. Now, I think we face a deeper issue with regard to post-modern ideas, break down in research academia, new technologies impacting etc. I think the conditions are for indoctrination to be unusually bad currently, over an arc say to the beginning of the 20th century.
If the rebuttal is that we've always taught propagandising myths around national identity, history etc, I'd entirely agree with you. But I think it's a different kind of situation because the basics of pedagogy/child development were still prioritised. With the postmodern morass we are losing our actual orientation to learning.
This isn't actually true- Catholic schools are of generally excellent quality,
Oh right, I wasn't really meaning not having religious schools, I was thinking for public schools, public funds to have an expectation of secularity. I'm also in favour of charter schools with different perspectives etc.
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