Times Are Changing in High School P.E.

In spite of its length, The Times article (on school showers) manages to skirt the real issue behind the reluctance of teens to shower after P.E. As seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders during the late ‘60s, many of us were subjected to the humiliation of being mocked for our biological endowments, swatted with wet towels, and being urinated on as we passed through a gantlet of shower stalls.

I can think of nothing more refreshing than showering after prolonged physical exertion, but if, as I suspect, conditions are as barbaric now as they were then, it is little wonder why pubescent males and females avoid communal showering.

MICHAEL TACCHIA

Santa Barbara

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So they don’t want to shower. Well, OK. I recently substituted at a Los Angeles high school. Only one member of the P.E. staff had a whistle. Students and staff were startled when I blew mine. Yes, times they are a-changing.

VAL RODRIGUEZ

Signal Hill

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Amazing how times change. When I was in high school, everyone showered after P.E., and it was considered an embarrassment not to. Now students would rather walk around campus feeling sticky and smelly than be seen naked in the showers.

Even more astonishing is the hypocrisy in tolerating this kind of “modesty” from adolescents. For the past 10 years, there has been a push to open up sex-related discussions inside the classroom to the point, in fact, of distributing condoms among students.

Yet juxtaposed with this liberal approach to educating teenagers about sex has been an implicit message to the same teenagers that the human body is something to be ashamed of. So much for sexual enlightenment.

ARNO KEKS

El Monte