Children's Fitness

Remember your physical education (PE) classes in school? If your experience was anything like mine, it was a class you truly hated. And if, like me, you were not a natural athlete, your painful memories may have actually discouraged you from exercising later in life.

A recent New York Times article, “Putting the Gym Back in Gym Class” (October 13, 2005), explores this problem and examines what some PE professionals have proposed to improve the situation. In part this re-evaluation is due to the sharp curtailment of school PE programs in recent years. As the article explains, “School administrators began cutting physical education programs...because of the way many classes were taught. Budget cutters who remembered playing dodge ball and Red Rover came to view gym class as dispensable.”

But there is also a genuine understanding that PE has not, for the most part, been successful in promoting health and fitness. Only a tiny percentage of students continue playing the sports they learned in gym class after graduating from high school. (When was the last time you and your friends enjoyed a game of dodge ball?)

And many of the sports emphasized in gym failed to help those who needed it most. As Anne Flannery, the president of PE4life, a PE advocacy group, points out, “In dodge ball it’s the very child that needs exercise the most who’s picked off first...in a game of soccer probably four or five of the most athletic kids touched the ball, and everybody else just stood there.”

This certainly describes my own PE experience. I quickly learned that if I kept a low profile, and was discreet in minimizing my participation, I could still get by with a grade of “B”, or at worst a “C’. During our weekly outdoor runs, I would disappear for a few rounds into a shallow ditch behind a row of hedges, out of sight of the gym teachers. My dodge ball strategy was to pretend I was hit early in the game when there were still enough players in the game that nobody noticed.

Today, there is a growing emphasis on teaching skills that are useful beyond gym class. Instead of learning how to dodge a ball or climb a rope, children in some schools are taught to lift weights, balance their diets and build cardiovascular endurance. There is also a movement towards fewer competitive activities and more activities that emphasize personal achievement such as rock-climbing, kick-boxing and tai-chi. As Ms Flannery says, “It’s about giving these kids the tools and skill and experience so they can lead a physically active life the rest of their life.”

This approach certainly makes a lot of sense. It’s usefulness is also backed up by a recent study published in the October 2005 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. University of Wisconsin researchers observed 50 overweight children and found that they lost more weight when they cycled, skied cross-country and walked than when they played sports during class time. They also found that sports like football and kick ball produced less overall movement, in part because reluctant students were able to sit on the bench much of the time.