Kids are getting fatter. The culprits are the same ones that plague adults: Sedentary lifestyle and junk food. Given the slow progress in addressing vending machine temptation at schools, it appears a school-based intervention will have to address childrens' inactivity. Unsurprisingly, many advocates call for daily, more demanding gym classes. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been calling for such measures as long as I can remember. I had always disagreed with him until recently.
Many of you probably share my dismal memories of gym class. Once kids get old enough to have a bad attitude about sports (which is pretty early), they are old enough to make physical education unpleasant for the weaklings. The weaklings (a group to which I belonged) band together, hating gym as a self-preservation mechanism--after all, we told ourselves, we are good in the important part of our academic experience, that is, the rest of it.
Despite viewing gym as something I could play cello to get out of (class time for strings had to come from somewhere), I usually got As in gym--and rightly so, for a class like that should be based on effort, shouldn't it? But in sixth grade, I got a B+, even though I participated every day with a good attitude. I just couldn't make as many foul shots as you needed to get an A. My mother even called the school. I was outraged--after all, playing basketball well wasn't something I had much control over--you were born with athletic ability or you weren't, right?
I did not consider until recently (while pondering another undeserved A in a photography class) that many people felt the same way about math. As is the case for most of us at Duke, the academic subjects just came to me. The mixture of dread, boredom and frustration that was for me confined to second period on alternating days characterized most of each day for some kids. What is athletic ability but an intelligence in movement? I just happened to have the kind of intelligence that teachers valued most. I had been a grade snob.
In college, I began to value physical fitness as much as intellectual fitness. Thus enlightened, I now agree with Mr. Schwartzenegger. But several points merit notice before we rush to elevate gym to the same level as chemistry.
First, most schools lack anything resembling a comprehensive gym curriculum. Learning how to take a derivative in three weeks was a reasonable expectation because I had been building the necessary mathematical skills for 12 years. Learning to score a soccer goal from 30 yards in three weeks was not a reasonable expectation because I had just learned the proper way to kick.
Second, motor skills aren't built in a few hours a week of group lessons any more than reading skills are. I learned the elements of English grammar by doing homework. I practiced.
Third, and most important, is that in my science class I wasn't allowed to openly ridicule the kids who didn't get it. The torment of intellectual weaklings was not teacher-sanctioned or tolerated. In my gym class, I was openly ridiculed for missing the volleyball serve, the foul shot, the baseball, etc. My science teacher's attitude was that everyone could be enabled to learn the material. My gym teacher's attitude was that pansies didn't get an A in her class. It's a small wonder the only kids who derived any kind of appreciation for exercise in this environment were the ones who were already good at it.
If we want to make gym a requirement, we've got to do it right. If we are to fight child and adult obesity, we have to make gym a time of learning useful, enjoyable skills. Many kids are turned off from exercise because their school gym classes are horrible experiences.
We can rightly preserve the integrity of grades in physical education by patterning it on the more traditional academic subjects. Schools should teach students how to play sports over time, the way recreational athletes learn, not in six-week units that consist of rotating basketball, softball, volleyball and track.
Give kids homework assignments--20 crunches a night, 20 minutes of stretching or 20 plies. Check out athletic equipment to them the same way they can check out library books. I realize the cost of athletic equipment is significant, but it's not as expensive as textbooks, it doesn't come out in new editions every five years, and gym units can be staggered, e.g., while one section of the class studies basketball, another studies tennis, and another studies jazz. If kids who play on sports teams are exempted from gym class, the school classes will be smaller and the pool of students more forgiving of neophytes.
If gym teachers truly want to help the sissies learn to appreciate their field, attitudes have to change. Teachers must not tolerate the Little League attitudes of the athletically gifted. We stratify academic classes according to ability. Why not do the same for physical education? Make it education, not exhibition. Let the kids who learned how to play soccer when they were three play together. Let the kids who just put on cleats learn how to dribble. The talented ones get to continue their growth as athletes; the novices get to learn in a nurturing environment.
The more I reap the benefits of exercise, the more I wish gym class had been made a pleasant experience for the kids to whom it did not come naturally. Its continued failure, whether the blame lies with unsympathetic teachers or unsupportive administrators, is showing in the significant population of unhealthy kids who desperately need its benefits.
Emily Streyer Carlisle is a master's student in the Department of Economics and the Health Policy Certificate Program.
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