Whither gym class?

Gym classes seem to be a thing from the past:

The gym at Eberhart Elementary School is bright and spacious — with high ceilings, several basketball hoops, even a large, colorful climbing wall. But for much of the day, the gym doubles as a cafeteria where the school's 1,800-plus students are offered breakfast and lunch.

There's another gym on the fourth floor, but it's so old it has basketball hoops attached to ladders. Time and space limitations mean each class gets physical education just once a week for 40 minutes. In the fight against childhood obesity, getting kids moving is one of the most effective ways to combat the problem. But only Illinois and Massachusetts require P.E. classes for all kids in kindergarten through 12th grade. And, as Eberhart's example shows, even those requirements sometimes are not enough. "I understand the funding issue. I understand the space issue," said Betty Hale, one of two P.E. teachers at Eberhart. But "our children are getting shortchanged."

Illinois first adopted P.E. requirements in 1915, and the state has been mandating phys ed for all grades since 1957. But those rules have not prevented Illinois kids from getting heavier. An estimated 20.7 percent of 10- to 17-year-olds in Illinois are obese, according to a 2007 survey released last month by the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative. That's the fourth-highest rate in the country, behind only Mississippi, Georgia and Kentucky. Nationwide, an estimated 32 percent of American kids ages 2 to 19 are overweight, including 17 percent who are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Illinois mandates gym class but does not have a standardized P.E. curriculum, meaning what counts as phys ed can vary widely. For instance, kids at Eberhart on Chicago's West Side play kickball once a week in a cluttered, 100-year-old gym. Meanwhile, students in suburban Niles are high jumping in a gym that includes a weight room with better equipment than some health clubs. The state does not monitor schools to ensure they are meeting the daily P.E. requirement, and there are no penalties for not doing it. The Illinois General Assembly even gives waivers to districts that have financial issues or want more classroom time.
But it's the health of the kids that tells the full depth of the problem.

When Hale arrived at Eberhart 10 years ago, most kids could run a mile in 13 or 14 minutes. Now only a few can. At Louisiana State University in New Orleans, professor Melinda Sothern sees children at the school's Health Sciences Center with a range of related problems more typical of adults: high cholesterol, diabetes, muscular-skeletal disorders. "What really hurts me is they never have that euphoric feeling I had as a child of riding their bike down the street. They just don't have the stamina to do it," said Sothern, a former gym teacher.

Physical fitness "is just so not valued today. And it's what would turn this thing around." Health experts recommend 30 minutes of daily physical education for elementary school students, and 45 minutes for those in junior high and high school. But in a recent CDC study, less than 4 percent of elementary schools, less than 8 percent of middle schools and just over 2 percent of high schools required daily P.E. for all students for the entire school year.

At Eberhart, the weekly 40-minute period passes quickly. By the time a class of fifth-graders settled down and did their warm-up calisthenics recently, more than five minutes had passed. It took another five minutes for Hale to split the class into teams and give them a quick refresher on how to play kickball, and there were still more interruptions during the game to explain the rules. With no money for new equipment, the kids use a ball worn to the point of crumbling, and the floor is soon strewn with little bits of yellow foam. The wooden pins for bowling look like something out of the school's time capsule. The facilities are lacking as well — and not simply because the one gym can only be used part-time. Hale's classes were kicked out of the older gym the previous week because of a space camp, and leftover garbage still cluttered one corner: two black plastic bags stuffed to the brim, a blue plastic barrel, a Styrofoam cooler and two cardboard boxes — one with a crumpled Doritos bag inside.

Having P.E. "even twice a week would make a world of difference," Hale said. "These kids need to move. Exercise is just as important as sitting down and learning their math, their science, their reading." Some educators complain that physical education — along with art and music — has been squeezed out by No Child Left Behind, which prods schools to boost the performance of low-achieving students. With annual math and reading tests, many schools are trying to find extra teaching time wherever they can. But doing it at the expense of physical education is misguided, said Russell Pate, associate vice president for Health Sciences at the University of South Carolina. Studies have long shown that giving kids time to play, both through P.E. and recess, does not hurt their test scores, Pate said.

In fact, the breaks could help. "I'm all for holding schools to high standards with regard to academic outcomes," Pate said. "But we need to have some balance. We need our schools to be healthy places for kids." That's the approach at the elementary and middle schools in District 64 in Park Ridge and Niles, suburbs on the northwest side of Chicago. Three of the eight schools in the district received the National Association for Sports and Physical Education's STARS award for outstanding P.E. programs; they are the only schools in Illinois to earn the recognition. There are no vending machines with candy or soda at any of the schools, and the food service at the middle schools gives students healthy choices.

Elementary classes have P.E. for a half-hour four days a week, and gym-like activities at recess on the fifth day. Middle school students have P.E. for 40 minutes each day. The curriculum is designed to get students moving and appeal to everyone, regardless of athletic ability. There are units on everything from softball to wrestling to field hockey.

Grades are based on kids' preparation for class — being on time and in uniform — as well as written tests on the sports they learn. There are fitness tests twice a year, but instead of telling kids they must run a mile in a specific time or do 50 sit-ups, progress is measured against previous results. The results are not counted in their grades.

"We want them to gain an appreciation of being active, to enjoy being active," said Aaron Schauer, who teaches at Emerson Middle School and is the district's P.E. curriculum specialist. "So when they're on their own, they'll make active choices."
The facilities are top-of-the-line, starting with a 26-person P.E. department for the eight schools. Each school has ready access to green space, and there's enough room outside to hold six soccer fields. When students at Emerson want to track their heart rates while running or walking, they can use one of 32 Polar monitors, which retail for $60.

"Physical education cannot be expected to solve society's obesity problems," said Pate, a past president of the National Coalition on Promoting Physical Activity. "But I do think it's realistic to expect P.E. to help solve the problem."

I had daily PE classes all the way through 9th grade. Our junior high PE teachers would actually FAIL a student who couldn't run a mile in under 11 minutes-- sadistic as that sounds. In 10th grade I managed the girls' basketball team, and that counted as my last PE requirement (I will admit I was thrilled at the time). But I still played softball and rode my bike and so on. Now, when I watch kids amble around the hallways listening to their iPods-- which is how most of my students earn their HS PE credits-- I have to admit that I feel a bit disgusted.

I know some teachers, parents, and administrators who think that PE is a waste of time in an already jam-packed school day. But developing good habits when young certainly would be better than the situation we have now. Let me pretend to address the kids now: As someone who used to be incredibly skinny can tell you, though, PE class is not enough. You will get older and the metabolism will slow down, and you will go to work somewhere that doesn't give you an hour a day for activity. You will struggle to make time for exercise. Half of you or so will put on dozens of pounds in pregnancy when you are older and married, and you will find out that it doesn't come off and that sweet little baby wants your attention NOW and is not willing to wait until you get off the treadmill.

But, we at least have to make the effort to save PE class.

Obesity and schools

There is currently a big push to offer more healthy fare in school cafeterias, and it is certainly a good idea. The days that I fail to bring my own lunch to school are always days of tension, as there is no way that an adult who is concerned about their weight can eat the food in the school cafeteria. It seems like 80% of the calories come from starches and fat. I would love to be able to explain to the people who make up the menus in a typical school that if you substitute ground turkey for beef as an ingredient (which by the way, unfortunately, tastes completely different, and by that I mean unpleasant), that cooking it in lard is spectacularly missing the point. If I'm going to clog my arteries, it should at least taste good. Which is the first problem: healthier fare won't do any good, either, if the kids won't eat it.

But there is another problem that is more important, if we are going to take this issue seriously. My school district currently requires 1.5 credits in physical education during the four years of high school, and the half credit is taken care of by a health class. There is currently talk of reducing this to one credit. In middle school, many students attend PE only every other day if they play a musical instrument. This is not enough. Then there is the fact that I often easily lap students taking "Power Walking" when I'm walking from one hallway to another on my planning period without breaking a sweat-- even in my street clothes and as ancient as I am.

Now, before people think that I've gone all "Multiple Intelligences" on them, let me say that I am all about the primacy of academics in schools. Nor do I believe that it is the job of schools to solve all societal ills-- far from it! However, physical education has been part of the educational landscape for decades now. My experience has been that people can use their brains better when they are not prisoners of lethargy. Physical education is a key component in an excellent education.

those lazy days of summer

Kimberly Swygert at Number 2 Pencil (www.kimberlyswygert.com) cites a recent USA today article ("Childhood pastimes are increasingly moving indoors," July 11, 2005) detailing the lack of desire in today's kids to go outside and play, especially during the magical days of summer. I've had conversations with my students about this phenomenon when we get to the point in the US history curriculum where we discuss "the good old days" for me-- in other words, the Seventies and Eighties (You know you're old when you actually remember stuff covered in a history class.)

Anyway, the article talks about how obesity rates have quadrupled since the 1960s, how kids would rather be playing video games than fishing, even when they acknowledge how fun fishing is:

"The fundamental nature of American childhood has changed in a single generation. The unstructured outdoor childhood — days of pick-up baseball games, treehouses and "be home for dinner" — has all but vanished.

"Today, childhood is spent mostly indoors, watching television, playing video games and working the Internet. When children do go outside, it tends to be for scheduled events — soccer camp or a fishing derby — held under the watch of adults. In a typical week, 27% of kids ages 9 to 13 play organized baseball, but only 6% play on their own, a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found....

"'Boundaries for kids used to be measured by blocks or miles. Now, the boundary for most kids is the front yard. A lot of kids are under house arrest,' says Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, a book about how children have lost touch with nature...."

There are a few things that we need to acknowledge about this trend. Parents are afraid of letting their kids out of the house for fear they will fall victim to some rapist or murdereer. But have we overreacted and fallen victim to the worst excesses of our consumer society by giving kids every time-waster ever devised to keep them from resenting our protection? Let us consider the following:

1. There were four television stations in my beloved hometown when I was growing up, including the public television station. Children's programming could be found during the weekdays only in the early afternoons (Sesame Street and a local cartoon show were favorites), and Saturday mornings from 7 am to noon were devoted to cartoons on all three regular networks. The Wonderful World of Disney came on after Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom on Sunday evenings. That was it. No Cartoon Network or Disney Channel, or 75 other channels for your entertainment pleasure.

2. Our family had one television to bring us those four splendid channels. It was color, though-- Grandma didn't get color TV until I was 7 or 8 years old. When I had my tonsils removed, my parents rented a tiny TV just for me to watch, and this was a BIIIIIIIG treat. Cable arrived in our town in the mid-70s, and suddenly, you could see all of The Little Rascals and the Mickey Mouse Club you could ever want. Whoo-hoo! We couldn't afford premium movie channels like HBO.

3. Our family had one telephone, and the receiver was connected by a cord to the phone's body in the kitchen, where anyone could hear your conversation. No matter how we stretched that cord, we still had to conduct our conversations completely within hearing range of other family members, especially since my mother spent what seemed like 70% of her life in our microwave-less kitchen.

4. I shared a room with either a brother or sister from the time I was two until I went to college. Even after I understood that a right to privacy had been deduced from the Bill of Rights in general, I knew that my parents were strict constructionists and my siblings were anarchists and there was no such creature in MY life. There was no closing of the bedroom door on that family. I usually climbed up on the roof and hid behind the chimney just to get five minutes to myself while on the familial estate.

5. I saw my first Atari videogame console in high school. We had to go to an arcade in a shopping mall or at the skating rink (with a king's ransom in quarters) to play video games such as Pong or Asteroid.

6. No computers, internet, instant messaging, or text messaging-- well, DUH! I AM a fossil! I also saw my first microcomputer in high school in my geometry class, but the teacher would only let boys play on it (upon my honor!) It had about the processing power of a rancid bottle of ketchup.

At this point, I usually have to assure my students, no, we weren't Amish, nor did we live in Point Barrow, Alaska.

7. I remember, from the time I was 8 or 9, getting on my bike as soon as I got up in the summer, and riding to the nearest park which was one block away, sitting under a tree and reading with my transistor radio (shaped like a Pekingese dog, from Radio Shack, powered by my free 9 volt battery each month) tuned to the local AM top-40 radio station. I might come home at lunch, or I might not if I had enough scratch to go buy a salad or a burrito, and I would play tackle football or a pick-up game of baseball with the neighborhood kids. We had bike races and played war and cops and robbers and mowed lawns to pay for, for me, two sessions a week at the rollerskating rink and books about horses and science fiction.

8. I also remember nearly getting snatched off the street when I was five by a creepy old man before we moved to a safer neighborhood, so it's not like that kind of problem suddenly was invented in the last few years.

I remember when people began putting triangular signs up in their windows with symbols of an adult with its arms around a child, indicating that they were willing to be a safe house for any kid who needed protection. Late 1970s, I think. This was, I believe, the beginning of the end of summer as we knew it.

Well, now that I've completely dated myself, let's fast forward to now. I have three of My Beloved Offspring under the age of twelve. When I let them play by themselves within hearing range of my backyard in the common ground of our subdivision or on the cul-de-sac around the corner, I am accosted as the World's Worst Mother by some neighbors. Okay. There are currently not enough kids in the neighborhood to have pick-up ball games, nor is there a park nearby in which to play games, if they were able to do so, but they are each allowed to belong to one organized sport at a time. It's the best I can do.

But there are some things we as parents can do.

There is no TV in My Beloved Offsprings' rooms, and, hence, no VCR or DVD or Playstation. I bought a Playstation for my hubby, but it is difficult for the kids to get to without my active cooperation. They do have handheld gaming devices, but I try to limit that.

There is no phone in MBOs' rooms, and if I see the handset missing from our cordless phone, I may just get on that phone and listen to anything being said or embarrass said BO by instructing child to hang up said phone-- with no warning. Since our phones are now cordless, this is not a perfect system, but it'll do for now.

An antique Macintosh is now on one of MBOs' desks, but it is not connected to the internet, nor will it ever be, even if its little guts could stand the strain. Its purpose is to print reports for school and to play CDs by some group named-- so help me-- Atomic Kitten.

I have been awarded the Meanest Mother Ever Award (for several years' running now! I'm like the Cal Ripken of Mean Mothers in terms of longevity and dependability) for turning aside all wheedling for a cell phone ("But Mom! Then you could always get a hold of me!" I can already always get a hold of MBO-- I have a pretty good grip, especially since I started judo at the Y.)

They still watch too much TV. But, as much as they can, my kids play-- with each other, indoors and outdoors, even when I catch flak for it. I believe that those long days spent relying upon ourselves in a completely unchoreographed way made us capable of taking responsisbility for ourselves and our actions. Ironically, we were more mature for being allowed to be kids. As a mother who also holds down an outside job shepherding other people's children through adolescence and the mysteries of history, I was only a temporary part of the whole contrived "playgroup" experience. But I know people that orchestrate their kid's every movement because they feel that that is the best way to protect them. But, ironically, the parents whose kids are drowning in the most schwag are the ones who bemoan their little ones' dilated pupils, pasty white complexions and Nintendo Thumb from too many hours plugged in to some device.

One of the parents in this article admitted to calling her kid "The Caveman" because he basically barricaded himself in his room 24/7. See, if you complain that your kids never come out of their room, it's because you've given them all the incentives in the world to stay there. And here's the amazing part-- it doesn't have to be that way! You can make that room less like a palatial refuge breathlessly extolled by Robin Leach and more like a place for sleeping. Just because they're in there doesn't mean you give in have to leave 'em there.

But, unfortunately, there is no way my kids could be gone for hours anymore, even if we moved to the country. The last five kids I can think of that made the local news by being abducted lived in really small towns near our metropolitan area. And I do need to do a better job of getting up and going outside and playing with them. It IS a different world out there. But don't blame the technology; blame the fact that we allow it to be so ubiquitous. We do have to be brave enough to take control of the things in their lives that we can, which means pulling the plug regardless of all the howls of juvenile protest. That's why we're their parents, not their friends.