L.I.F.T.

As MacBeth says in the eponymous play:

Life is…a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Reminds me of the education debate. For the high school kids reading my blog right now, here’s what I mean – there’s a lot of talk, and no action.

I just finished reading Valerie Strauss’ commentary on Obama’s revised education plan on The Washington Post’s site.

Then, as I often do, I started to read some of the responses.

Then, as usually happens, I realized I was wasting precious life, reading regurgitated doctrine from people who have been programmed to spew it out.

So I stopped, and started writing this.

My good friend Kwame Brown recently posted a blog entry with a similar set of questions as those raised by Valerie, and by an inquiry into education in our country.

In his post Education and the Tribe, he asks several good questions:
1. Why are citizens of the US (who are taxpayers) reticent to increase taxes (even minimally) to help pay for education?
2. What is happening within our education system, and what are the alternatives?
3. If funding is created, what should it be used for?

Kwame has some answers, and his readers have others.

My interest is in a deeper current.

The question I would pose is this – why is education in the state it is in today?

In order to change it, we need to know how it got to the state it is in. Some people advocate for activism, period. But I think that is misguided. Without understanding the background of the situation, you can easily waste time and effort, and potentially have disastrous results, opposite to those you hoped for.

Consider the case of a person who goes to a doctor with a problem. If the doctor does not interview the patient and try to find the possible cause of the problem, the doctor is merely treating the symptom – and may in fact hurt the patient even further.

Once we know how and why education is in the state it is in (and there are many many reasons – from personal to community to regional and national factors, and on to international factors, from marketing and consumerization/productization to cultural influences), we must then ask what is at stake for the people who brought education to the place it is now.

Again, there will be at least a few key stakeholders (I’m thinking of groups like Federal government, industry/business, state government, regional authorities, county authorities, and then parents, teachers and students, and others), and each group will have its own agenda, outcome and strategy.

What is at stake for each of these groups? What are their desires, fears, and needs?

When we find those, we can find the intersections, or “win/win” arguments to support our agenda (once that, itself, has been defined).

This, I think, is the way to make change. Yes, action can be organized and orchestrated now, and can be incredibly effective, but it must have its foundation in an understanding of the source of the problem, and a clear idea or proposal for the desired state.

Otherwise it’s all sound and fury…and will end up signifying nothing.

Michelle Obama, wife of our President, is taking a stand for physical education and fitness.

She’s started an initiative called Let’s Move!, that has a website to boot!

The group has four initiatives – Healthy Choices, Healthier Schools, Physical Activity, and Accessible and Affordable Healthy Food.

Yes, let's!

“To support Let’s Move and facilitate and coordinate partnerships with States, communities, and the non-profit and for-profit private sectors, the nation’s leading children’s health foundations have come together to create a new independent foundation – the Partnership for a Healthier America – which will accelerate existing efforts addressing childhood obesity and facilitate new commitments towards the national goal of solving childhood obesity within a generation.”

Partnership for a Healthier America

Linked to in the header above, the Partnership is composed about five founding organizations.  It’s a way to provide additional support, financial and outreach, for the Let’s Move! project.

Ok Pepsi, let's see what you've got!

Pepsi, On the Bandwagon

Pepsi Co. has announced that it’s going to support Mrs. Obama’s initiative a few ways.  First, they’re changing the way they list calories on their container.  They’re also going to provide funding for some movement initiatives.

The Old and the New Me

The old me would be suspicious, and doubtful of any change coming from this type of thing.

The new me – or, rather, me, now – sees any effort toward a positive direction as a good thing.

Please support the Let’s Move! initiative by going to the site and subscribing to the blog roll, and enter your email address to receive program updates as they come out.

It only works if everyone pitches in…

Another great article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, this one by Bryan McCullick, called Obesity won’t improve without reforming PE, sums up the thoughts of a lot of my classmates (and professors) from one class this past semester.

The article points out that PE is a wonderful method for preventing obesity, for informing young minds, and for creating healthy lifestyles. It also points out that PE is conspicuously missing from President Obama’s healthcare reform package.

“PE is at the core of promoting healthy choices. A comprehensive school program includes PE, health education, healthy food options, recess for elementary school students, intramural sport programs and physical activity clubs, and interscholastic sports for high school students. Ideally, schools would also include physical activity breaks, walk/bike to school programs, appropriate physical activity in after-school child care programs, and staff wellness programs.”

The above is, in fact, the definition of “physical educator” that my classmates and I arrived at this semester. And is the definition the physicians had in mind who created the field of kinesiology back in the early 1900’s.

Bryan gives us some good financial data:
“A 2009 report from the California Center for Public Health Advocacy on the annual economic costs of physical inactivity, obesity and being overweight in California estimated that in 2006 physical inactivity cost $20.19 billion, being overweight and obesity $20.98 billion. That’s more than $41 billion in economic costs for Californians alone.”

I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts the costs of “Non-Communicable Diseases.” When you consider that NCD’s include obesity, heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, you have to wonder why more attention isn’t being given to physical activity on a national level.

Then Bryan gets to the point that really stuck with me this past semester…the one that I think is the major hurdle to all of this:
“The quality [my italics] of PE students’ need is glaringly omitted in anyone’s talking points in the health care debate. Overcrowded gymnasiums, insufficient or outdated resources, and sometimes inhumane working conditions (no air conditioning in gyms when school begins in August) are archetypal for many PE programs…Further, 33 percent of states reacting, again, to federal mandates for “highly qualified” teachers have relaxed licensure requirements for PE teachers. To help young people develop into physically educated individuals, a specialist with a body of knowledge and skills is needed in every school. The days of the ball-rolling, coffee-swilling, game-prepping PE “coach” have contributed to the current obesity rate increase.”

One of the things that happened to the field of kinesiology, the field of physical education, in the 1970’s, was that the academic began to split from the professional. That is, the people doing research and teaching academic classes were no longer the same people providing exercise advice, or dealing with human beings’ physical state as their daily work.

Soon thereafter, “physical educator” was a worthless term – and the profession went with the job. Schools figured, heck, anyone can teach a PE class. It’s just having the kids play around or something.

No more tying their Biology lessons into their own biology, or their Chemistry lessons into their own Physiology. No more education on the proper technique for performing certain movements, and the reasons behind that technique. Nor for the ways the body responds to various types of exercise.

The fact that I can work as a personal trainer has a lot to do with the terrible state of physical education in this country. Most of my clients are more than able and happy to exercise without paying another person to show them how – they just don’t know what to do or how to do it without potentially hurting themselves!

They always say that the best employee seeks to put him/herself out of a job, by making the connections needed across the organization to make themselves unnecessary. They create efficiency.

I hope to do the same thing with my training. It’s my new goal.

Job Title: Physical Educator