Fat Kids, Their Parents, Nature Deficit, and the Future

Posted on December 24, 2009 by Josh

So many articles on overweight/out-of-shape children popped up on my Google alerts yesterday that I have to post about it. Not that I don’t want to, you know.

The kids in Sacramento are terribly unfit, and getting less fit by the year. The Sacramento Bee article linked to above does a good job of showing how most “physical fitness” data ignores socioeconomic data. It’s essential that we start putting these things together, to be able to see the bigger picture.

You see, poor kids are typically less fit than kids from more wealthy families.

One of the schools mentioned also had to reduce the presence of their “physical fitness specialist” from five days per week, to two days per week. I’m sure that kind of thing is happening all over the country. “PE” isn’t valued in our culture.

Great Britain is experiencing the same symptoms. The article says, though, tat the biggest cause is a lack of regular physical activity by the children. Sounds good. Again, though, it’s only part of the argument.

This recent article in Scientific American points out how being in nature or in a natural setting not only reduces stress markers, but also creates value change in the people involved.

Out in the Wild, people naturally become more “other-focused,” and less “self-focused.” Further, our motivational drive switches from an extrinsic drive, to a more intrinsic drive.

In all of these articles, though, where are the parents?

I mean, why aren’t fingers being pointed? And pointed where they should be?

Socioeconomic status notwithstanding, parents play a huge role in getting their kids active, and into nature.

I suppose what I’m saying is this – we always look for the “cause” in the immediate present. But those things are just symptoms.

What happened in the parents’ generation that has led them to care less about physical activity and nature? Or at least, to be less involved in those things, or have their kids less involved?

What happened back then? Treat the cause, not the symptom…

H1N1 – The Importance of Health Education

Posted on December 11, 2009 by Josh

This article from Cincinnati.com asks why health education has such a small role in Ohio’s education program.

Actually, it asks “why are we afraid of health education?”

Good question. In light of my recent post regarding an article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the topic of physical education in that state, I’m beginning to wonder the same thing.

When I think about the potential lost on children who are not taught about their bodies starting at an early age, I’m completely puzzled.

I’m not sure what education looks like now, but I know for a fact that any child who can memorize the 26 letters in the English alphabet can also learn and relate to the basic bones in their bodies, and the larger muscle groups.

What about their biological systems, or even physiological principles?

That’s part of Physical Education folks. Physical Education IS “health education.” At least, it should be.

But my PE classes never looked like that, either. Instead, we had loosely organized athletics practice…based on nothing, seemingly, with no apparent aim from year to year. When I turned 13 we had “health class,” which was a series of classes designed to scare the shit out of you regarding the use of drugs (especially LSD), drunk driving, and sexual intercourse.

Great education assholes.

This type of “education” leaves the kids scared and lacking in knowledge or power. They have to rely either on their family, friends, or other people to help them to “do the right thing.” Good luck.

Give me your child for one hour a day for 6 months of every year for the three years from their 12th to their 15th birthday. They will learn, grow, and change in ways you would probably rebel against. They would surpass your and their own beliefs in their possibilities.

So, why are we afraid of Physical Educaton?

Physical education in schools

Posted on December 10, 2009 by Josh

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