A majority of California students are unfit, according to results released today from the 2010 School Physical Fitness Test.
Given to students in fifth, seventh and ninth grades, the test showed particularly low fitness levels among the youngest students, with 71 percent of the state's fifth graders unable to perform at a level designated as the Healthy Fitness Zone.
The test assesses six fitness areas: aerobic capacity (running, walking), body composition (percentage fat), abdominal strength (curl ups), trunk extensor strength (trunk lifts), upper body strength (push-up, pull-up), and flexibility (shoulder stretch).
In Sacramento County, 70 percent of fifth grade students were not able to meet criteria in all six fitness areas. Sixty-five percent of seventh graders and 60 percent of ninth graders also did not meet all six fitness area criteria.
The California Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance released a statement from its president Daniel Latham attributing the poor fitness levels to schools cutting physical education programs in the last five years.
You read that right, it's the schools' fault. Couldn't possibly have anything to do with anything outside of school, could it? Couldn't possibly have anything to do with parents, could it? Nope, it's all the fault of the schools. It should be intuitively obvious to the casual observer that a few years ago, kids were fine, but maybe some schools cut an hour of PE a week, and bam! Kids get fat and out of shape.
Clearly, those kids were on the borderline before, if that hour of dodgeball or whatever is the difference between being Olympic triathletes and Jabba the Hut.
Gawd, what a stupid article.
10 comments:
Darren, get with the program! Don't you know that we, the teachers, are supposed to solve every social problem during the 7 hours of the 180 or so days that we have the kids? If we don't, it is clearly the case that we have either incompetent or underfunded -- depending on which side you ask.
I have one solution.
Parents, once your child is able to walk, do not put him in the grocery cart with a sugared beverage to slurp on...
Actually, Darren it sounds more like they think it is the fault of the administrator who decided to cut PE. They would really hat me, cuz I would cut all sports and increase library spending.
How about letting the kids who are doing rec league sports outside of school use those minutes to fulfill their PE requirement? Then they could use the PE class time for academics or study hall.
Mavor, I'm standing with you to cut sports in favor of the library.
Considering some of the unhealthy garbage I see some of these parents toss into their grocery cart (love the comment Rhymes put in there about sugary drinks), I am surprised that people find this surprising. When, when, when will there ever be any parent accountability? Oh, that's right, there won't be as long as the Nanny state continues to thrive. Disgusted.
We used to have PE 5 days a week. Now with the Oh-So-Important NCLB standards, my children's elementary school cut not one hour, but three . . . and, on top of that much more of those two hours is spent not running around, but sitting, as PE teachers, for some reason, think they need to take part in 'writing across the curriculum'.
We used to have recesses long enough to get a little more of the football game in that we'd started before school, and then finished at lunch; now kids aren't allowed on campus much before school begins, and aren't even allowed to play tag or run on the asphalt.
All those things are NOT the parent's fault. I'll give you the fact that diet, driving them to school, etc. are factors, but this is one where schools need to take a big hit.
Max, aren't you one who used to talk about how we can only affect what goes on during the 50 minutes we have kids, and that what goes on outside of school clearly/obviously has a major impact? I assert that such is the case here, too, and that cutting PE at schools, while not helping, isn't the cause of the problem--which was what was specifically stated in the last paragraph I quoted.
Come on Darren . . .first, you left out everything I wrote about idiotic changes in school rules, and shortening of play times, and changing of curriculum, second, I was talking about elementary schools where students spend the majority of the day with one teacher (until they started cutting out PE . . . and music . .and art), and lastly you ignore the fact that everything I mentioned (with the possible exception of before school play -- imagine! we used to WANT to geet to school early!) is within the hours of the day we can control. It doesn't excuse parents not being more responsible, but still let's total up the time previously spent on physical activity (at least, by most people at my school ) lost now: 3.5 hours of PE (due to curriculum and lost hours) 10 x20 minutes in recesses, for another 3.3 hours, 5x30 before school, and another 5x30 at lunch for another 5 hours. That's almost 14 hours of physical activity that I used to participate in that, were I student in elementary school today, would not have the option of. That is a significant factor. And, sure, we could suggest they play after school, but now we start assigning homework in freaking first grade, despite the extra class time devoted to the fundamentals. We seemed to do a fine job teaching the fundamentals under these conditions way back when, and I remember thee being at most one heavy kid in each class.
I meant, 10x20 minutes of RECESS
Could this have anything to do with eliminating all recesses from elementary schedules in order to accommodate yet more drill and kill for standardized testing? Could this have anything to do with the fact that from birth parents plop their infants in front of a DVD player even when going on short trips to the grocery store?
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