Unfit Conditions
Someone once calculated that by the time a typical American child reaches the age of 18 he will have spent more hours sitting in front of a television set than sitting in a classroom. It shows. Employers increasingly complain about the near-illiteracy and lack of usable skills of many young people entering the job market; tests reveal how ignorant even many college students are about basic history, geography and the language they speak. Now comes further evidence that children are not only neglecting to exercise their minds but apparently aren’t bothering to exercise their bodies, either. Physical fitness tests administered to nearly 800,000 fifth-, seventh- and ninth-graders in California found disturbingly low levels of performance throughout the state.
The widespread inability to meet minimum flexibility, muscular and endurance standards continues a trend among young Americans first noted--and deplored--more than a generation ago. For all the talk in recent years about the health benefits of adequate exercise, California’s children, who are probably representative of the nation as a whole, clearly aren’t getting enough.
What’s wrong with being sedentary at the age of 11 or 13 or 15? What’s wrong is that theinclinations of childhood all too readily become the habits of adulthood. Research by Dr. William Dietz, director of clinical nutrition at New England Medical Center Hospitals, has shown a clear correlation between TV watching by kids and obesity; the more time a child spends staring at the tube, the chubbier he is likely to be. An out-of-shape 13-year-old is far more likely than his fit counterpart to grow into an out-of-shape and ailing 33-year-old, with worse to come as the sedentary years roll on. A study of 6,000 men done at Auburn University in Alabama found that those who watched TV more than three hours a day were twice as likely to be significantly overweight--and so more vulnerable to major illness--than those who watched less than one hour a day.
This year’s California test scores provide a basis of comparison for coming years. They also strongly support findings by the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and the Amateur Athletic Union that fitness among young Americans is on the decline. Obviously school districts ought to be doing more to promote physical education. Just as obviously, parents should start encouraging their children to engage in physical activities more strenuous than changing channels on the TV set.
