Kids’ Physical Fickleness : Health: Watching television and talking on the telephone overshadow exercise as a pastime for many youngsters. A majority in the county flunked a CAP physical-fitness test.

Diane Ito and Pat Brown, a pair of physical education teachers, know that when it’s running day at Ralston Intermediate School, their students are going to act up.

“I’m sick, Miss Brown,” said Robert Tinoco, an outspoken eighth-grader, piping up among the groans of fellow students, several of whom arrived bearing notes excusing them from class.

“I think I hurt my leg. I think it’s broken,” he added, holding it up and shaking it.

“They just love to do their fitness,” Brown noted wryly, as she corraled her students onto the tennis courts for their daily exercises last week.

After suiting up amid grumbling protests, the youngsters plodded through their jumping jacks, griped about their laps and did just enough exercise to get by. The best part about P.E., according to several students, is the shoe fights in the locker room.

“They just don’t have the desire or the responsibility to follow through,” Ito said. “Somewhere along the line, they’re not getting the encouragement.”

Ralston students are not alone, at least according to recently released California Assessment Program scores for physical fitness.

Nearly 800,000 fifth-, seventh- and ninth-graders in California took the test last spring, and the overwhelming majority failed at least one section. The test set minimum standards for sit-ups, pull-ups, a mile run, and “sit-and-reach”--a test that measures flexibility. An optional test called for teachers to measure skin folds on a student’s arms and legs, a way of checking flabbiness.

Less than 30% of Orange County’s ninth-graders passed the test, while 22% of seventh-graders and a paltry 17% of fifth-graders made the grade.

At Ralston, test scores were par for the course. Seventeen percent of the school’s seventh-graders passed the test, exactly matching the state average for that grade and suggesting that its students--at least according to their scores--are perfectly average California youngsters.

But par for this course is downright bad.

“California students are not physically fit,” California Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said bluntly when he released the statistics on Nov. 14. Honig and other state educators say the results of the physical fitness tests, which were administered for the first time last spring, support the need for greater emphasis on school physical education programs.

At Ralston, an ethnically diverse school in a middle-class Garden Grove community, the school sign reminds students that “Triumph is just ‘umph’ added to try.” But there was not much ‘umph’ evident in the students who lolled at the edge of the field, dreading their turn to run three laps in under 10 minutes.

They begrudgingly submitted to the three-quarter-mile run Thursday, complaining that it was at once boring and annoying.

“We hate this,” said Ryan Nazarian, a seventh-grader. “The running is worse than anything.”

Even Jason Hospedales, an eighth-grader who likes physical education and participates in after-school sports, is no fan of the run. “I think we should have less exercises and more competition,” he said. “This just isn’t that much fun.”

As exasperating as it is for any physical education teacher to train unwilling youngsters, the chore is especially wearing for Ito and Brown, both of whom are noteworthy athletes. Ito is a nationally ranked biathlete, usually finishing at the top of the “masters” group in the combined running and biking competition.

And Brown swam for the United States Olympic team at the 1968 Mexico City Games, finishing fifth in her 800-meter event.

“At 13, I was a world record holder. . . . I was swimming five or six miles a day,” Brown said. “Sometimes I can’t understand these kids when it comes to their physical fitness.”

For many of the Ralston students, physical education is little more than a break in the academic day. They straggle to class, suit up and trickle outside. By the time they start stretching, there’s less than half an hour to work out.

That half-hour is all the exercise many will get for the day. Many have working parents, and educators say many kids return to an empty house, settle in front of a television and wile away the afternoon. It’s not a recipe for fitness.

Ralston offers a full program of after-school sports, but interest has fallen off in recent years, Ito said.

“They’ll sign up for something, but then they just don’t come,” she said. “The program hasn’t changed at all, but we’re seeing less participation in it.”

Shane Morgan, a seventh-grader, said students prefer more sedentary activities to the rigors of flag football or track and field. “After school, we’ll kick back and watch TV or listen to music, play Nintendo,” he said. Other students who crowded around him nodded.

“Nintendo’s great,” several said of the popular video game.

Not everyone agrees. A few students participate in after-school sports, and some attacked their run with vigor, completing it without once slowing to a walk.

One student even dared to challenge Nintendo. “It’s stupid, that’s what my parents say,” said seventh-grader Scott Ovard, still panting from his run. “It just makes you lazy, and you sit there doing nothing.”

That bold declaration drew scoffs from Scott’s classmates.

If the experts are to believed, youngsters who prefer sports to re-runs are the exception and not the rule. Many teachers say they’re seeing more overweight students, and they agree that the fitness craze that grips so many adults shows little sign of trickling down to young people.

“They seemed to be fairly fit at the high school level when I started out (as a teacher),” said Brown, who has taught for 16 years, “but for the last five or six years, they just haven’t been. . . . They go home, and they watch TV, and they sit around.”

Students, especially girls, seem to agree.

Kim Vo, a seventh-grader, says it’s a rare day that finds her in the weight room or sprinting for the finish line. “I hate P.E.,” she said. “Mostly after school, I stay home and talk on the phone. Your mouth gets exercise.”

While Orange County results were almost universally bad, some schools did rise above the pack. MacArthur Fundamental Intermediate School, for instance, reported passing grades for 60% of its seventh-graders and posting top Orange County scores on the test at that grade level.

Tom Reasin, principal at MacArthur, credits an innovative physical education program that has evolved over several years with lifting the fitness of his students.

At MacArthur, students can choose three-week units in cricket, lacrosse, juggling or tumbling, in addition to the more conventional options. They are taught muscle structure in aerobics class, and they are told over and over that physical education is as important as math or science or any other course.

“We’ve initiated what I consider in this state to be a unique program,” Reasin said. “I feel very, very strongly that it’s making a difference for our kids. . . . It’s not just kids jumping up and down.”

But MacArthur’s high scores are a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy picture. Fewer than 10% of the students at some schools passed the test, and educators across the county agree that it’s a difficult task to coax a student away from a television set and onto a playing field.

“The kids are certainly active,” said Gaye Besler, principal at Commonwealth Elementary School in Fullerton. “They’re running all the time from place to place, but as soon as it comes time for P.E., they don’t want to run one lap.”

Ito agreed.

“Kids,” she said as her class filed back into the locker room to change, “are just very strange at this age.”