Playtime: Take PE Seriously
Greg Critser’s “A Get-Fit Plan for Physical Education” (Opinion, Dec. 16) should be required reading for every parent and educator in California. The dismal failure of our students on the state-mandated physical fitness tests is the result of the failure of the state Department of Education to treat physical education with the same concern received by the subjects tested by the Stanford 9.
Critser did not mention three other items that have a negative effect on physical fitness scores: The state requires only two years of physical education for students in grades nine through 12. High school students may use participation in band, drill team, cheerleading and athletics to meet their physical education requirement. Co-educational physical education classes often demoralize the very students who could most benefit from rigorous activity and discourage teachers from offering equipment-intensive activities, such as gymnastics. And how many of our high-school-age males would be eager to take a class in rhythmic gymnastics or modern dance?
Membership workout facilities will reap a fortune from these students when they become adults if they decide they must address the level of their health and fitness.
Sally A. Graves
West Covina
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Gov. Gray Davis must act quickly to prevent more obesity, sickness and even death in public school students, grades K-12. He should demand 30 minutes of play every day. It’s a crime--close to torture--to force kids to attend school for 12 years and not allow them the justice of daily play.
Public educators were warned about 25 years ago not to stop daily physical education classes for 11th and 12th graders, but PE was axed at high schools in L.A. Thousands of kids became obese and sickly because of that absurd and dangerous decision. High school interscholastic sports for small students (“C” teams) were also stopped.
Duke Russell
Hollywood
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In your editorial (“Teach Kids to Fight Fat,” Dec. 15) there was a suggestion that class and culture are not the only explanations for the epidemic of obesity seen presently in America’s youth, particularly those of African American and Mexican American descent. However, there is another important contributor to this devastating epidemic. It is imperative to point this out. Otherwise, it is all too easy to blame these youthful victims for the entire cause of their own obesity.
This other factor is that of genetics. While medical science has been unable to isolate which exact genes predispose to obesity, it is clear that certain ethnic groups have a greater dose of these genes, which evolved to enable our ancestors to withstand fasting--something common to all of our early ancestors but in varying degree, depending on the geography and available food sources unique to different parts of the ancient world. These genes, which have been labeled “thrifty” genes, served our ancestors well for over 40,000 years.
Only in the last 50 years or so--with an adequate food supply, the marketing of excess consumption brought to us by the soft drink and fast-food industries and the disappearance of the need to exercise as a means of work and transportation--have these thrifty genes turned on us and brought us face to face with an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Only in the last 10 years or so has the California school system served as a co-contributor by marketing high-calorie junk foods and by nearly eliminating PE for many of our children and youth.
It is important to realize the dual contribution of genetics and environment. While at this time we can’t change our genes, recent research has proven we do know how to provide comprehensive approaches to obesity prevention, and with political will we certainly can change what transpires in school.
Francine Ratner Kaufman MD
Los Angeles
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Your editorial supports social and cultural changes that will allow young people to become more fit. And yet, before outlining a long list of daily obstacles that our kids must hurdle in order to become more active, you write of the “Golden State spawn[ing] so many chubby young slugs.”
Replace the subject matter (fitness) with any number of other challenges that children face, such as learning disabilities, and you will see how inappropriate your insulting comment is. What our kids need is support, encouragement and well-funded programs, not mean-spirited judgment. It is that type of uneducated small-mindedness that remains one of the largest obstacles of all.
E.B. Calkins
Manhattan Beach
