— Comments —

Kathy G. writes:

I have to disagree on this one. “Physical Education”, and JFK’s dratted mandate to try to turn us all into athlete’s a la the famous sailing and touch football-playing Kennedy Clan, was the bane of my public schooled life for years.

Not being athletic, but gangly, awkward, and bookish, I nearly always brought up the rear…although, mercifully, not usually the ridiculed last straggler…in those yearly races and “run-walks”. Every yr, after the worst one, the 600 yard “run -walk” I would be left, nauseated and gasping in the grass, desperately trying to not vomit. It’s not like we had any kind of conditioning or routine other than a few minutes of jumping jacks, that kind of thing. Schools should stick to the 3 Rs, history, and kids left lots of free time to be outdoors and active.

My daughter was born with hand and arm deformities and required surgeries as an infant. She was public schooled for several years, and I learned from another parent how she had been humiliated and told to do pull-ups from a bar, and all she could manage was to dangle for a few seconds from her small, reconstructed hands. This is the one-size fits all, slam that square peg into the round hole ethos of government “school” and “Physical Education” that really just teaches conformity. Government is way too interested in our kids’ bodies, but not in a good way.

Laura writes:

I can understand that.

I was using those gross buzzwords, “body positivity,” somewhat ironically.

Anyway, it’s probably better to glorify the physically fit than to glorify the physically unfit, as is done with the “body positivity” movement. Balance is the ideal.

Robert Manning writes:

There are countless good reasons to be physically fit. There are no good reasons to be unfit.

Decades ago a study reportedly showed that the average female then weighed what the average male weighed in 1960, and the average male was then 30lbs heavier. The weight of both sexes continues to rise.

We’re a fat people. Obesity means “excess fat”.

This one report, of many, shows that childhood obesity has increased from 5.5 percent in 1970 to 19.3 percent today; ages 2 to 19. Adults are over 40 percent obese, and half morbidly. It is killing them.

Physical fitness is common sense. We should be glorifying common sense.

Laura writes:

Many schools don’t even have gym classes anymore.

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