Fat Children and School

It's pretty obvious that America is getting fatter, hell, I'm getting fatter.

I look back at my school days and realize how much more active I was. Once I was able to drive, I stopped riding my bike everywhere, and around that time I started hanging out with people who spent most of their time playing video/table-top games indoors.

But then I look at the schools. In middle and high schools, we weren't forced to have some kind of exercise, we were "allowed" to choose another class in lieu of a PE class. In high school I took J-ROTC for 2 years, and spent most of my time on the rifle team, barely ever doing anything physically demanding. Other options were things like band and choir. And two years of "PE" was all that you were required in order to graduate, that's it.

In some schools (even some states) they have forbidden the game of 'Tag'. Seriously? That was fun!! Hell, I had a friend who wanted to set the world record for the largest game of Tag, and he still may attempt it some day. Why forbid it? Because the overweight kids were being picked on and couldn't compete. And who really complained? The parents. I'm sure the kid told the teacher(s) at some point, but when he comes home and complains about being singled out and picked on, the parents head off to the school and do their fair share of complaining. These days, parents (not all, but a significant number) are passive and want to be their kids' friends, but NOT their parents. A real parent would analyze the situation, realize their kid is fat, blame their parenting (because it IS the parent's fault for having a fat kid), and make the necessary changes in order to keep their child healthy. Hell, Tag is a great way to stay healthy, if they just kept at it.


I've decided that there is only one acceptable idea: from the time kids begin attending public schools, until they are FINISHED with their education, they should be required to attend a 1 hour PE class. Does this mean they should be rigorously exercising for the whole of the hour? No. It means they need to get off their asses and play, work out, have fun, and, most importantly, be fit.

What needs to happen is that from day one, every day at school, the kids should be active for roughly one hour. If a child is sitting there moping, the teacher should make an attempt to console the child for whatever reason, but encourage them to get up and move. (I never played football as a child, I usually spent time jumping rope and playing patty-cake with the girls, too bad they don't let me play patty-cake now) If the child is reluctant, they should have further encouragement, even from the other kids if possible. If it becomes a recurring issue, the parents should be informed and basically instructed to get their shit together, for the good of their child.

This one hour period of activity should be mandatory all the way through college. I'm not talking about taking elective courses to "fill in" the PE spot, REQUIRE PE. Every day. If in college, PE still. Not some easy weight training course or archery or some other nonsense. I think you get the point.


Think about it this way. Let's say in that 1-hour period of PE, each person commits to roughly 45 minutes of activity, with time to rest and change up what they're doing and where to do it. Now, I recall in Mesquite [Texas] schools, 180 days was the school year. So, if they are active in this 45-minute period (and this is just the PE class, nothing else) they would have spent 8100 minutes in a school year being active; that's 135 hours, which is 5 days and 15 minutes. That's actually quite a lot of play, for ONE year. Now, extrapolating that, for a 12-year public school education life-time, it comes out to 97,200 minutes, which is 1620 hours, which is 67 days and 12 hours of activity.

Now remember, this is ONLY exercise that is performed in the mandatory hour of school time. Not to mention any minutes/hours spent being active after school and on the weekends; e.g. sports, ballet, bike riding, etc.


Coming to the real point here. Being active this much for such a long period of time, the child will not only grow accustomed to being active, but in all likelihood, they will enjoy being active, and shy away from sedentary behavior.

That only makes the situation better in the long run.