Fitness Mandatory In School?

A Push For A Revolutionary Fitness Experiment For Texas Children Gains Traction

(CBS)  The game a group of suburban Dallas middle school students are playing in gym class is called chaos - but nothing about their exercise regimen is being left to chance.

That's because they are about to become part of a revolutionary experiment to shape up America's kids, CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers reports.

“I just want to stay healthy because if you do get overweight, sometimes it can be life-threatening,” said Alex Sobotka.

Back in the 1960s when PE was part of every day and fast food wasn’t, only 3 percent of 6-19 year olds were overweight or obese. Today 30 percent are. And 80 percent of chubby adolescents will grow up to be overweight adults.

“It is truly, I believe, going to be the most serious health problem we face as a nation if we don’t do something about it,” said Texas state Sen. Jane Nelson.

Current dire projections show by 2025, 48 percent of Texans will be overweight, enough to help Nelson persuade fellow lawmakers to take drastic action.

Beginning next spring Texas will become the first state in the nation to require at least 30 minutes a day of physical education - and require all 4 million students third through 12th to undergo a series of annual fitness tests to see how they compare now and later to other kids their age.

Garrett Braun, a Texas 6th grader, thinks it's a good idea: "I think everyone should be tested so we can see how fit everyone is and how far everyone has to go."

The tests are the brainchild of the man who 40 years ago introduced Americans to aerobics. Dr. Kenneth Cooper has pretty much given up on the adult generation, but says it's not too late to try and save the next one.

"Can we do this in children? I thin we can," he said. "I think one of these days that will be my legacy. Not aerobics, but what we can do in Texas is gonna spread across this country."

Cooper believes the benefits will be three-fold. First off, kids will lose weight. Secondly he believes kids who are in better shape will perform better in the classroom and behave better.

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Couric & Co.: What About The Kids?

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But the question remains: Can you force kids to be fit?

“We can make sure that our children are getting a dose of physical activity every day,” Nelson said. “We can do that.”

Valerie Garcia is ready. The El Paso seventh grader wrote Nelson a letter asking for help.

Her words were, “I am overweight and would like to not be obese.”

Why did she write that? “Because I really feel like it. There’s a girl behind a big, huge girl that I would like to show everybody else,” she said.

Can anyone force her to be fit, though?

“I think I have to make that decision myself,” she said.

Valerie says she's already lost fifteen pounds by cutting out junk food and exercising more. The state is hoping its new plan will help other kids come to the same decision.

[sterri99]

It is so nice to see something related to childhood obesity and finally a solution for parents. Often we tell parents the problem and don%u2019t offer them a solution.
The question is "Can we force children to be fit." We don%u2019t need to if we have more programs out there that are giving children a positive outlook on fitness, children will enjoy exercise for life.
As the founder and president of Kidokinetics. Our main emphasis is to make sure children have an enjoyable experience and want to continue with exercise, as they grow up as well as an understanding about healthy and unhealthy foods.
The broadcast spoke about childhood obesity and how the next generation is not going to live as long as us. The emphasis is about doing something today for children.
The question was asked %u201Cis it okay to force children to exercise.%u201D What they should be focusing on is giving children a fun and positive experience while exercising and that way children will grow up loving exercise. We need to give parents ideas for what they can do with their children at home and also how they can set a better example from a very young age.
Kidokinetics starts children as early as 18 months-12 years. No child is too young to exercise.
Kidokinetics is also developing classes for children with special needs as they deserve to exercise the same as any other child.
Terri Braun - www.Kidokinetics.com

[jdadee]

There are tons of ways for kids to become healthy. One of the biggest problems is that kids pick on each other a lot, so when a nerdy kid tries out for sports, they are embarrassed. The big thing is to make exercise fun and find something each individual child will like whether its football, soccer, martial arts, ect.

[likeabllunch]

'' ... there was first aid on the trail, followed by inkblot sport and puzzle, followed by sell art basketball, followed by the evolved book rental shop: the yseedsberry, created to replace book rental with local information exchange, computerized bulletin boards gave way to the internet which made finding local solutions to local problems and local answers to local questions difficult, a community center dedicated to local people shopping for local bargains or jobs or homework help made a tolerable idea for a replacement ... enter ''rally round the sick beds'': and now the 300 county shopping malls are a collection of homes where the sick beds converge and the vendors around the sick beds cutting and pasting their blooms and other inventorys before hiking / bussing on to the next shopping mall / village ... ''

'' ... the few and proud run scream and citate and the job is dangerous; yet, they are 99.9999 plus percent less likely to be injured or killed as a result of disciplinary action than a small child ... ''

'' ... there should be wide arrays of input devices for playing with screen pixels ... perhaps user friendly impromptu local / task specific web browsers could be employed to facilitate the creation and maintenance of masses of web pages for individual sites utilizing gui toolboxes of object oriented routines and pan and zoom you-are-here maps and impromptu task specific ''jargon keycode'' character systems and other languages ... ''

[likeabllunch]

'' ... i met god, she speaks to me by meddling in the lives of others, and then tells me that there is infinite divergence and that i am as much a god as is she, and that neither of us has any real power over each other or anyone else and vice versa ... if i''m hurt against my will, she says, then it is not truly against my will: there is inadequacy / uncertainty / etc in my heart, i''m having a bad dream, she says ... ''

[soxperk]

FYI: Public schools in Illinois currently have P.E. every day - high school included.

[hypnotoad72]

It was when I was a kid. For a whole 60 minutes, oh my word!

So what happened? Phy-ed replaced with Videogame-Ed? Junkfood-Ed?

I''ll save the nerd argument for a later time (noting I agree with what capuletnew had said)