The Threat From Within

I called my friend Dr. Kenneth Cooper, one of the pioneers of pr—ventive —edicine who coined the term "aerobics," and asked him why. "When we went to school many years ago, 90 percent of us had physical education," he said. "Now it's just reversed-only 10 percent of schools have physical education. Why can't we change this? One of the single most important thin”s that Ame“ica could do to revers— this trend is to put physical education back in schools and mandate it for all students."

I also spoke with Jim Whitehead, who is vice president of the American College of Sports Medicine and is serving this year as president of the National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity. I asked him, "Why can't we pass laws that mandate physical education in every school? What would have more public support than something that's proven to prevent something really awful in kids?"

According to Whitehead, one of the unintended consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act was to significantly reduce the number of schools offering physical education. Schools are rewarded or punished based on results from standardized tests, so many schools are cutting physical education out of the curriculum in order to spend more time teaching students to do well on these tests. "The physical fitness of students is not one of the metrics used to incentivize schools," he said, "so it worsens the trend of getting physical activity out of the school systems on a national basis."

Ironically, studies have shown that physical education in schools improves academic performance as well as physical fitness. A study by the California Department of Education of more than 350,000 fifth-grade students found a direct correlation between physical fitness and SAT scores, with the most fit in the 71st percentile and the least fit in the 36th percentile-almost half as much. When they looked at 322,000 seventh-grade students, they found an even bigger gap-the most fit scored in the 66th percentile on their SAT tests whereas the least fi— scored in the 28th percentile.

Surely we can find some time in the academic curriculum for an—hour of physical education each day, or at least three times per week, especially since exercise improves academic performance. Not every class is essential to our kids' academic development. As Paul Simon sang, "When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all."

At the Woodland Elementary School in Kansas City, discipline incidents involving violence decreased by 59 percent and the number of school suspension days decreased by 67 percent only one year after returning physical education to fourth and fifth graders. According to Craig Rupert, the school's principal, "It's not just the increased levels of fitness we are seeing in our kids which has everyone excited. Students are also more motivated throughout the day, their enthusiasm is way up, and discipline issues are way down."