The childhood game of Red Rover is not bound to be standard fare in what’s become known as the “new physical education” class. It affords too much standing around, too many opportunities for less skilled players to be intimidated.
But a Red Rover game of sorts can describe what is starting to happen at schools across the country. The second-rate status of gym class is undergoing a slow but positive upgrade. Innovative physical education teachers and other advocates are joining the side of getting kids to be more active. The need has never been more urgent.
Although health officials continue to trot out woeful statistics about America’s sedentary and overweight youth, school districts are still cutting physical education requirements to accommodate more math and science classes to boost test scores.
“Many school districts are not meeting the recommendations for physical activity, which is to accumulate a minimum of 60 minutes a day for children 5 to 12 years of age,” said Bradford Strand, a North Dakota State University professor and president of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE). “We are asking kids to restrict most activity six hours a day, and we wonder why they are restless and inattentive.”
Inactivity of American children seems to increase with age. Research shows that kids are most active in 3rd grade, then steadily lose interest in physical activity through senior year in high school. Some middle-school students take a mere nine weeks of physical education classes every other year. Forty percent of all U.S. high schools aren’t enrolled in any form of PE, including an astonishing 75 percent of seniors.
What’s more, a 1998 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study showed that only 32 percent of high school students who were actually enrolled in PE classes were active for half or more of the school period.
Yet, amid this total disregard for the role of physical activity in developing a young person’s body and mind, some educators are linking up to conduct classes differently. The main goal is to get students moving. They want to extend into the school-age years — and beyond — what is only fun and natural in early childhood.
“If you observe a group of young children at recess, you will most likely see them running, jumping, throwing and kicking. It’s what they do naturally; they enjoy play,” said Eloise Elliott, chairwoman of the health and physical education department at Concord College in Athens, W.Va., and senior editor of an Internet site for physical educators called PE Central.
The issue goes deeper than the joy of playing and moving, although that should be enough for most parents. For young children, Elliott said, movement is the critical means of communication, expression and learning. Our brains are less likely to dominate the body at this age. We know all too well what happens as we get older.
But PE reformers want to calibrate the interaction between body and mind. They believe a daily PE requirement does more than eliminate fat and build muscle and bone, which, of course, is no small achievement. A growing number of studies, notably by Harvard researcher and psychiatrist Dr. John Ratey, are suggesting that regular physical activity improves cognitive function by increasing blood flow and oxygen to the brain. Other research indicates that aerobic conditioning may help improve memory and reduce depression.
The goal is simple. Get people to change the way PE is taught in their communities.
“We need to concentrate on movement,” said Judy Young, executive director of NASPE. “The new PE is not basketball, baseball, volleyball or any other sport. These are applications of what physical education is. Learning the skills is a way to understand how the body works and how to keep it working. It makes a place for students who are not high-performing athletes.”
Bob Pangrazi, an Arizona State University physical education professor, said there is good evidence to change traditional PE even if you love team sports. Only 1 percent of all Americans play a team sport regularly beyond age 25. The number is barely a fraction of that by the time people reach 45.
Pangrazi said the barometer for PE should be minutes of activity rather than skills learned or points scored. NASPE has established some physical-activity guidelines for children.
Elementary students should be getting at least 150 minutes per school week, and in middle and high school the number should rise to 225 minutes. The association made news recently by recommending that even infants should have 30 minutes of structured physical activity each day (“not a workout,” Young said, but playing catch or moving outside of a bouncy seat).
Guidelines for movement
NASPE previously released an hour-per-day guideline for toddlers and preschoolers, citing the critical learning time frame for young children. Parents should note some of the fine print of these guidelines: No child should be sedentary on a regular basis for more than one hour, except when sleeping.
Surveys show that current PE programs around the country fall woefully short of these recommended activity times. Many programs are no more than 30 minutes per week for students in elementary and middle school and as low as zero for those in high school.
“We want to make physical activity a regular habit, the same as brushing your teeth,” said Pangrazi, founder of a highly successful “new PE” for the Arizona school system and co-author of the definitive textbook on the subject. “You wouldn’t brush every few days or skip it for a year.”
Nonetheless, persuading school board officials and administrators can be difficult, sort of like finishing your walk or run on an uphill slope. These physical educators are learning from each other, then teaching not only the kids but also parents, principals, board members, other teachers, whoever else they can win over to re-establish PE as a must-have subject.
Red Rover, Red Rover, let Phil Lawler come over.
Lawler runs the PE4Life Institute, which is part of Naperville School District 203 and is based at Madison Junior High. The school’s model program is praised by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for what PE can be rather than what it was. Dozens of other schools call or visit Lawler every month. The PE4Life Institute was founded by the Chicago-based Wilson Sporting Goods Co.
“The new PE is spreading, but it is slow-moving,” said Lawler, who has been teaching physical education for nearly 30 years, including lots of dodgeball in the early years.
“The problem is most educators draw from their own personal experiences in PE class as students themselves,” he said.
PE classes are daily at Madison, which itself is a breakthrough.
Illinois is the only state in the country that requires daily PE through 12th grade, yet many state school districts have received waivers to bypass the mandate on daily PE in favor of spending funds on other subjects, such as math, science or English.
Academics over fitness
“Even after-school physical activity programs are being cut back in favor of after-school academic programs,” said Don Hellison, a professor and researcher in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “The pressure to do well on tests is at a broad level. I’ve talked to 3rd graders who know their test scores and worry about them.”
Lawler actually favors testing for PE and health but not the President’s Council on Physical Fitness test that most of us knew and likely feared as kids. He has appeared before the state school board to lobby for a health and fitness “assessment” that would determine if, say, 6th graders know the basics of cholesterol and target heart rates. Several states have established such assessments, including Missouri.
“Now we find out about fitness in our 40s, 50s and 60s,” he said. “We want the next generation of kids to find out early.”
Although the ground-breaking PE4Life Institute is here, there is irony its location. Last month the Chicago Public Schools reapplied for its waiver of daily PE for grade schoolers, opting instead for two classes per week. Plus, if the waiver is approved by the General Assembly as expected, high school juniors and seniors will again have no PE requirement.
“I read recently that an analysis by a national health magazine [Men’s Fitness] showed Chicago is the `second-fattest city’ in the country,” Lawler said. “The public schools waiver guarantees Chicago will be No. 1 next year.”
Perhaps not coincidentally, the Texas legislature is considering a bill that will require daily PE for students in kindergarten through 6th grade. The Men’s Fitness rankings named four Texas cities in its top 10 fattest cities, including Houston as No. 1.
The national numbers about kids and obesity are downright scary. The rate of obese children (20 percent or more heavier than healthy body weight) has doubled since 1980. More than 1 in 5 grade-school children are obese or overweight at unhealthy levels. Among adolescents, 11 percent are obese, and another 16 percent are at risk of becoming obese.
Lawler offered sobering numbers from the Naperville school district. When his cutting-edge program first started screening 6th- to 8th-graders for cholesterol, nearly 45 percent tested higher than 175 milligrams per deciliter. Health officials consider 150 mg/dl or above to be a cardiovascular disease risk for children, comparable to 200 mg/dl for adults.
The percentage of Madison Junior High students with high cholesterol has gradually decreased during the last half-dozen years of the PE4Life program.
The program includes one day each week at the school’s fitness center (kids use both cardiovascular- and strength-training equipment), one day of a timed run (every student gets a heart-rate monitor and is graded on minutes in the target heart zone of 60 to 80 percent of maximum heart rate) and three days of activities ranging from touch football to dance.
Lawler said that even the units covering football or basketball emphasize movement over winning and losing. For instance, basketball is played 3 on 3, and football is one-hand touch, played with teams of four.
“We emphasize keeping the kids moving rather than lecture them on the proper skills,” Lawler said.
The program appears to be making the right impression.
“It took some adjustment at first to do the weekly run,” said Jennifer Huwe, 15, a freshman at Naperville North High School who attended Washington Junior High, which has incorporated the PE4Life program. “We all learned about keeping our heart rates between 145 and 185 [beats per minute].”
“One thing that strikes me is I didn’t realize back then how many really cool things we had in the [Madison] junior high gym,” said Aaron Zielinski, 17, a senior at Naperville Central. “It most definitely helped me stay fit. Now I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t work out.”
Times change
Lawler’s sense of history served him in a recent meeting before the state school board. He was testifying against dropping the daily PE mandate.
“I reminded them that 20 years ago in the Naperville school district, administrators actually voted to establish a smoking area for high school students during passing periods,” Lawler said. “You wouldn’t do that now. Dropping PE from school curriculums will be looked at the same way 20 years from now.”
The state officials did not eliminate the PE requirement. Lawler’s arguments were bolstered by the fact that about 30 percent of Illinois schools now have switched to the new PE model. Roughly 100 schools have visited the junior high and PE4Life Institute in the last two years.
Visitors are typically nothing short of inspired. For instance, a group of 10 community members from Owensboro, Ky., toured Lawler’s classes about a year ago. In late February, the town of 90,000 installed fitness center equipment in six middle schools and one high school, complete with heart rate monitors. The cost was $50,000 to $75,000 per school, split evenly between the school district and the Owensboro Mercy Health System medical center.
“We are called the barbecue capital of the world,” said Debby Neel, a nurse and vice president at Owensboro Mercy. “So we figured the health of community might need some attention. We first started assessing students in 1996. We discovered 27 percent of 5th and 6th graders [were] overweight.”
“We made it our mission to do something to reverse the pattern,” she said.
Looking only at today’s bottom line is no way to see the future well-being of children, Lawler said. His school’s parent-teacher organization raised most of the funds for Madison’s equipment. No taxpayer money was used. A vending contract for bottled water and juices (no soda) helps maintain the program.
“People say it cost too much money to set up a PE curriculum like ours,” said Lawler. “I tell them this is the cost of a computer lab. You wouldn’t dream of not having a computer lab. One weight machine or cardiovascular equipment is the cost of one computer. But the difference is the exercise equipment won’t be obsolete in two years.”
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Visit PE4Life online at www.pe4life.com.
