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New York, 5:29 PM
Sat Nov 21
50 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/19/09
11/19/09
I don't have a problem with required PE, so long as it's for everyone, and there are options. Walking. Yoga. Weights. Aerobics. One of the things I liked least about PE in high school was that it was mostly forced competitive sports. I was happy to walk the track for 40 minutes, just don't make me play volleyball.
Also, if you're already fairly muscular, you can have a BMI over 30. Are they factoring that in? At any rate, just basing it on BMI is, at best, misguided. At worst it's really discriminatory and fat shamy.
11/19/09
My high school required daily PE (except for one semester of health), but after ninth grade, you could pick units, and that made it a lot more bearable. I still hated the teacher and felt uncomfortable in the locker room, but at least when I was doing 2 days of step, 2 days of kickboxing and 1 day of yoga a week it didn't seem quite like such an unbearable waste of time, and for the most part, no one was harrassing me about how well I was doing (and I turned out to be pretty decent at all those, and now do them at home with my Wii!)
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11/19/09
My HS started letting you opt out and walk the track instead of the sports in about Junior year. It was great, I could walk 3-4 miles in that block, instead of standing around on a field, avoiding getting a ball in the face, or fellow students who took that stuff really seriously. Then they started offering aerobics and weights, which was useful in the winter when you couldn't really go out without dying of the cold. I remember when one of the football players broke into the aerobics class, thinking he was funny, to try and do the moves to prove how "easy" they were. He gave up after 5 min because he couldn't keep up.
I'm just a born walker. If the goal is fitness and health then we should be making it easier for people to get in whatever activity they actually like. Not insisting we all like the same ones.
#tips
11/19/09
Not only did I do poorly and get injured a lot, my classmates were alternately pitying and resentful. Let the kids who enjoy sports play sports, let the kids who hate sports do other things. No reason kids can't build trust and cooperation in partnered yoga.
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11/19/09
Given the horrific obesity rates in our (black) community, this move doesn't surprise me.
However, I don't think it should be based on BMI and I don't think it should be mandatory. Do these health issues need to be addressed? Of course but not sure this is the way to go.
11/19/09
And I'm not surprised about forcing people to take PE, but it just seems arbitrary to make it based on BMI. Just make everyone take it and be done.
I assumed all HBCU's had a PE requirement. At Howard, we had to take a swimming class and another PE credit as well as a health class. Annoying, but understandable given the health issues in the black community.
11/19/09
I agree. Have everyone take it and offer plenty of options (teams sports, yoga, etc.)
#tips
11/20/09
Excuse me, but fat bodies are not 'horrific'. Life-giving, strong, and useful, yes. Horrific, no.
11/20/09
I didn't say fat bodies were. I said the high rate of obesity in our community was. There's a difference.
#tips
11/19/09
That said, while I can (kind of, sort of) understand the motivation, BMI is not a solid measurement for health. If they are worried about the health of their students, then everyone should be forced to take physical education.
11/19/09
PE doesn't work to make people healthy in high school, and it won't work in college. PE is a joke.
11/19/09
In any case, by PE I meant more like the 2 dozen or so sports "courses" they had at my school, anything from golf to swimming.
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Which makes the whole thing no less screwed up, but ...
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A bunch of my high-school friends all went to the same University with a PE requirement, so they all took bowling together.
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It just strikes me as a completely half-baked idea. I'm willing to give the school the benefit of the doubt that they are trying to slow the rate of obesity on their campus--however questionable and hamfisted that objective may be--but it just isn't right to single out students.
Universities have a lot of issues to worry about such as binge drinking, date rape, homophobia and academic dishonesty, so why not create a comprehensive plan that would address the overall welfare of your student body? Health is not limited to your weight; it also includes your mental health and happiness. My sister's college has mandatory nutrition, PE, social awareness and environmentalism classes and it seems to work well. Granted, this is in uber-liberal VT, where drive throughs are forbidden because the state believes that if you want to gorge on greasy fast food, you should at least walk a few feet.
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#tips
11/19/09
If you're unhappy with obesity rates at your school, why not serve healthier food in the cafeteria, or provide lots of things for your students to do instead of binge drinking on the weekends if they are bored? How about creating lots of fitness options like allowing students (who want it) to meet with a nutritionist and/or provide lots of varied exercise options--like yoga, or dance, or badmitton. Forcing people to take a class or imposing restrictions undermines the goal, and probably just makes people miserable. The goal, I believe, should be toward creating an environment that encourages health for all students, not trying to alter some students' BMI rate.
11/19/09
Because that would cost money and require thought.
There've been attempts to do things like this in some of the primary school systems in England. Food services companies lie about what they spend on meals in order to increase profit margins when they sell to the schools; food service workers' wages at the schools have been cut. It's been a series of abysmal disasters.
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#tips
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#tips
11/19/09
OK, I snopes'd it, and apparently every school with a required swimming class has that story: [www.snopes.com]
While I'm glad that nobody's kid drowned, I'm kind of disappointed that one of the most interesting pieces of my school's lore is just a legend.
11/19/09
#tips
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#tips
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[en.wikipedia.org]
Land grant and location retracted; historically black part, not.
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My college made us take three semesters of physical ed - the first semester was about health, nutrition, first aid, and STDs; the second involved actual activity and learning about measures of fitness; and the third was an activity of your choice (options ranged from golf to kickboxing to bowling to soccer).
Somewhat horrendously, in the first term health class they did measure our BMI using calipers to pinch our fat. The results weren't announced, but everyone ended up comparing anyway. I was 2 points away from underweight at the time, but was still mortified because some of the other women were declared officially underweight, so I felt fat next to them. I would *not* recommend that this be a part of any required class.
Interestingly, in the 2nd term class, weight clearly didn't correlate with fitness, as the students who were the strongest and had the highest endurance weren't the skinniest (and the girls who were trying to keep their weight artificially low through restrictive diets were barely strong enough to complete most of the tasks).