Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 9, 1993 TAG: 9302090137
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jane Brody
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL: OUR CHILDREN'S FITNESS
Abandonment of school fitness and athletic programs seems to be a common solution these days to budgetary problems at educational institutions throughout the country, including prestigious and wealthy institutions like Yale University.Whatever the merits of the argument for the necessity of such cuts, the institutions that are especially hard hit are the public schools where children, teen-agers and young adults are supposed to be learning habits that foster a long and successful life.
And the argument against such cuts can be made not just by fitness professionals who stand to lose jobs in education but by people concerned about health consequences in all areas of society.
An important goal of a well-rounded education is producing sound minds in sound bodies, to prepare young people to meet the challenges of a complex, ever-changing and increasingly sedentary world.
The loss of physical education in any public institution affects a system that serves many young people who could not afford things like private tennis lessons, swimming and skating lessons and memberships in health clubs or even the Y.
Discounting the importance of physical education in public institutions at any level is also unfortunate because after the so-called exercise explosion of the 1970s and early '80s, many Americans have returned to or never relinquished their favorite physical pastime: sitting and pressing the pedals of cars and the buttons on the television remote controls.
Paul Siegel, who directs the Adult Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Surveys for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, says, "It's a myth that Americans are becoming more active." The fact is that the small percentage of Americans who are physically active now is about the same as it was in the mid-1980s.
Nearly three out of five adults in this country lead sedentary lives, spending less than three 20-minute sessions a week at leisure-time physical activity, national surveys show. While some people classified as "sedentary" may spend one two-hour session a week at an activity like tennis, half of them do nothing at all. Three 20-minute sessions: that is only one hour out of 168 hours in a week. Many people spend more time than that in the shower, and most do not even have any sweat to rinse away.
For the poorer people in our society, the inactive share is even higher, consistently above 60 percent throughout the second half of the '80s.
It is notable that the highest shares of sedentary adults were found in areas with large low-income populations, like New York, Kentucky and the District of Columbia.
In the district, where former Presidents Jimmy Carter and George Bush regularly jogged and President Clinton is now doing the same, 73.3 percent of adults are sedentary and 51.9 percent get no physical activity at all.
For the nation as a whole, 28.7 percent of adults get no physical exercise, and Siegel pointed out that Americans are far from the goal for the year 2000 established by the Public Health Service of reducing the prevalence of inactivity to below 15 percent among all people over the age of 6.
Joseph DiGennaro, a professor of exercise, sport and leisure sciences at Lehman (N.Y.) College, described the plight of his students, "College physical education courses represent the only avenue through which inner-city residents of low economic status can learn exercise skills as well as the kinds of information and knowledge requisite to their attainment of optimum levels of physical health and fitness."
DiGennaro said that the "blanket elimination of physical education" will end up costing society far more than would be saved.
"The dollar costs attributed to elevated levels of disease and ill health [obesity, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, back pain and coronary heart disease] associated with poor nutrition and the inactive life style stand only to soar to higher than current, alarming levels as a consequence of this ill-conceived action," he wrote.
There are other costs in eliminating physical education, like the difficulties of teaching academic skills to children who are restless and inattentive when deprived of the calm induced by physically venting their youthful exuberance or socially destructive activities pursued by some teen-agers and young adults if their abundant physical energies remain unchanneled toward more healthful expressions.
Turning this trend around requires public pressure from all corners of society on the people who establish the funds and curriculums for education, both public and private. These include elected representatives at all levels, schools chancellors, university presidents and school boards.
The pressure must come not only from professors, teachers and coaches who stand to lose their jobs, but also from parents and students who stand to lose their health and their potential for being productive citizens.
Many parents need only turn to themselves for examples of the consequences of lifelong inactivity; a march on Washington for fitness education could be the only exercise that some protesters get all year.
Jane Brody writes about health and fitness for the New York Times.