Let's Get Physical

Last night we had a Board meeting in which we discussed some new cost estimates for our athletic fields. This is a hotly debated issue primarily because we have an older facility whose fields are in the autumn of their life-cycle and although the track is the most pressing need the rest of the fields are racing toward obsolescence as well.

The issues are complex. The fields serve a multiplicity of users - high school and community sports teams, gym classes, and community players. Cost [e.g. local taxes] is an obvious flash point.

The following recent stories illustrate just how twisted the public dialogs on this subject can get.

The first story is a narrative about a disabled girl denied a diploma for being unable to perform a physical exercise she's incapable of doing.

Brittany has Ichthyosis, a rare skin disorder. According to Ms. Amos, "Her skin flakes and falls off all the time. She itches and scratches most of the time, her feet and hands crack open, and she has very little hair and wears a ball cap most of the time." Because of her condition, Brittany cannot walk or run far in the sun, and, said Ms. Amos, she submitted a dermatologist's note stating that she would be unable to run a mile during her fitness course. The family was told that the fitness course does not accept doctor's notes in order to excuse a student from an activity.

Ms. Amos says her niece was not notified that she wouldn't get to graduate until just four days prior to the ceremony. "On Thursday morning before graduation on June 3rd, 2008, she went to school for Baccalaureate practice and was told she would not graduate because of the fitness course," said Amos. "I feel like since Brittany looks like she does and is not popular, even though she is an honor student, they just did not care about her."

Brittany didn't let the school's decision prevent her from moving forward and obtaining her diploma. She's since completed a fitness course online, said Ms. Amos, and has received her diploma. Brittany was even able to participate in a graduation ceremony despite Lake Wales High School's decision to bar her from graduating with her classmates.

Wow. It never ceases to amaze the public how dumb and inflexible so-called educational institutions can be but the story ends with the victim taking a physical education class online!

Let's take a closer look at that phenomenon. The New York Times story, Public Schools Begin to Offer Gym Classes Online by Sam Dillon describes the phenomenon.

One of the first schools to offer physical education online, in 1997, was Florida Virtual School. It is now the nation's largest public online school, with 21,000 students taking at least one course. Personal fitness, the online version of the state's physical education requirement, was the school's most popular course last year, attracting 4,500 students. (Second-most popular was economics, with 2,400 students.)

Abbie Modaff files workout reports from her computer at home.

Some students, including a blind teenager in Miami and a student in Melbourne, Fla., who was recovering from a kidney transplant, signed up because their health problems prevented their taking regular gym classes, said Jo Wagner, one of Florida Virtual's lead instructors. But Ms. Wagner said most students took the course to free their schedules for foreign languages and other electives at their traditional schools.

The same pattern holds in Minneapolis, where Abbie Modaff, a sophomore, is taking her second semester of online gym this summer. The daughter of self-described "strugglingly middle-class" parents, she signed up last spring to open time in a schedule snarled with English, Latin, biology, world studies and advanced mathematics classes, not to mention horseback lessons, soccer games and concert band.

This summer, Abbie has been training for a triathlon, so she has e-mailed reports on swimming, biking and jogging workouts to her instructor, Tamara Cowan, who is teaching online gym to 31 Minneapolis students this summer from a friend's home in Sacramento.

"When I'm not feeling like I'm about to die, running can be incredibly good," Ms. Modaff wrote to Ms. Cowan in one workout journal in July.

Last spring, when Ms. Modaff sought to use her horseback rides to fulfill some workout requirements, Mr. Goodrich balked. But using a heart monitor, Ms. Modaff documented that her pulse frequently surged to a pounding 170 beats per minute as she flexed her legs and torso to guide her horse through a dressage course. Mr. Goodrich assented.

"She showed us that her heart rate was elevated, and her muscle strength was improving," he said.

Because the class has faced much questioning, the district issues heart monitors, requiring that students send pulse data to teachers and that parents sign the workout reports.

Mr. Goodrich and Ms. Cowan are also on the lookout for cheats. Mr. Goodrich recently sat on his couch in sweat pants and a T-shirt, and, peering into the screen of his Macintosh, signed on to the school district's Web site. He found 31 student e-mail messages documenting recent workouts. There was also a message from a student who pleaded the equivalent of "my dog ate my homework."

"I have just got back in town for three days and then I will be gone for three days," the student wrote to Mr. Goodrich. "I am trying to get as much work done as possible. Thanks."

Mr. Goodrich checked the student's preliminary grades and found she was hopelessly behind with her assignments. He would send her a warning, he said, and predicted she would fail the course.

About 20 percent of the students dropped out of online gym in the spring, said Jan Braaten, the district's lead physical education instructor.

"Even though we told them it would be as hard as or harder than traditional P.E., some thought it was going to be a cakewalk," Ms. Braaten said.

Even the course's author, Brenda Corbin, who writes curriculums for the Minneapolis district, was dismissive at first.

"I refused to be a part of it," Ms. Corbin said of her initial reaction a year ago, when Ms. Braaten and district administrators approached her about writing the physical education course.

"How do you know they're really working out?" Ms. Corbin said she asked.

But she later changed her mind. "I was uninformed about what you can do over the computer," she said.

I don't know about all this. Confusing physical therapy with physical education or treating recreational hobbies such as horse-back riding with sport is not an educational exercise per se. That is to say, that although your heart may race faster for performing the activity, one could argue that watching a scary movie makes one heart race as well. Does a person deserve "credit" for that?

The distinction is important because of the concerns raised by the following news item about a study from Britain.

While 70 per cent of parents said their own greatest childhood adventures were among rivers, trees and woods, only 29 per cent of today's children said their favourite play experiences were outdoors.
Not all child's play: Wrapping youngsters in cotton wool is not preparing them for setbacks and contributing to the rise in mental illness in young people

Child's play: Wrapping youngsters in cotton wool is not preparing them for setbacks in adult life

While 73 per cent of seven to 12-year-olds could surf the internet unsupervised, 42 per cent were not allowed to play in their local park without an adult.

A third could not ride a bike to a friend's house or play in their local streets unsupervised.

But the survey of 1,030 children and 1,030 adults found many parents were too busy to watch their children playing.

Adrian Voce, director of the charity Play England that carried out the research, said: 'It's not the end of the world if a child has an accident.
Resilience: Children can adapt

Resilience: Children can take a bit of rough and tumble

Playing is an essential part of growing up and adventurous play that both challenges and excites children helps instil critical life skills.

'Constantly wrapping children in cotton wool can leave them ill-equipped to deal with stressful or challenging situations they might encounter later in life.

Three times as many children are put in hospital each year from falling out of bed as from tumbling from a tree, the researchers said.

At EO Smith, the goal of many people involved with the school is to get our kids out into the sun exercising in a social atmosphere.

Demonstrably healthy. What a concept.

The Wussification of the West

The evidence continues to mount from all quarters of the western world that our children are being dumbed down, becoming socially sterile, and biologically stripped of natural and interpersonal immunities.

The Guardian, in Bullying is exaggerated, says childhood expert by Anushka Asthana, Tom Gill argues,

'Children are not always nice to each other, but people are not always nice to each other. The world is not like that. One of the things in danger of being lost is children spending time with other children out of sight of adults; growing a sense of consequence for their actions without someone leaping in,' he told The Observer

Gill related an incident in which his own daughter complained that she was being bullied after three boys teased her about a game she was playing in the park. 'What struck me was the use of the word bullying to describe that,' he said. 'Bullying is where the victimisation is sustained and there is a power imbalance. I do not mean we should allow unbridled cruelty, just that one option is asking, "Can you sort it out yourself?" '

In No Fear: Growing up in a Risk-averse Society, which will be published tomorrow, Gill argues that society is 'bubble-wrapping' children. Parents, teachers, police, the government and wider society are all to blame, he said, for overreacting to risks such as 'stranger danger', injury and abuse.

Children were too quickly branded antisocial. He cited a case where three 12-year-olds were arrested and DNA-tested for climbing a tree.

Similarly, the Daily Mail carried an article called Let your children injure themselves, says ROSPA.

Parents must allow their children to play outdoors - even if it means they get hurt, a safety campaigner has said.

Research published last week by the Children's Society suggested that too many parents are refusing to let their children play by themselves outside in case they are injured.

It found 43 per cent of adults think children should not be allowed out with their friends until they are 14 or over.

But Peter Cornall, from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, argues that when children scrape their knees or bump their heads, they learn how to avoid hurting themselves again in future.

The New York Times recently carried an article called, Lobes of Steel by Gretchen Reynolds that reiterated the importance of aerobic exercise, even as schools steal exercise time to cram for yet another test.

University of Illinois scientists have studied school-age children and found that those who have a higher level of aerobic fitness processed information more efficiently; they were quicker on a battery of computerized flashcard tests. The researchers also found that higher levels of aerobic fitness corresponded to better standardized test scores among a set of Illinois public school students. The scientists next plan to study how students’ scores change as their fitness improves.

The SF Gate reports in, Warning: Fun ahead - Safety first, yes, but today's overprotected kids need to live a little by Peter Hartlaub, coming full circle, reminds us,

The wussification of American children is a relatively recent phenomenon, but a very real one. We pamper our kids, over-schedule them, overemphasize fairness in competition (the score ends in a tie ... again!) and keep them indoors too much, to the point that we're doing them a huge disservice. Kids aren't learning how to get hurt, lose, fend for themselves, find their balance and discover minor dangers on their own - all important parts of growing up.

Great News About Exercise

CNN reports in Strength training may reverse muscle aging by Reuters some good news for older folks and something kids of all ages should be imprinted with in terms of physical education habits.

Strength training may not only make older adults' muscles stronger, but younger as well, a small study suggests.

It's well known that resistance exercises improve muscle strength and function in young and old alike, but the new research suggests that strength training also affects older muscles on the level of gene expression -- essentially turning back the clock on muscle aging.

The study, published in the online journal PLoS One, looked at whether strength training affects the "gene expression profile" in older adults' muscle. Genes hold the instructions from which the body manufactures proteins; gene expression refers to the processes that translate these instructions into proteins.

Analyzing small samples of muscle tissue from a group of healthy young and older adults, researchers found that older and younger muscle tissues differed significantly in their gene expression profiles. The difference indicated that older muscle tissue had impaired functioning in mitochondria -- structures within cells that act as the cell's "powerhouse."

That impairment was reversible, however. After 14 of the older adults underwent 6 months of strength training, the gene expression profile in their muscles showed a more youthful appearance.

"In a very real sense, the muscle was younger," said lead study author Dr. Simon Melov of the Buck Institute for Age Research in Novato, California.

Experts have long known that exercise is good for younger and older adults alike, Melov told Reuters, but the new findings suggest that it can "actually rejuvenate muscle" in older individuals.

Human activity levels dictated by genetics?

Here's an article about a study of the degree of activity a person exercises. It suggests a genetic predisposition that may be so hard-wired as to make it very difficult to change. Something for parents and teachers to think about before assuming someone hasn't tried enough. Click the link to read the whole press release.

OHSU Study Reveals Each Persons' Activity Level Appears Intrinsic, Possibly Tied To Genetics (November 14, 2005)

Research helps explain why active people will likely remain active and why couch potatoes will likely remain couch potatoes

WASHINGTON, DC - Research conducted by scientists at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University reveals that a person's level of activity is likely an intrinsic property of that individual. This means personal decisions to become more active for the purpose of losing weight may take more of a conscious effort than traditionally thought for certain people. The research is being presented during the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, D.C., Nov. 12-16. It is one of the largest and most respected meetings of neuroscientists in the world.

"Previous research has revealed that increased physical activity can decrease the risk of obesity, coronary heart disease, respiratory disease, metabolic diseases like diabetes, anxiety, depression, breast cancer and colon cancer," said Elinor Sullivan, an OHSU graduate student conducting research at the Oregon National Primate Research Center. "Based on the wealth of benefits provided by regular exercise, doctors have often recommended that patients increase their level of physical activity. However, currently the factors that regulate an individual's average daily activity level, and the brain systems involved in regulating activity are not well understood. It is likely that these factors affect how easy it is for individuals to substantially increase activity through voluntarily exercise, and whether some people can more easily increase their activity than others."