Cuts to physical education feeding obesity epidemic in kids
"A mind is a terrible thing to waste'' - Slogan for the United Negro College Fund
Stu Cowan
CanWest News Service; Montreal Gazette
Sunday, August 27, 2006
MONTREAL -- A mind definitely is a terrible thing to waste E but so is a body.
That's why I wish sports and physical education played a bigger role in our public school system.
Some of the statistics made public recently about the health of children in our country are frightening. Statistics Canada reports that 26 per cent of children under 18 are overweight or obese, while the Quebec Health Department estimates that 52 per cent of boys and 35 per cent of girls age 12 to 17 are not getting enough daily exercise.
Parents should keep those figures in mind as they get their children ready to head back to school. They should also remember them the next time their school thinks about cutting back on physical education.
In Quebec, the provincial government has taken a small step toward fighting child obesity, increasing the minimum time devoted to physical education to 120 minutes per week this year for elementary school children, up 20 minutes from last year. It's an improvement, but in my opinion, it's still not enough.
"The school board is responding right now to the government increasing the time (for physical education and health studies)," Sandy Farr, the physical education consultant for the English Montreal School Board, said late last week.
"That was done directly as a demand from the population to increase the amount of time that the children are active. Not just to increase the amount of time, but to increase it in a constructive way, so that children are graduating with the understanding that they do have to be physically fit and have a good understanding of what it means to be healthy."
How unhealthy have Canadians become? Between 1986 and 1992, only nine per cent of men and women age 25 to 35 were obese, according to Statistics Canada. By 2004, 24 per cent of men and 17 per cent of women were obese.
"People don't understand that it's almost a national emergency situation here that if we don't address today or tomorrow, in five or 10 years it may be too late," Arya Sharma, director of the Canadian Obesity Network, told CanWest News Service recently.
Sharma added that Canada is in danger of losing one-quarter of its young generation to early disease or disability. Among the physical problems that have been linked to obesity are heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, aggressive prostate cancer, kidney stones and certain cancers.
That's scary stuff.
And that's why I'd like to see at least 30 minutes of daily physical education made mandatory for students from kindergarten to Grade 11. Not only do sports build healthier bodies, they also teach valuable life lessons about teamwork, the joy of victory and how to handle defeat.
But cutbacks over the years in physical education show that sports have almost become an afterthought in our public school system. When parents want more French, science or math classes, physical education usually takes the hit.
"There was a definite degree of frustration within the physical education profession about the cutbacks, as phys-ed was put to the back-burner to many other things," Farr said. "And there is still some frustration to some extent at the secondary school level."
What's the solution? Ruth Collins-Nakai, the outgoing president of the Canadian Medical Association and a cardiac-care specialist, suggested in an Ottawa Citizen story last week that Canada should follow the lead of European countries, which recently recommended a minimum of 90 minutes a day of moderate activity for children.
Collins-Nakai fears we are setting our children up for a "lifetime of inactivity and poor health."
When Canadian Olympic hero Clara Hughes won a gold medal in long-track speed skating at the Turin Games last winter, she decided to donate $10,000 to Right to Play, an athlete-driven international humanitarian organization that uses sports to help disadvantaged kids around the world.
She later issued a warning to Canadians.
"In Canada, we have a situation where phys-ed programs are being pulled from the schools, and we have a sedentary generation growing up," she said. "Kids are sitting in front of computers and televisions more and more. We are not in a war-torn country; we are in a country of great opportunity, but yet we have kids who don't know what it's like to play."
A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
It's also a waste to develop a brilliant mind, only to have it wiped out by a heart attack by age 50.
Childhood Obesity in Canada
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