Edutopia - June/July 2008 - (Page 48)

At the same time, according to the CDC, America’s fast food diet and sedentary lifestyle has led to a quadrupling of the number of overweight children ages 6–11 since the 1960s. There is some good news, however. In 2005, forty-four states voted to mandate that students spend a required amount of time in PE class. Unfortunately, even in a program as active as San Rafael’s, a phenomenal amount of time in PE class is spent without anyone actually getting physical. One report found that at an elementary school in Texas, students were active only three and a half minutes during an entire fortyminute class. So, what has gone wrong with American PE? According to Len Saunders, a New Jersey–based physical ⇒tness expert, “The major problem is the lack of support from the adult community.” Why has this happened? Saunders, founder of the annual ACES (All Children Exercise Simultaneously) and PACES (Parents and Children Exercise Simultaneously) events, says, “It is because adults associate PE with the dodgeball they beat each other up with as kids.” The PE crisis is real and undeniable, so much so that America has reached one of those ⇒tness moments of truth that periodically bring calls for a new PE back into national focus. In the 1970s, the focus was on movement education, centering on kinesthetic exercise. In the ’80s, reforms involved a number of subspecialties such as applied exercise science, exercise physiology, sport pedagogy, and ⇒tness and wellness training. Recently, the newest new PE has focused on humanics, a philosophy that views physical education as the only subject that engages all three of the critical domains of education: the cognitive, the spiritual, and the physical. Ab Crunch Versus Money Crunch Humanics is the of⇒cial approach at Spring⇒eld College, a teacher’s college in Spring⇒eld, Massachusetts, that is the West Point of American physical education (and the hallowed ground where James Naismith invented basketball). The goal of humanics, says Diane Lorenzo, an associate professor of physical education pedagogy, is to use PE “to get students to become lifetime movers.” This is more easily said than done, Lorenzo acknowledges. Even the best-intentioned PE programs need to be tempered by the knowledge that they must compete in a world of ever-smaller budgetary pies, and are usually considered lower priorities than core assessment courses. This reality has transformed PE scholars like Lorenzo into budgetary pragmatists who urge their students to “sell” PE to parents, PTOs, and particularly fellow teachers. “We need to reach out to the community much more than ever before,” Lorenzo says. 48 EDUTOPIA JUNE/JULY 2008

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Edutopia - June/July 2008 Contents UpFront Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of Class Cool Schools Design Young Minds, Fast Times Wii Love Learning No More Pencils, No More Books Tech Without Support All the Right Moves Room to Learn Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Jeff Corwin

Edutopia - June/July 2008

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