but here is something to keep quoting to motivate you to turn back the years:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&e=8&u=/usatoday/11646524.
This doesn’t surprise me one bit. I see some of my old high school friends that are very “old”. What is scarey is the rise of obesity in teenagers that will make these problems even more common in the future.
Why do my kids only have gym class ever other day ? What does that teach them about health ? They tell me ,a gezzer to get 45 min. a day of exercise. Don’t get me started !! Is math more important then good health ? Illinois is the only state with sense enough to have gym class everyday . The schools should have a great health club with all the machines along with teaching team sports.
as a former PE teacher, I can attest to the sad state of affairs when it comes to kids and physical activity in the schools today. In Alabama, elementary age kids have 30 minutes of PE every day. Middle school kids have 50 minutes of PE every day. In high school, they only have to take PE for one semester and can opt out of that to take band instead. Alabama is doing a good job until the kids get to high school. On top of that, PE is taught by a certified PE teacher.
Here in California, which I would have though would be better, they are actually worse off. Elementary kids get PE twice a week in some cases and it doesn’t necessarily have to be taught by a certified PE teacher.
There are so many problems with the public school system nationwide and PE is just one of the minor problems. To me, having been in the system for many years I can tell you the root of many of the problems comes down to accoutability. Parents do not want to accept responsibility for their kids learning. Sure not every parent is like that and there are good schools as well. But for every really good school, there are 5 that are on a state watch. For every good parent (s), there are 10 that don’t really care.
Why do my kids only have gym class ever other day?
Try one 40min class per week when I was at school, and a PE teacher who decided to get us to do the beep test, then switched it off when me and two others were at level 13, because the rest of the class had been sitting on their asses for 10 mins or so!
Budget cuts.
Art, music, physical education are the victims today. Next will be foreign languages, AP classes, driver’s ed (now there’s a sobering thought…), sports. High school will be English, Math, History, and a little science. But biology will probably be the first science to go. Americans rank last among industrialized nations in their understanding of common biological prinicipals and ideas. (Thus, we have such abominations as Creation Science and not so Intelligent Design being sold to a gullible, science illiterate, populace.)
Vote Republican, and this situation will continue to get worse. Vote for more initiatives like Prop 13 in California and it happen within the next 5 years.
Support teachers, smaller class sizes, music, art, sports, and daily physical education. Our bodies are important as you note. Our culture wants us to donate them to science and corporate productivity. Resist the culture.
-Robert, who thinks good sense was “recalled” long ago.
Vote Republican, and this situation will continue to get worse. Vote for more initiatives like Prop 13 in California and it happen within the next 5 years.
this is not a problem that is affiliated with any particular party in politics. There are states that are republican and there are states that are democratic, same problem across the board. Alabama has republican leadership (when I was living there) and they have problems. California has democratic leadership and they have problems. Electing a republican governor won’t solve the problem, niether will electing a democratic governor. We have had republican leadership and democratic leadership at the national level and the problem hasn’t changed, just got worse. To blame one party on the problem goes back to the original root of the problem, parents and personal accoutability. Stop blaming others. All politicians whether republican, democratic or independant can be bought or sold. They all use education as a means to get elected, but they can’t really do anything with it, the education problem is not a political problem to be solved, it starts in the home.
…unfortunately, teachers are their own worse enemy. The profession tolerates teaching skills that are substandard when compared to corporate America. As a general rule, those students who are the most talented simply do not go into the education profession. Sure, there are exceptions, but the unfortunate fact is the talented and most intelligent students go into other fields. Is it pay or is it a lack of societies value of teachers? It’s probably both, but you would think the profession would try to improve those standards and expectations.
To assume smaller classes is part of the solution is very naive… size of class is not the key. Well paid, Talented, Intelligent and Motivated teachers skilled at educating students (not raising them) can teach as many students that is necessary. In short, It’s quality not quantity that defines the ability to successfully educate children. Budgets don’t define quality as much as they do quantity.
It’s less of a question of funding. Instead, it’s more of a question of efficient use of resources. The structural base of the public educational system restricts the talented teachers and promotes the ineffective. We are educating our students the way we fought the Vietnam War. And, if you might note we lost that war.
Health of mind and body is a true developmental factor. Physical Education and Art are as important as the fundamentals. It helps define a society. And from what I see, the definition has been on a decline. The simple reason is because most parents are re-defining what is important. If that is what creates the problems we have, then so be it. But the teaching profession should be first to fight that decline in levels of expectations. Teachers should be drug out of society “dragging and screaming” as they attempt to define HIGHER educational standards. Instead, the are (in general) humble sheep relegated to a minimum wage work ethics defined by a substandard profession - very sad.
The irony is that in spite of these short comings, the US is still the most productive and consuming society on earth. I just wish the educational community and it’s administation could catch up to the 20th century (forget the 21st century - that’s too big of a stretch).
O.K., I’m off my soap box … now, about those chunky kids in school… standing next to their overweight parents… soon to be medically state dependent statistics… How about a hardy and brisk round of chess?
Joe Moya
Check this out: click me!
Note the paragraphs titled “Scaling Up” and “Keeping Active”. Frankly, the second one scares the crap out of me…
Let me go on my own tirade about physical education: it used to be structured (and still could be for that matter for the few places that still have it) to ridicule the under develpoed and fat kids.
When I was in seventh grade, I was given a “C” in P.E. class by an *ss hole of a P.E. teacher who said my poor grade was “because I had not developed enough yet”. I dressed everyday, and I tried as hard as I could. I had started down a path of being a bad kid on drugs until the second semester. I was performing horrendously in ice hockey (as a result of this terrible teacher) until the semester was over with, and I then had a BRILLIANT P.E. teacher. I did better then. Two more semesters of this jerk would have guaranteed me a life time of couch potatoness. I had that later (which is for a different time to discuss).
How many adult couch potatoes had that humiliating experience in junior high and high school? How many couch potatoes were picked last in P.E. class for the team sports? How many people had such horrendous, scarring experiences that they don’t want to put their kids through what they went through as a child? Why do you think that these people do not find Physical Education and therefore physical activity important (and therefore not fund it)? Because they were told they would never amount to anything in sports as children.
I am not defending this attitude against Physical Education AT ALL. I am a happily active adult, but only through my own motivation. The Physical Education system (save one wonderful P.E. teacher) works to scar children and only reward the kids who happen to be athletically gifted at the time.
What should be done? An entire overhaul of the entire P.E. programme should be done. Grade the children (like what is done with academics), put them into the appropriate classes (like developmental, junior varsity, and varsity) and make sure the P.E. teachers can do the things they are trying to teach in P.E. class.
A couple of things as a follow up to my story: I stuck with Ice Hockey, played in Junior leagues, injured my MCL, got fat and porky, rediscovered sport and self-confidence with cycling, got to publicly diss that old goat P.E. teacher who was a total ****head, and am in better shape than 98% of the football jocks that I had graduated with quite a few years ago. And I am better looking, as well.
Joe M, obviously you’re not a teacher. My wife is and she became so after spending 12 miserable unsatisfying years in the corporate sector. She took a pay cut and now teaches (by choice) in a school that would be classified as being in a lower socio-economic area. Why does she stay there instead of taking a job in a better part of town. Because of her dedication and belief that she can make a difference to kids who are in many cases at her school, are underprivileged.
Class size is a factor. Not the only factor as you say, but you try teaching thirty elementary level kids, without regular teaching assistants and with some of her kids coming to school without breakfast every morning.
Budgets do matter. Is it fair that my wife pays a few thousand dollars of her salary every year so that her kids can have all the supplies that they need.
Realize that we are in Canada and although we have poorer area schools we have nothing like the inner city ghetto schools that you’ll see in major US cities. Those poor kids have very little chance. And it’s not the teacher’s faults.
Unfortunately here in Ontario we elected several years ago a conservative right of center provincial government that has made huge cut backs in education spending and tried to use teachers as a scapegoat. Our former premier was a failed teacher who was fired for incompetance in his first year of teaching. He then became a golf pro and somehow ended up leading the provincial Conservative Party. He’s had a chip on his shoulder against teachers ever since. The guy he originally appointed as his first Minister of Education was a high school drop out.
Unfortunately final decisions and policy regarding education are generally not made by professional educators. They’re made by bull sh*tting politicians.
Don’t believe the political rhetoric. Just take a few days off and volunteer to spend a few days in a classroom and see what teachers really have to put up with.
“am in better shape than 98% of the football jocks that I had graduated with quite a few years ago.”
Why was it that every PE teacher I ever had in high school was an ex football jock that thought the whole high school program should evolve around football. That was I sport still can’t stand, and was too small to play any ways.
What happened to all those high school football jocks that used to bully and push everybody around. Big fat slobs. Revenge is sweet.
Mike and Joe:
I was involved in public education at the national policy level for two years. I worked on many of the issues in education, most of which are still festering, and I even taught for 3 years though it was in the military.
I’m sorry, but I’ve watched the conservative agenda for 40 years. The right wing of the Republican Party is an enemy of public education. They have recently been the push behind school vouchers as well. They would be happy to see public school budgets at zero. As a percentage of state revenues funding for education has dropped significantly since the 1980’s. In California, the schools were, and still are, circling the drain because of a variety of problems, including underfunding. (A part of Cali’s budget crisis is related to the recent increases in funding for education.)
To say it is less about money than use of resources is where you will find naivete resting blissfully ignorant of the truth. Teachers are buying supplies themselves and bringing them to school so they can teach. Teachers are working overtime without pay to help kids from poorer families. I actually know teachers (and have even had dinner with them), one of whom is a local chess master and a damn fine teacher. And if you think class size doesn’t matter perhaps you should try teaching English to 50 inner city kids in 9th grade! Class size is extremely important in almost all the grades.
Does pay matter? Well, would you be more or less likely to look for another job if your earnings were reduced to the average earnings of a high school teacher? Of course pay matters and it affects the quality of people who go into teaching only to a small extent because most teachers are idealist WOMEN. This idea that teachers are incompetent is an urban legend fostered by the political right and swallowed whole by a gullible American populace-the same people who think Bush made a good argument for invading Iraq.
This whole country has moved so far to right that Americans think Barry Goldwater was a liberal. Yes, some Democrats, like Clinton and Lieberman, are better Republicans than Democrats because they embrace much of the conservative agenda. So I do blame Democrats for moving to the right. Rather than leading, they FOLDED. NO BALLS. Moderates like John Dean are almost non-existent in politics today. Dean is the only person who has brought dialectic tension back to politics.
What we need is a renaissance of ideas and humanistic (Oh God, a liberal word!) IDEALS and more funding for schools. And fewer Prop 13 initiatives. We have to pay for what we want. There is no free lunch, contrary to what the FRONT RANGE LIBERTARIANS, many of whom are closet Republicans, will tell you.
If you want gym in the public schools then support public funding of the schools. Get to the legislature and TELL THEM. This is just like the USAT elections. Everyone bitches about racers not having a voice, but few of you will vote! Consistency, thou art a jewel…
-Robert
A few comments on the above posts FWIW:
I work in the personnel side of the education and training business (for past 10 years). There are no empirical studies that show improvements in learning strictly due to smaller class size. Florida recently passed a smaller class size initiative–it will bankrupt the state and not improve education one bit.
Republicans are the enemy of public education–Maybe, but not education in general. Public education is failing. Pouring more money down a rathole never fixed anything. Just look at the public school districts who spend the most money on education. There is no correlation to learning whatsoever. Republicans are the ones with new ideas about how to improve education. Democrats just parrot what the NEA tells them. Competition, what we as triathletes know improves us, will also improve education. When public school teachers have to compete for their jobs, they will improve. If you don’t believe this, look at how much American cars have improved since people started buying Japanese and German cars.
Teachers work overtime and spend their own money–Blah, blah, blah. Name me one “profession” where no one has to do this. Teachers want to be paid/treated like professionals, but uniionize and complain like blue collar employees. On an hourly basis, teachers are paid better than most professionals. BTW, I haved lived with teachers (mother and wife) for about 45 of my 48 years on this planet.
PE teachers are all ex-football players who belittle overwieght/underdeveloped students–Amen to that. PE teachers have done more damage to fitness in this country than any other group. When I was in HS, and a 135 lb. All-City Swimmer, I got a “C” in weightlifting from a football coach because I couldn’t bench press 250#. PE is what many jocks major in when they fail out of engineering, business, or even education.
I am a Boy Scout leader and am appalled by what I see when kids take off their shirts to go swimming. Most of their guts look like 100# of chewed bubble gum. A lot of these kids are living with one parent (mother) who is working full-time, and the kid never does anything but sit at home and play video games. I blame a lot of the problem (both fitness and education) on the breakdown of the traditional, nuclear family. The Scout leaders, as a group, are no better. Most of them get their Scout shorts made by Omar the Tentmaker. No fit, active role models for young kids.
When a boy is not a slug, in today’s world, he gets put on Ritalin. Just send him out to run some laps or let him play or something!!!
Encourage your local triathlon club to have a Kids Camp!
“What happened to all those high school football jocks that used to bully and push everybody around. Big fat slobs. Revenge is sweet.”
Actually, some of them got smart, grew up, got sober, published several books of poetry, sang and recorded with a punk band or two, majored in English Literature, and now really enjoy the world of triathlon. Revenge is indeed sweet. Nyuck nyuck.
Tribri:
Just a few bullets:
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The schools with the largest school budgets are the ones with the biggest headaches. They are dealing with poverty, ignorance, poor language skills by immigrants (who MADE this country, and, unless you are a native American, you ARE an immigrant’s relative). Los Angeles is a good example. Why should they spend money on gym when they can’t get 50% of the student population to reading above the 5th grade level by the time they graduate from high school? And, these are not just SCHOOL problems. These problems need broad support from the government, churches, and individuals. To lay educational failures solely at the foot of the educators is not only unfair, it is sheer folly.
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The Republicans haven’t come up with a single good educational idea. Not one. If vouchers is your idea of a good idea I’m afraid it won’t wash. Vouchers will KILL public schooling if taken to their logical conclusion, i.e., private schooling for all.
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You obviously haven’t listened carefully around the dinner table to your wife and mother. Your remarks have sexism handily built in. Notice that it is males who DON’T teach who think the schools suck? Gee, here are some teacher’s shoes. Take a hike! How do you look in heels?
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Public employees do not have the right to strike in almost all states. Hell, we have 22 Right To Work states alone. Quit blaming unions. The NEA isn’t a union. The NEA is essentially a lobbyist for a broad range of educational groups including unions and teacher groups. Teachers unions have power in a very few jurisdictions, most notably in N.Y. City thanks to the efforts of firebrands like Al Shanker.
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All state budgets are under severe restraints because state REVENUES are the lowest they’ve been in years. Every time there is a surplus in a state the Republicans give it back to the citizens as a tax refund, rather than investing it in schools. That was done here in Florida by the Bushmeister. Now Florida faces a severe budget shortfall and the schools are suffering. Ditto for almost every school district in the country. The point here is that education MUST have consistent and steady/reliable funding regardless of budget constraints. If property taxes must be raised because sales taxes haven’t covered the budget then do it. By way of example, the City of Orlando is having major budgetary problems but my property taxes just went DOWN. This is a blatant, and stupid, political move by the new mayor to immediately curry favor with the voters.
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The complaints about the schools by the right wing really is a canard. They aren’t worried about the quality of education, but what is taught. They don’t want birth control, sex education, evolution, or secular humanism of any type taught in the schools. That is what is driving this fight against public schools, not the quality of the education the children receive. The right wing is populated by Front Range Libertarians and religious extremists who think lying is ok if the goal is no government or no taxes or some religious agenda. Have you ever heard the arguments against evolution by a creation scientist? Nothing but lies. Anyway, gym classes, art, music, and even some academic classes have suffered as a consequence of the lack of backbone by the state legislators and governors. They are afraid of the crazies on their right.
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I have never had a gym teacher I didn’t loathe. And I was a jock in high school. Gym teachers must share part of the resposibility for the demise of fitness in this country. They were right wing troglodytes in an era when the only light came from the caves of the unenlightened. They are the result of the McCarthy Era, which always threatens to reinvent itself at the drop of a hat. Just ask Strom Thurmond (that’s now a long distance call) and his buddy Trent Lott. So, now you and everyone else is complaining about how you were mistreated by the right wing? Too funny.
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At age 18 I believed almost all of these urban myths the right wingers throw down like running socks and smelling just as badly. I’m ashamed to say that most males stop their emotional and intellectual growth about the same age. This problem is greatly exacerbated by the male’s tendency to watch entertainment masquerading as news. Fox Entertainment comes to mind. Bill O’Reilly may be the best of the worst.
Just my two farthings worth.
-Robert
Something else. I just got an email from someone here and I think I should make the following crystal clear.
I REGARD TALKING POLITICS AS FUN NEEDLING. Almost all of my friends are right wing wackos and I stand nose to nose with them frequently arguing. When it’s over, its over. I have way too many friends who are conservatives to take this stuff so seriously that I would dump a friend. Friends are way more important than politics.
-Robert
Please blaming your PE teacher for doing drugs??I had a few bad ones,had a Basketball coach who has forever changed how i feel about BB,played a little Football till got tired of it,chased and caught from behind our school running back,but still coach would not look at anyone but his pets,but i never let it stop me from toeing the straight and narrow,Stop blaming others and send your kids to school knowing how to read and write,maybe some need to train less
.
Public education in America isn’t faling because of some Republican aenda, its failing for the same reasons all monopolies fail - without some form of competition resources aren’t effectively deployed, mediocrity becomes a benchmark, and deficiencies are addressed by crying poverty.
Vouchers attempt to fix this by forcing failing schools to improve or give way to better schools. Let parents and students decide where their education tax dollars should go and good things will happen. We don’t need the government to think for us and what students in the worst faring schools need is more options and opportunities (as will be provided by things like vouchers) and not the straight jacket of mediocrity and excuses that passes for many of our public schools.
Triathlon is a microcosm of this idea. We train because we are in competition. To gain an edge we try and innovate, work smarter and harder than the next guy or girl and even if we don’t win our race or age group, at the end of the day hopefully we have fulfilled our potential. (I had to make this somehow relevant to the point of this board). The only thing that I can think of that accounts for Robert’s hysteria is fear of this idea.
In sum, competition is good, vouchers are a great idea, Reagan was the greatest President of the 20th Century, and yes, Bush won Florida (I can chum the water too 
).
Thanks,
John
Member, Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
Cortes:
All monopolies fail? Where did you study the economic history of the world? That’s rich…I’d suggest you give that notion the benefit of some research and come back with some support for it. As it stands it’s a laugher.
This idea that elementary and secondary schools don’t compete is likewise a howler. You have no idea how competitive the teachers and parents at these schools can be. What, you think we throw competition out the windows in public schools? Bwuahahaha!!
And the idea that vouchers are somehow the creative savior of our school systems is, I realize, a form of religious piety for the right wing. Educators can give us many creative ways to improve education without resorting to vouchers. But the right wingers and the spineless Democrats who won’t stand up and fight them won’t give them the money. Schools are run on shoe string budgets. That’s one of the larger problems for schools. Go take a look at the physical plant of many of this country’s high schools. Decrepit comes to mind. DC city schools are an abomination. Some schools resemble war zones more than bastions of learning. We need about 100 billion dollars in capital expenditures to our public school buildings alone TODAY and that is a conservative estimate.
But beneath the rhetoric about the quality of the public schools is the idea that public funding of schools is a form of communism. The right wingers won’t use that language but that is what they imply. Using tax money to educate some poor Hispanic kid whose Mexican mother is an illegal immigrant is contrary to our American ideals? Right? Well, WRONG!! Education is a universal right and imperative. Everyone should be able to go to a public school regardless of their circumstance. I support capitalism, but it must be softened with this form of socialism for education, health care, utilities, infrastructure, defense, and to run government.
Triathlon is fun and yes we can be a bit competitive, but many of us do triathlons simply for the life style. We train because it is GOOD for us and because we want to finish, and, with any genetic luck and no flats, maybe place. The vast majority of us don’t expect to win, place or show in our age groups. Finishing is enough. Everything doesn’t have to be competition. At 60 I’m just happy I can find my bike after the swim. That is an Alpha Male disease you’ve got there dude. :),
The rest of your post is worse of course-mostly a non sequitur-and not even worthy of a reply.
-Robert