New phys ed favors fitness over sports

The "new P.E." focuses on long-term fitness rather than competitive sports

By Kathy Slobogin
CNN

(CNN) -- For many baby boomers, physical education class was daily torture. Slow children were sitting ducks for dodge ball, while klutzes were subject to humiliation, hoping against hope they wouldn't be picked last for a team. Not only were there scars, but it now appears those P. E. classes weren't especially good at developing long-term fitness.

"Our old focus was on athletic skill and focusing on about 30 percent of the population -- the athletes," said Phil Lawler, a physical education instructor in Naperville, Illinois.

"But most of those athletes' careers ended three or four years after they left us and many times they were not athletic after their athletic careers. So what value did we bring to their lives?"

The focus on competitive sports also sidelined some of the children who needed physical education the most, according to Lawler.

"I think we turned off thousands of children to exercise over the years when they were embarrassed that they weren't one of the best in the class and they kind of hid away."

Lawler is a guru of "the new P.E.," a model he has pushed in his school district for the last 10 years. The new P. E. focuses on the 70 percent of kids who will never be varsity athletes. It's about fitness skills, not athletic competition.

Madison Junior High School in Naperville is a model of the new P. E. The gym is designed as a health club, with weight lifting, exercise bikes and running machines. Rollerblading and a rock-climbing wall get as much attention as competitive sports. Although team sports are still played, Lawler picks the teams. Students are graded on how well they stay within their heart-rate zones, not how many baskets they shoot.

Students at Madison Junior High School get computer printouts of their cholesterol levels, body fat and heart rate

"I now can have a child literally running a six-minute mile at this age, and a 14-minute mile, and each child will get the same grade based on the number of minutes they put in their zone," explained Lawler. "If the best they can do is walk and they're in their zone, that's great."

Each child at Madison gets a computer printout that records things such as his or her cholesterol, heart rate and body fat. The physical transcript follows the student through 12th grade. Lawler said the school's monitoring detected some form of heart disease in at least six students over the last few years.

The movement is spreading. About 30 percent of Illinois schools have changed to the new model, said Lawler, and officials from over 100 schools around the country have visited Madison in the last two years.

But the national picture is bleak. At the same time that childhood obesity has reached epidemic levels -- doubling in the last 30 years -- physical education classes are vanishing.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 10 years ago, 42 percent of high school students attended daily P. E. class -- today it's only 25 percent. A 1997 survey found that a quarter of all U.S. students get no P. E. at all. As schools are pressured to improve students' academic performance, P. E. often gets squeezed out of the curriculum.

Phil Lawler

One bright spot is the recently passed Physical Education for Progress Act, which provides $5 million in grants for selected school districts to improve their P. E. programs. The grants average $300,000 per district.

Lawler's setup at Madison Junior High cost about $75,000, but he said it can be done for less with creative scavenging and donations. In any case, he said the investment pays off far beyond a student's school years.

"I can't grade you on whether you're healthy or not," said Lawler. "Life is going to have a way of grading you. When you go to the doctor, when you're 30 and 40, we're going to find out if you passed or failed."

Schools taking breaks from recess
May 15, 2001
Global push to let kids play
May 6, 2001

National Association for Sport and Physical Education
Physical Education for Progress Grant Program
P.E.4Life
Madison Junior High School
Polar Heart Rate Monitors

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