Darren Dale |
Steve
Jefferies, publisher of pelinks4u,
has written a timely article on
physical education's current obsession
with childhood obesity. In Physical
Education and Obesity - Let's
Be Careful What We Wish For
(April 2008, Vol.10, No.4), Steve
writes that it is "tempting
for physical educators to see
our subject matter as the solution
to children's obesity." Steve
couldn’t be more on point.
School physical educators, university
faculty, funding agencies, and
the national physical education
alliance are among those who suggest
the school physical education
curriculum can influence how fat
children are (and how fat they
might become). This is folly.
Here's why.
PE cannot
make children thin. This is an
unachievable goal.
Even if persuasive evidence came
to light (a) linking child behaviors
to being overweight, and (b) linking
overweight in children to health
risks, school physical education
is poorly placed to do anything
about it. First, the time devoted
to physical education classes
over the school week is minimal
- perhaps an hour or two per week.
Second, even a physical education
lesson involving a high caloric
cost is unlikely to contribute
in any substantial way to making
a fat child a thin one.
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Children and young adolescents cannot
work hard enough within a 30-minute
physical education class to influence
their 24-hour energy expenditure. This
is not to say that some vigorous exercise
during class time is not important.
Asking children to exercise to a high
intensity during some part of the lesson
is a reasonable curricula objective,
particularly in high school. For teenagers,
intensity and duration of exercise is
imperative for producing changes in
physical fitness - aerobic and anaerobic
fitness, muscular strength and power.
Vigorously exercising during physical
education will not make children thin,
and teachers should stop implying to
students that it might.
Readers are referred to an article
written by Gary Taubes published in
the New Yorker Magazine in 2007. In
The
Scientist and the Stairmaster,
Why most of us believe that exercise
makes us thinner - and why we're wrong
Taubes challenges the contention that
by exercising individuals can influence
how fat they are: "But there's
no reason to think that we will lose
any significant amount of weight, and
little reason to think we will prevent
ourselves from gaining it." There
are points to refute in The Science
and the Stairmaster (and even more in
Taubes' most recent book Good
Calories, Bad Calories). Nevertheless,
he gives physical education teachers
much to ponder, especially those teachers
who demand children exercise vigorously
in order that they not get fat.
PE should not
try to make children thin. This is a
misguided goal
Overweight is not a behavior. Being
overweight does not expose a child or
adolescent to higher rates of injury,
disease, or premature death. (It may
expose the child to ridicule and discrimination,
however a distressingly unfortunate
outcome that results from the message
that overweight children need to be
cured).
Compare the goal of reducing the prevalence
of obesity to that of decreasing youth
smoking or alcohol consumption. Decreasing
the number of youngsters who begin smoking
is an admirable public health goal because
smoking substantially elevates risk
of cardiovascular disease and lung cancer.
Drinking alcohol is also a behavior
that should be strongly discouraged
because alcohol consumption causes injury,
violent behavior, and premature death.
Educators are acting responsibly when
they teach that young people can (and
should) stop these behaviors, or never
begin them in the first place. Changing
these behaviors can lower risk of health
and injury. The same cannot be said
about overweight and obesity. Teachers
cannot be certain that fat children
can become thin. Nor can they be certain
that if a child did lose weight an improvement
could result in his or her health. Even
among adults, the evidence linking body
fat (with the exception of extreme obesity)
to premature disease and death is far
weaker than it is for smoking and drinking.
It is misguided to set a "get
thin" goal for an overweight child,
as misguided as it would be to set a
"get tall" goal for a short
child. With few exceptions, it is likely
the case that thin children cannot get
fat, and fat children cannot become
thin.
Physical activity and the choice of
what to eat are behaviors (to some degree)
within a child's control, but evidence
linking activity levels and eating behaviors
to child obesity is weak. Many heavy
children are no doubt quite physically
active, and many thin children are probably
sedentary. Many heavy children will
eat a healthy diet while many thin children
will live on junk food. The goal of
having children conform to a particular
body size and shape (if they only would
exercise more or eat less) is a misguided
one. It is wrong to have children believe
they can change how fat they are by
exercising more after school, or by
eliminating ice-cream from their diet.
PE can provide children with meaningful,
positive experiences. Teachers who focus
on trying to make fat children thin
deprive their students of the best that
PE can offer. The "less fat
children" goal is harmful
to PE.
What is physical education? As Steve
Jefferies reminded readers in his column,
it is a unique school experience encompassing
education of and through the physical.
For teachers this means teaching the
joy of movement and an understanding
of how we move. It means helping students
achieve higher levels of fitness, skills,
and performance. It means being the
catalyst for psychological and social
benefits related to exercise and physical
activity: dedication, courage, fair
play, commitment, loyalty, camaraderie,
and honesty. It has little to do with
how fat a child is.
If a teacher has the goal of making
children thin, the lesson he or she
teaches will undoubtedly involve a great
deal of exertion - a high caloric expenditure.
Such lessons may sacrifice some of the
more worthy objectives mentioned above.
For instance, the physical education
lesson with the best chance (albeit,
slim-to-none) of influencing a child's
body fat would require children run…and
run…and run… for the entire
lesson. This is fun for the children
that are good at cross-country. It may
not be fun for the remaining 95% of
children in the class. Nor will the
lesson be inspiring or educational.
When physical education teachers require
children to run (or walk or cycle) for
the majority of class time, little in
the way of quality teaching is needed.
Indeed anyone, the classroom teacher
for example, could ask the children
to go and run laps. Some might begin
to question why it is necessary to have
a specialist, with a four year physical
education degree, teaching a lesson
that involves a large part of class
time devoted to children running laps
around the sports field.
The most important topics in a physical
education curriculum do not require
high energy expenditure. At the high
school level, time devoted to topics
like resistance training, sports skills,
adventure-based education, and conceptual
learning (anatomy, physiology, and sport's
nutrition) would be lessened as these
do little in the way of making children
thin. At elementary school, the time
devoted to teaching sport skills (throwing,
catching, striking) and fundamental
loco motor movements is lost when children
are asked to spend time running laps
of the gym.
Physical education needs to put aside
the objective of solving the nation's
obsession with how fat people are. Our
profession has more important things
to focus on. Improving physical fitness,
and teaching enjoyment through movement,
are unique and worthy outcomes physical
education can provide within the broader
school curriculum. Expressing dissatisfaction
with a child because they are fat seems
rather sad in light of higher, more
meaningful, outcomes physical education
can aspire to achieve.
This article began by making reference
to the editorial Steve Jefferies wrote
on obesity. I’ll finish by answering
a question Steve asks: "How is
it possible to impact children's obesity
with only two 30-minute physical education
lessons a week?" It's not possible.
And physical education should stop trying.
Readers interested in exploring these
arguments further are encouraged to
read Obesity,
Health, and Metabolic Fitness by
Glen Gaesser. Readers are asked to note
the list of original sources he provides
to support his arguments, and take the
time to locate and read those of interest.
Dr. Gaesser is also author of Big
Fat Lies: The Truth about Your Weight
and Your Health. This book is a
must-read for all physical education
teachers.
Last year in the UK newspaper The Times,
readers were greeted with the following
headline:
Is
PE a waste of time? How much energy
children expend may be determined by
their genes, a study suggests, implying
that they find their own activity level
no matter what we tell them to do.
Barbara Lantin of The Times reports
the results of a 7-year study on physical
activity and diabetes in children: "It
has found, to almost universal astonishment,
that children's activity levels are
governed not by the number of PE lessons
in the school time-table, or even by
the sport they do in their own time,
but by an internal mechanism that may
be preset before birth."
What is disturbing for school physical
education teachers is the headline "Is
PE a Waste of Time?" The implication
is that if children are still fat when
they graduate from school, then physical
education has failed. It is of no value.
It is a waste of time.
This is the point we have arrived at,
and it is disappointing in the extreme.
A New England Journal of Medicine editorial
review of Child and Adolescent Obesity:
Causes and Consequences, Prevention
and Management (edited by Burniat, Cole,
Lissau, Poskitt) opines:
"In our rush to find a metabolic
cause for obesity, nutritionists and
physicians have tended to downplay the
role of excess energy, preferring to
believe the results of dietary histories,
but neglecting data that show that obese
children often grow faster, have a larger
fat-free weight and advanced skeletal
maturation, and mature a bit earlier
than their normal peers. Since these
phenomena could not occur without an
excess of food, obesity is truly a nutritional
disease" (emphasis added).
That is, energy expenditure
in childhood may not have a lot to do
with whether or not a child is fat.
Indeed, as stated earlier, it is naïve
to think that two 30 minute PE classes
per week have any hope of significantly
influencing a child's body weight.
Several others have written thoughtful
and persuasive texts critical of the
obsession by some to make fat people
thin. In 2004, Paul Campos wrote "The
Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession
with Weight is Damaging to Your Health."
Last year, New York Times Science reporter
Gina Kolata received superb reviews
for Rethinking
Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss--and
the Myths and Realities of Dieting.
"…most importantly, explains how genetic and biochemical understanding has (at least among researchers) replaced the view of obesity as a lack of self-control. Most dramatic is Kolata's recounting of Jeff Friedman's ground-breaking search at Rockefeller University for the "satiety factor," a hormone he called leptin that tells our brains when we're full. The science alternates with moving chapters in which Kolata follows a group of people in a weight-loss study who are trying desperately to get thin-a quest that, as Kolata makes increasingly clear is sadly futile. In her final-and perhaps most surprising-chapter, Kolata blasts those in the obesity industry-such as Jenny Craig and academic obesity research centers-who are invested in promoting the idea that overweight is unhealthy and diet and exercise are effective despite a raft of evidence to the contrary."
For more than a decade, physical education
faculty and teachers have erroneously
positioned physical education as a solution
to the "problem" of fat children.
This has damaged the integrity of our
profession. Physical education is about
fitness and the enjoyment of exercise.
It is about understanding physiology,
and learning how to move efficiently.
It is about recognizing that a physically
active lifestyle can provide substantial
benefits to physical and mental health.
It is not, and should never have been,
about being fat. |
