Quote:
Originally Posted by tarcone
In Missouri, our legislative body passed a law stating that elementary school kids are REQUIRED to have 150 minutes a week of physical activity. This includes P.E. and recess. The stipulation is that a qualified instructor must be present for the 150 minutes. No more recess aides.
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P.E. is a real pet peeve of mine. For many kids, it is just a period of social awkwardness. Rather than forcing kids to play games that they hate and have no skills for, give them some choices and cut down on the 15 min to take attendance and 15 min to wrap up at the end. One choice should always be to let the kids walk. Let them walk around the gym for 45 min. If people truly want kids to exercise, that is far better than standing around for your one turn at kickball or softball (and waiting for the other kids to laugh at you). I understand that part of school is to expose kids to different activities but some kids have absolutely no desire to compete in sports. Every kid can walk/jog/run and should always have that option. Like many other things in today's schools, most rules are set to comply with some government mandated "program." The forest is usually missed for the trees.
I have kids in both categories. I am a sports nut but my daughter made it very apparent from an extremely young age that she hated "ball" of any kind. My son can't get enough. My daughter is social enough that P.E. wasn't necessarily awkward but she hated it and really got nothing from it. Now she is 20 and her main form of exercise is running. My son gets plenty of exercise on his own.
The bottom line is that kids need to be active more than to be exposed to a certain number of activities mandated by some program. I'm sure most of us on this board can see that our kids get a decent level of activity...that's not the case for many households. Walking for 45 min might not cause any dramatic changes in a person but it is better for many kids than what goes on in most gym classes.