Should Sports Be Required?
Gordon Brown, Former Prime Minister of Great Britain, lit a fitness fire in the UK while in office. Fueled by both the glaring statistics showing low physical activity in today’s children and the UK’s role in the upcoming Summer Olympics, the British Government is getting involved in the physical health of its future. They launched a Sports Manifesto that guaranteed each child the opportunity of competitive sport. Their government sees the increase in participation in school sports as an important social investment.
The Sports Manifesto states:
“This ambition will be reinforced through a new Pupil Guarantee, ensuring every pupil will have access to:
- regular competitive sport;
- coaching to improve their skills and enjoyment;
- a choice of different sports;
- pathways to get involved in club and elite sport, and;
- opportunities to lead and volunteer in sport.”
Again, this isn’t a requirement, just the opportunity to participate. Maybe the Brits are on to something. This strategy, called the P.E. and School Sports Strategy, has found success. In 1997, only one in four UK children ages 5-16 were doing two hours of P.E. and sport a week. As of 2007, nine out of 10 were getting their two hours in. But it wasn't cheap. With a price tag of almost $4 billion (U.S. dollars), they have created 422 school sports partnerships and 2,300 school sports coordinators, a National Sports Week and the UK School Games.
In contrast, kids in school in the United States get only a few precious minutes on the playground at recess, weather permitting, and an hour or two a week in P.E. class. And technically, the kids aren't getting an even an hour of exercise. The American Journal of Physical Education conducted a study among elementary school students in Texas and found that although the students were in P.E. class an average of 140 minutes per week, they were active an average of only 10.4 minutes per week. Some schools have even cut that program out completely, viewing it as extracurricular and the first thing cut from school budgets.
Stanford University reported in their Stanford Report article “Building Generation Play” that one recent study among 8- to 18-year-olds found that they spend 6.5 hours per day with personal use media (including TV, DVDs, computers, radio and CDs), among which a daily average of 4 hours is spent watching TV, DVDs or videos. Are we really all that stumped as to why childhood obesity and diabetes are on the rise?
Perhaps starting a similar program in the United States could be just the right thing to turn things around for our youth. Let’s weigh the pros and cons.
Pros:
- Participation. Children get to participate in sports programs they normally wouldn’t enjoy whether the constraint was lack of access to such programs, financial reasons, inability to get there or not having support from home.
- Development of a healthy lifestyle. Children get the opportunity to choose a sport they normally wouldn’t have chosen before. By selecting the sports they would like to participate in, they are showing what really interests them. Therefore, they’ll stick with it longer. Making it a part of their daily lives now will create a lifelong dedication to an active lifestyle.
- Exercise. They would be getting at least one hour of vigorous play a day. Physical inactivity takes a toll in more than one area. From Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the estimated costs of physical inactivity in the United States are $37.2 billion annually. More research shows that childhood obesity alone is estimated to cost $14 billion annually in health expenses.
- Becoming better students. Active children do better in school. A recent study by the American College of Sports Medicine found that moderate activity for 30 minutes, like P.E., did nothing to influence the grades of the middle school children in their study. However, what it did show was that the more active the children were, the better their grades were. Those children were the ones that participated in sports like basketball, soccer, football, baseball and softball outside of school.
Cons:
- Ridicule. Not all kids are athletically inclined. Could this actually hurt their self-esteem? We’ve all seen it. We’ve watched the kid that steps up to the plate and looks like he has never held a bat before. His peers laugh. As if we need one more thing for kids to get bullied about. But if given the right coaching and consistent skill development, would this still be an issue?
- Pressure of competition. Some kids just aren’t competitive. They don’t feel the need to win or have the desire to win. However, if given the perspective that sports isn’t about winning, it is about being active and enjoying the activity, the right message is clear. And not everything has to be team-oriented. Swimming, gymnastics, tennis and dancing are individual pursuits, yet great exercise.
- Injuries. Four million children head to the ER for sports injuries every year. Also, overuse injuries are on the rise for kids that play the same sport all year round. Can someone alert the “elite” clubs in town...stat?
- Government involvement. Who wants the government to get involved in something at the local level when they have much bigger issues to deal with? But maybe an investment in our society’s future and our communities would provide a better return on investment than some of our current political agendas.
The jury is still out on whether or not this approach would be effective here, but across the pond, everything seems to be working with great results. What do we have to lose? A few pounds...which is a good thing here!
Hallie Sawyer is a freelance writing mom in Overland Park who has no less than 30 balls roaming around her car, garage and backyard at all times.