Student Body Needs Toning Get Physical Pe Classes Will Help Keep Kids Off The Couch

The United States has become a nation of couch potatoes - big ones, little ones, old ones, young ones.

We drive to work and to run errands. We have sedentary jobs. We gain our sports thrills vicariously by watching professional or college athletes compete. Our children recreate by channel surfing, surfing the Internet and playing video games.

Our children. Nearly half of them, between the ages of 12 and 21, are physically inactive, and the older ones are the least active. From 1991 to 1995, the number of high school students enrolled in physical education dropped from 42 percent to 25 percent.

Now, the Idaho Legislature is listening to a proposal that would grease this downward spiral into poor health - in the hallowed names of mathematics and science. A recommendation in the proposed overhaul of public school rules calls for replacing health, humanities, freshman reading and one year of physicial education in the core curriculum with two semesters of math or science.

If anything, in our technologically advanced society, Idaho should heed the 1996 “Surgeon General’s Report on Physical Activity and Health” and expand PE requirements to two years, as neighboring Washington mandates.

Children today should be forced out from behind their computer screens, out of their comfort zones, and should be taught that sports and exercise aren’t just for jocks. That moderate, regular workouts are essential for good health. That a variety of activities can keep them in shape and, as they grow older, help them avoid heart attacks, hypertension, diabetes and colon cancer.

That life sports can be fun.

In its call to action, the surgeon general’s report equated our level of inactivity to health hazards such as cigarette smoking, AIDS and the failure to buckle up.

The report urged families “to weave physical activity into the fabric of their daily lives,” health professionals to push patients to work out, businesses to promote work-site fitness and schools and colleges “to reintroduce daily, quality physical activity as a key component of a comprehensive education.”

Not all students will become engineers. Or researchers. Or computer whizzes. But all will need their health to enjoy their lives. PE isn’t superfluous.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see headline: Let students exercise options

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = COLUMN, EDITORIAL - From both sides CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria For the editorial board