Superbowl Sunday! Americans will hear lots of warm fuzzies today about the NFL “Play 60” program. Michelle Obama will maybe even chime in with some Just Move too. While physical “activity” is part of the solution–know the differences between just being physically active and being physically EDUCATED.
La Sierra High School PE Teacher Stan LeProtti using brachiation hanging drills to align spines of young men.
With today’s children who have developed severe postural deformities, adding fitness on top of this level of dysfunction can actually create more injuries and more pain. Need proof? From 1997-2007 physical “education” injuries INCREASED 150%. If PE is so great, then why is it hurting our kids? Because PE is not really physical education anymore. PE has devolved into sports, games, and play which represents only ONE important content area of classical physical education–the other two “were” restorative and martial. No amount of playing basketball, football, “Just Moving”, or even jumping rope is going to correct severe kyphotic hunched over spines. So, we take lots of kids that are physically ignorant of movement quality then dump them into lots of physical “activity” like running, sports, and playing around without any instructional quality in physical education–and we get kids literally tripping over their own feet and getting injured. The cited report above missed the real points–our kids don’t move well. Let’s stop blaming the lack of school nurses, the heat index, and the PE teachers who even if they wanted to teach real physical EDUCATION are barred from doing it. Our kids do not move well because they have not been taught to move well. This is an adult problem more than a child problem because the adults created it in the first place.
Yes–there is a time and place for free play. Yes–there is a time and place for games. And yes, “if” kids have been properly educated physically on the essentials of movement, there is also a time for sports. However, throwing kids into sports and mere physical activity without the physical or “movement” education essentials is…well…ignorant of why we need physical education in the first place. To educate, learn movements skills, learn movement SAFETY, and to become physically literate as opposed to remaining ignorant.
Lack of physical education results in this type of body and this lack of form quality.
Rise up. Get educated. Don’t just move or move more or play 60. Move better by taking that 60 minutes of “Play 60” and using 20 minutes of it for physically educating your children. Educated movers stand better, walk better, play better, and become more efficient and injury-resistant athletes if they choose to participate in sports…we can even teach them how to sit better which is one of the main culprits of broken structure today.
Our last “real” Physical Education program with national significance was La Sierra High School during the early 1960s under the teaching leadership of Mr. Stan LeProtti. If you need a great example of where to start again–look back to La Sierra High School.
