Physical Education Issues in Contemporary

Physical Education Issues in Contemporary Education

Impact on Children, Schools, Communities, Families and Teachers

The importance of instilling good habits about exercise, physical activity, and nutrition as early as possible in the lives of children cannot be overstated. According to empirical research, children who spend more time playing passive games such as computer games more than participating in physically active games, recreational activities, and sports have much greater chances of becoming overweight and of having less fulfilling social lives than children who actively participate in physical recreational activities.

From the perspective of children, being healthy and maintaining normal body weight have obvious advantages in comparison to being less healthy and being overweight or obese. That is especially true because children who are overweight have at least a sixty percent chance of remaining overweight or obese throughout their later lives; and adults who are overweight or obsess have significant health problems in comparison to adults who maintain a normal body weight. In addition to health issues, there are social serious social disadvantages to being overweight. In childhood and adolescence, overweight children have lower self-esteem, fewer friendships, and they are more susceptible to being victimized by bullying. As adults, they are at a disadvantage in hiring decisions, as well as in many other social situations, including the prospect of finding fulfilling romantic relationships.

From the perspective of schools, children who are less healthy and those who are overweight present issues of social responsibility in terms of providing for their nutritional and health needs, and in terms of allowing students the best possible environment to enjoy school and perform up to their potential in their studies. From the perspective of families and communities, children who are less healthy or overweight because of their habits and lifestyle present problems in connection with depression, social anxiety, and social withdrawal. Few things are more troubling to parents than witnessing their children become unhappy. Unhappy, unhealthy, and unfulfilled children become less happy adults who are less likely to reach their potential academically, socially, and professionally and that naturally detracts from the community in the aggregate. Finally, from the perspective of teachers, less healthy and less socially secure and happy students are less committed to their studies and less capable of learning or of concentrating in school than healthy and happy students. The prevalence of unhealthy and unhappy children only makes the job of teachers even harder than it already is.

Impact on Future Primary School Health and Physical Education Teachers

The impact of the concepts of healthy childhood physical education habits and principles on primary school health and physical education programs would be to provide means of ensuring that those programs benefit as large a proportion of the student population as possible. Traditional approaches to primary and secondary school health and physical education programs strongly encourage the participation of students who are naturally inclined toward athletics and strongly discourage the continued participation of students who are less physically inclined or less competitive in that respect. To a large degree, that has been the fault of physical education teachers who are content to allow students to organize their own games and teams. When students are in control in that way, they tend to exclude those students who are already at the greatest risk of giving up on sports and physical recreation at a young age.

By contrast, the approach advocated by experts in the field is not to allow students to direct their own games and sports. Instead, physical education professionals must remain more directly involved to prevent the more athletically inclined students from excluding those students who are less athletically inclined. More importantly, it is the role of the modern physical education professional to recognize that the traditional sports that have always been the main staples of physical education may not necessarily interest all students. Instead of restricting the available choices to those traditional games and activities, physical education teachers must initiate sufficient interaction with students to understand their preferences and to provide them with possible options that interest them more than the relatively few options within the framework of traditional physical education programs.

Similarly, it is not helpful for physical education professionals to focus their efforts on the students who are most naturally inclined to doing well in sports. This is a natural tendency of physical education professionals because it is more rewarding to work with students who can easily grasp what they are being taught. Therefore, it is important for physical education professionals to recognize that they have as much of a responsibility to meet the needs of less physically-inclined students as those of students who are naturally more athletic and more gifted in sports.

Application to Primary School Teaching

Applying the concepts of healthy childhood physical education habits and principles to primary school health and physical education programs means, among other things, that physical education teachers, and other teachers more generally, must take a more comprehensive or "holistic" view of physical education and the physical health of all of their students. It is not longer acceptable to allow students to direct their own activities and participation in physical education. At the other end of the spectrum, it is also no longer appropriate to focus on mandatory participation for the mere sake of participation, especially with regard to students who clearly are not enthusiastic about the physical education options available. Applying the modern concepts of physical education that are conducive to the health and happiness of all students means that physical education teachers must make the additional effort to get to know their students well enough to learn what their likes and dislikes are. In that way, they are in the best possible position to devise physical education programs and activities that might genuinely interest certain students who are less interested in the traditional physical education activities.