By: Nikki Nies
I’m glad others are taking a stand and sharing their desire to incorporate physical education (PE) into everyday class schedules. With 15% of children obese, we’re in a critical need to reinstate recess and PE into daily schedules.
I can understand school’s willingness to wane to state and national standards to groom competitive students. However, does that mean stripping our students of recess and physical activity? Life is all about balance and without any play, the work becomes mundane. There’s only so much the classroom can teach. What about the human interaction?
Networking, social relationships and communication are essential tools to thriving in this world. What better place to start than as a young child. Besides the most listed benefits above, it’s been shown active children have a greater attention span, faster cognitive processing speed and perform better on standardized exams than those that are required to sit behind a desk all day.
It’s recommended children get at least 60 minutes of exercise daily. It’s hard to fit exercise in with varying school, family and life responsibilities. School’s are supposed to be advocates for providing students tools and life lessons. Let’s not stop with just academics.
