What Do You Cut in School?

A school in New York City does not have physical education classes for its kindergarteners. This has outraged parents, who want structured gym classes so that their kids learn to understand the value of physical activity and as it would keep them from outside recess (one parent said this was because the school was in a bad neighborhood). The school received a failing grade in a review last year, all of which seems to point out that criticism is justified.

But not because of a lack of `phys ed.

No one disputes that children who are physically active are better than those who aren't. Yet of all the things expected of our schools, isn't this the least important? Isn't being active something far more of a parent's responsibility than that of the schools? Why in the world, anyway, should the lack of physical education appear to matter more to those Brooklyn parents than the fact that the school is failing all around? Shouldn't learning sums and how to read rate higher than that pale concern?

The obvious retort is that children who are physically active tend to be better students all the way around. Still, that begs the question of whose job it is to keep them active, and it blows the question of academic integrity out the window. Further, being in good shape hardly matters if you can't communicate with everyone around you, or if you lack the basic skills which you need to hold almost any job out there.

The article goes on to cite that only 6 states actually require a recommended 150 minutes of phys ed (oh heck, skip that: gym class. Prettying up what we call it really doesn't matter) per week in elementary schools. We should be horrified at that? Not if play time isn't a true part of a school's daily grind.

And that's what it is, when all gets said and done. Play time. That's not a bad thing by itself. Yet not every good thing is or ought to be the province of the schools. Especially for skills as relatively unimportant as hitting a ball with a bat or shooting a ball through a goal. When the question of school budgets come up along with the discussions about about to keep and what to cut, gym class ought to be the first item to go.