This 5-page report examines the ramifications of budget cuts in athletic programs for grades K-12. In the face of staggering statistics pointing to the ever-increasing rate of childhood obesity, an alarming number of schoolchildren are no longer offered even a modicum in the way of Physical Education classes. With no release for their excess of energy and no safe place to vent natural aggression, could this be contributing to the incidence of violence in our schools? Bibliography lists 5 sources.
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faded away. Nonetheless, and as strange as it may seem, images of playing point guard on the basketball team and doubles tennis with my favorite partner, Brigette remain
the only vivid beacons from those mostly forgettable years. This phenomenon shared by many of my generation is, according to Sue Tillery (a NASPE National Teacher of the
Year in 1994) "...only natural: Kids want to have their love of play validated. Thats what good gym classes do" (McCallum 2000, p. 82).
In the 1950s, Physical Education classes for grades K-12 included a wide variety of activities/sports in the curriculum -- not so much to
support "play time," but to teach discipline, teamwork and leadership - skills for a lifetime. Those days were a right of passage of sorts, where many were given
acronyms that lasted for a generations. Those were the days of team spirit and bonding. Children could learn the value of competition, release bent-up aggression and have a
safe harbor in which to express natural, but often conflicting emotions since "competition [by connotation] creates winners and losers; [and] winners and losers, [experience the extremes of], joy and depression.
Few memories unite us like memories of gym class" (McCallum, 2000, p. 82). In the late fifties
- a time marked by an onslaught of government intervention and surveys -- meetings were convened to discuss the state of physical fitness in the younger populace. A
test was designed, the results of which were to reveal the fitness levels for various age groups. When JFK endorsed the test, it became known as the Presidential Fitness