The Benefits of Physically Active Kids

This research summarizes the dramatic connection between improved academic performance of elementary school children, elevated heart rates, measurable physical activity in schools, and reduced obesity and risk of Early Chronic Diseases (ECD). The data is clear: getting kids active improves both their grades and their health.

CONTRIBUTORS

Nick Smith, Jen Washburn, Dan Bastian, Boyd Jentzsch

---

View Print version of this document
View Summary version of this document

Return to PE Home
< Prev   

1

   2   3   4   5   6   7   8    Next >

In response to budget cuts and provisions of the federal "No Child Left Behind" act, elementary schools have been forced to cut Physical Education (PE) programs from their curriculum. The legitimately motivated yet misdirected objective of these cuts is to give kids "extra" time for improving academic and scholarship achievements.

Unfortunately, numerous studies show these measures to be counter-productive. Academic performance of elementary school age children is hurt, not helped, by less physical activity.

Concurrently, the escalating and lifestyle-caused obesity epidemic is ravaging the future of children by spawning Early Chronic Diseases (ECD), shortening lifespans, reducing quality of life, and costing untold millions of healthcare dollars.

Almost as many people will die each year from obesity and related ECD as from tobacco-related illnesses, according to estimates from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The objective of this study is to assemble the research data, assimilate the discoveries, and summarize the evidence for policy makers and administrators who determine elementary school policy. The express objective of presenting these science-based data is to demonstrate to policy makers the urgent need to initiate appropriate, measurable, and validated physical activity in elementary schools. This will improve academics while stopping the obesity and Early Chronic Diseases (ECD) epidemic.

Published data and peer-reviewed research are indisputably clear in their discoveries
and conclusions:

1. Regular, aerobic physical activity improves the scholarship and academic
   performance of children.
2. Physical activity resources are most appropriately and effectively administered in the
   nation's school system; they add an indispensible dimension to the educational process.
3. Aerobic, measured, and validated physical activity is most effective in reducing obesity
   and ECD.

Improved Academics. In-school activity programs improve children's mathematics, reading and writing scores, concentration, and classroom behavior.

Eliminating physical activity in schools, with the objective of improving academics, inadvertently curtails learning and stymies scholarship.

Implemented Best in Schools. The opportunity to help children is an academic, health, and scientific issue. This physical activity will not occur at home; to think otherwise is demonstrably inaccurate.

To disband regular physical activity in schools is to cause irreparable harm to children.

Measured Activity. Regular, aerobic, and measurable physical activity programs, by definition, elevate children's heart rates for extended periods of time. Only regular, vigorous activities will produce a measurable improvement in the biometric markers for Obesity and ECD.

In short, appropriate physical activity improves grades and saves children's lives.

< Prev   

1

   2   3   4   5   6   7   8    Next >
Return to PE Home