Our friend Colleen Grady at State of Ohio Education blog points out legislation (Senate Bill 210) that would mandate physical activity in Ohio schools and track children's weight over the course of their academic careers. Schools would be required to screen students' body mass index (BMI) in grades K, 3, 5, and 9 and physical education requirements would be increased to a full unit.
Colleen rails against the proposal because it requires fitness data to be included in Ohio's rating system for schools and districts (yikes, as if it isn't complicated enough already). An article in the Marion Star points out the obvious burdens the law might impose on schools: hiring additional staff, tracking more indicators, and putting responsibity on them for "fixing society's ills" ("ill" is definitely the appropriate word, as a recent study estimates that more than half of Ohio's population will be obese by 2018).
Whether (and how) schools should play a role in students' physical wellness is a never-ending debate. There are myriad questions about privacy (would you want your BMI score on record?), paternalism, discrimination (at one Pennsylvania college, only students with a high BMI are required to take a fitness course) and fairness (seriously, do you know how inaccurate BMI scores are for athletes?). Not to mention the economics of adding requirements to already cash-strapped schools, and cramping their instructional time with non-academic mandates.
But alas, from this controversial debate there is a solution.?? It comes from two recent articles (here and here) highlighting that children apparently love yoga. A school in Minnesota has successfully practiced daily "deep breathing in unison with the help of the PA system" and some argue that it has the power to calm students before standardized testing. The answer is simple: use the ancient practice to inform new state mandates. Require yoga training for youngsters (they can select vinyasa, hatha, or ashtanga depending on their learning styles), force schools to track students' ability to hold a pigeon pose in grades 3, 5, 8, and 11, and stipulate the hiring of one yoga instructor per building.
Namaste.
-Jamie Davies O'Leary
Image courtesy of Wikimeda Commons.
