What if there was a program or product that had a positive, measurable impact on nearly every student's academic performance? And what if that same program or product could help reverse the epidemic of childhood obesity and had side effects such as enhanced health and self-esteem? Surely every School Board, teacher, parent and politician would want it featured in every school.

The program is Physical Activity. The product is Physical Fitness.

Look carefully at the following 3 graphs.

The graphs are based on measuring nearly a million California school children in grades 5, 7 and 9 in six measures of physical fitness (using the Cooper Institute Fitnessgram) and in their performance in mathematics and reading in standardized tests. In simple terms, the results show the fitter the child, the better their academic performance.

Graphs such as the above show correlations not causes, but it is the remarkable consistency of the correlations that jump from the page. Whatever the grade level and whatever the gender, the higher the fitness scores the better the scores in math and reading. The remarkable aspect of this information is that is does not come from some special interest group looking for more physical activity in schools, but from the California Department of Education. There are two other features that makes these data very robust and meaningful:

1. Over 950,000 children were tested.
2. Fitness was actually measured and not reported, assessed or guessed at.

If it were something other than physical fitness that seemed to boost academic performance everyone would be clamoring for it. If it came in a package, if is was convenient, if it saved a few short-term dollars, if it was a quick fix, if it could be used as a fundraiser or perhaps if it was novel, high tech and trendy, the movers and shakers in education would be demanding its place at every grade level. But physical education is not new, the Greeks saw it as an integral part of a balanced education 2000 years ago and built gymnasia and palastrae where their boys and young men (they still had gender problems) could exercise and discover the harmony of body, mind and spirit and strive for 'arete' or excellence. Throughout the centuries, enlightened societies have realized that a key part of the human potential movement is movement itself.

We don't need what's new for our children, we need what's best, and in order to be at their best as fully functioning human beings children need to be physically educated. They need a vocabulary of movement skills and they need physical fitness.

Intuitively, we know that we are vigorous, active animals who do well when we are able to move, and regress when we are sedentary. Chess players work out physically in order to maintain their mental acuity, Dickens claimed that the length of his walking was the length of his writing, Goethe told us that great thoughts begin in the muscles and marathon races feature numerous academics and professionals as the people of the book go back to their bodies.

Yet knowing this, we are allowing too many of our children to grow up soft and unchallenged without an awareness of what it is to be in peak condition. I've watched the erosion of physical education in my own province of British Columbia where all the major school districts used to have Physical Education supervisors who could act as a resource or reference for inexperienced teachers, today there are no such supervisors and teachers have to go it alone.

Throughout the United States and Canada most schools no longer have high expectations for the physical performance of their students. They have surrendered their responsibility to educate the whole child to cost cutting and convenience and thus become a major player in the obesity epidemic. Schools often compound the problem by becoming recruiting grounds for junk food and soft drink consumption. There are exceptions such as the State of Illinois, which still requires daily PE and kudos to the State of California for introducing fitness testing so they can at least measure the physical condition of their students. In 2004, LA School District is banning the sale of junk food and soft drinks in schools indicating that not all education administrators have their heads in the sand. However, the sort of expectations in my home province of British Columbia are more typical of the norm in North America, with an almost 'why bother' feeling about physical education.

PE "Suggestions" for British Columbia

1. Kindergarten - grade 3. Teacher's discretion!! Now there's a ringing endorsement for the importance of the early acquisition of physical skills as a part of neuro-muscular development.
2. Grade 4 - 10. Recommended allotment of 10% of instructional time. This represents about 100 hours per year if students get this "recommended" time allotment and many don't. Why 'recommended' and not mandatory?
3. Grades 11 - 12. No required PE!!

The guidelines are littered with weak words like 'suggestions', 'discretion', and 'recommended' all of which provide loopholes for lazy teachers and administrators to duck their mandate of educating the whole child. It's remarkable that there is something that enhances health, self-esteem, academic performance and weight control, but the curriculum planners cannot acknowledge its importance. Shamed by the complete lack of a PE requirement in grades 11 and 12 the provincial government has come up with a new token program for the future. Students will have to record 80 hours per year of physical activity of some sort for their Graduation Portfolio. The message is that physical education is not important enough to be part of the formal curriculum, but a little outside play will be fine to meet their graduation requirement. I wonder how many students will miss graduation because they haven't recorded their 80 hours of "physical activity"? I suspect zero.

In justifying this, Ministry Document 001/04 says, "The proposal to add grades 11 and 12 Physical Education to the graduation requirements resulted in the strongest opposition from students, educators and parents. (for example, over 90% of Internet responses)."

But when the National Association of Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) surveyed parents they got a very different type of response. (Survey results released April 29, 2003).

• 95% of parents think regular, daily physical activity help children do better academically.
• 76% of parents think more school PE could help control childhood obesity.
• 95% of parents think PE should be part of a school curriculum for all grades K - 12.

I guess it all depends on which questions you ask and to whom you ask them. (I suspect that you'd get a good Internet response from students to removing math or high school itself).

It will take belief, effort and an act of professional and political will to make fitness and physical education a vital part of the curriculum. Consideration must be given to:

1. Quality daily physical education at least through grade 9.
2. Physical education in every grade K - 12.
3. Specialist physical education teachers at every grade level. It is particularly important that children acquire appropriate movement patterns at a young age.
4. Standardized testing:
   1. body composition
   2. strength
   3. flexibility
   4. cardio-vascular endurance
5. Interesting and creative physical education programming. I love the Ontario high school who have changed their gym to look like an adult health/fitness club.
6. Graduation recognition. I like the concept of a BC high school that issued each student with a S.P.A.R.C. (student physical activity record card) when they joined the school. The SPARC recorded their growth and physical development and was presented to them along with their graduation certificate as an indication of the importance of the mind and the body.

Unless public schools offer challenging and comprehensive programs of physical activity, more and more families who want a complete education for their children will send them to independent schools who offer a wide range of physical education, athletics and outdoor recreation.

The truth about physical fitness and its relation to overall performance and health is self-evident, but too many educators are saying, "go away, I'm looking for the truth".

Fitnessgram and Activitygram Fitnessgram was the instrument used to measure student's health related physical fitness in the California study. It is the product of years of development and has been administered to over 10 million children. Acitvitygram is a module within the Fitnessgram software that helps children and adolescents self-monitor their personal physical activity patterns. I spent some days with the Fitnessgram Advisory Board at a retreat in Santa Fe (see Well Summer 2000) and was impressed by the level of expertise and the commitment of the Board members. I unreservedly recommend the use of Fitnessgram in schools. For more information click here for an acrobat article (.pdf) and here is the Cooper Institute page on the fitnessgram/activitygram and here is another article from the Wellness Center.