“University sports” were required for the first three years of all college students, voluntary in the fourth year. To continue their studies, every student had to pass a fitness exam each year.
The only institutions of higher education that require sports each semester anymore are the military academies, although even their passing fitness standards are minimal. The brass, now that women have been permitted in combat roles, has promised to “adjust” all standards so that females are not allowed out of important duties.
This, in an armed forces where drone pilots are esteemed as jet fighter jocks? Clearly, physical fitness is not a priority anymore.
American high school students get so little exercise and have such a poor diet that bone fracture injuries are escalating at an epidemic rate in basic training. Kids can’t take even a short march with a backpack and a rifle. Caffeinated sodas and sugary fruit drinks are no substitute for milk when it comes to building strong, healthy bones.
Actually, all the milk in the world wouldn’t do American kids any good. Calcium doesn’t do squat to strengthen bones unless the bones are also subject to impact exercise – weight-bearing exercises (aerobic exercise actually leech calcium bones).
It’s irrelevant to educators that regular exercise works miracles in improving classroom grades. All they care about is the bottom line. P.E. classes are too expensive, and so they are the first to be cut when budgets come under pressure.
The Jock Strap Culture
Young people who don’t grow up accustomed to regular exercise, appreciating the benefits of even a minimal level of fitness, enamored with the simple joys and camaraderie of sports and friendly competition on the field of play – swear off all physical college other than chasing after the opposite sex for a close encounter or lifting a beer mug at the local pub.
With 1/3rd of American adults obese and another 1/3rd overweight, it’s a given that at best 1/3rd of Americans are fit at all. The actual number is more like 5%.
Our healthcare system (and government) bears the cost of a nation of overweight, inactive, unhealthy individuals.
A simple prescription of P.E. classes in school at every level through college would save infinitely more than it costs, and also produce smarter, better, happier, and more productive workers.
Alas, obesity now has its own line of fashionable clothes, iconic movie stars who show obese people how to feel good about themselves, and politicians who are mortified by even the thought of offending 2/3rds of the electorate by any attempt at trimming the fat.
Politicians love their pork, after all.