We Need a P.E. Revolution
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Summary
When it comes to physical education in our country, parents, teachers, and administrators alike typically place it at the bottom of their list of priorities, something to fit in if budget, time, and academic standards allow. My guest, however, says that PE should be thought of as the most important component in education, and is critical not only in ensuring the lifetime health of our kids, but even attaining those vaunted academic standards.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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When it comes to physical education in our country schools, parents, teachers, and administrators
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alike typically place it at the bottom of their list of priorities, something to fit
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in if budget, time, and academic standards allow.
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My guest, however, says that PE should be thought of as the most important component
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in education, and is critical not only in ensuring the lifetime health of our kids,
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but even attaining those vaunted academic standards too.
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His name is Dr. Daniel O'Neill, and he's an orthopedic surgeon, a sports psychologist,
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Today on the show, Dr. Dan lays out how a lack of physical activity is creating problems
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in kids from obesity to anxiety, and preventing the development of what he calls a physical
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He explains the way the huge number of our kids who don't see themselves as athletes end
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up not pursuing physical activity at all, and why he thinks school-sponsored sports are
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Dr. Dan takes us back to a time in our history when physical education was prioritized, and
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we discuss what's wrong with modern PE and how it can be improved.
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Dan makes an argument for why PE should be the main foundational thing focused on in schools
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today, and what people can do to push to make that happen.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash PE.
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All right, Dr. Daniel O'Neill, welcome to the show.
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So you are an orthopedic surgeon, but you've become a big advocate for rebranding and revamping
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the way American kids experience physical education in schools.
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Yeah, that's a good question because my day job was an orthopedic surgeon, and after about
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10 or so years, I thought I was missing a big component.
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I was working with some pretty high-level athletes in those days, and I went back to school and
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got a degree in exercise and sports psychology, and that was at the School of Education at Boston
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So I wound up taking a lot of education courses over those years, but the real thing was, and
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this is not news to anybody, is that in my 40 years of medicine, I have seen kids get fatter
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and sadder and more out of shape and more unable to play and more unable to move.
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You know, it's not even, you know, you have to do a study and break down the data.
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And I thought we needed to do something about it.
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Well, yeah, I mean, I think everyone's seen that, and I guess, you know, everyone's heard
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about there's been an increase in the number of children these days with what we call the
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Things like diabetes, like stuff that you wouldn't get, you're not supposed to get until
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And what I talk about, the analogy I make is that when I was a kid, we were stealing our
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parents' cigarettes, and they were afraid if we got addicted to those cigarettes, we would
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become emphysemic and have lung cancer and such when we're in our 60s and 70s.
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Because these children, our children today, are sick now.
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They're not waiting until they're adults to get diseases.
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Like you say, they have diabetes and high blood pressure and anxiety and depression, all these
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Western diseases, diseases of civilization, but really adult diseases, you know, and they
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You write a bit about that, but your focus is on the physical activity component.
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Do we know what the state of childhood physical activity in America is today?
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In the book, I didn't want to go down the diet road too much just because there's so much
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been written on that and there's so much, not controversy, but just so much that we know
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And there are a lot of really smart people that are working on that.
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But what I feel like hasn't been addressed is that physical activity component and the
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The ones that do organize sports quit by the age of 15 and they're getting those diseases
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So unless we do something when they're young, when they still have what I call a physical
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identity, we're going to have another generation that has a shorter lifespan than the last generation.
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Yeah, I want to talk more about this physical identity idea in a bit because I thought it
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But I mean, do we have any comparisons to say like how much physical activity kids got say
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It hasn't really been quantified, but kids just went out and played, you know, and playgrounds
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and ball yards and these things just had kids all over them.
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But we don't know the real breakdown of activity versus the ultra processed foods that we're dealing
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with versus the genetic components, because it's to the point now where, you know, there is
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a genetic component to some of their obesity because the parents are giving these kids a
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bad start in life in utero because of the foods that they're consuming, the mothers are consuming.
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But I don't know of a study that has literally looked at activity when I was a kid 50 years
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We have some rough idea on the amount of time kids are spending on screens, and that's
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It's like up to like seven hours a day on screens, which is crazy because, you know,
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if you have like six hours at school and you sleep for eight hours, like the rest of the
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And like you say, whatever number you mentioned, it's probably bigger now.
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It's getting bigger by the day, just like the obesity, just like obesity is getting bigger
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These children are addicted to the two-dimensional entertainment.
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They are addicted, just like they're addicted to the ultra-processed foods and just like people
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It's a very similar physiologic response for sure.
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So we've mentioned the lack of movement has resulted in an increase in obesity, metabolic
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But then I also like how you emphasize the lack of physical activity can also help explain
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partly why we've seen an increase in childhood anxiety and depression in the past two decades.
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I was talking about setting up a study and I was talking to a public health guy from Columbia
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and I'm on the phone with him and I almost felt him reach through the phone and grab my
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neck and scream, we don't need any more studies.
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This is not a tobacco issue where the tobacco companies were able to obfuscate a lot of the
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If you open the USA today, it says if you had done this one study group of like 6,000 or
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If they had done 10 minutes of exercise more, it would have increased their lifespan by this
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I mean, it's just remarkable how little exercise we need to make these health changes.
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But in the case of kids, they need a lot of exercise because they're kids.
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And what's crazy is that movement can do all sorts of things to help with obesity, insulin
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It's like, well, you know, give the kid a drug for his anxiety, you know, give, put him
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on a high blood pressure medication or some sort of medication for his diabetes.
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And it's like, wait a minute, we got this thing that's free.
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Oh, Brett, if I knew I was down a week ago, I was down at our legislature testifying in
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front of the education committee, talking about just this.
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They're taking a hospital down in the Southeast part of the state, and they're making it a
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And that's the tune of millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars, rather
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than sitting there and saying, hold it, why do we have all these kids with anxiety and
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And as you point out, oh yeah, we have this thing called mother nature, and she could help
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And if we just gave these children physical education every day for every child, it is going
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And just to pick up on your point, we have our big brains to run these fancy bodies that we
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In other words, it's not the mind-body connection, it's the body-mind connection.
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If your body is not working, your brain is not going to be working.
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So one of your most, I think, really powerful and strong arguments you make in the book is
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that by kids moving less in childhood, it's causing them to not develop what you call a
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What do you mean by physical identity and what happens when a kid doesn't develop a physical
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So for anybody that has had a kid or a puppy dog or an octopus or has seen or a bear cub
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who has seen any youth, any young animal moving, they understand that they have a physical identity.
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You come out of the womb, you come out of the egg with a physical identity, you are born
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to move, you are born to explore, you were born to go out in the snow and roll around and
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What we have to do is allow them to keep doing that.
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In other words, if we let children continue to play and help them play with facilities
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and bike paths and this sort of thing, they are going to keep doing that because that's
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So everyone, every child has a physical identity.
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There's no two-year-old who walks slowly through the airport.
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Every two-year-old is jumping and skipping and running.
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If we allow them to keep that, things are going to be just fine.
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And if we allow them to have physical education every day, they're going to keep playing.
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And with a little bit of instruction, they can learn some body movement skills.
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They can learn how to swing a racket, this kind of stuff.
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But the most important thing is to let them play.
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And believe it or not, the kids are making that distinction around the age of seven.
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So in other words, if we don't let them keep their physical identity after the age of seven,
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that's when the kids start heading to the couch and bad things happen there.
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What you point out in the book is that some kids will take up a sport and they'll keep with that.
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But then there's some kids who don't take up a sport for whatever reason.
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The problem is they think in their head, well, I guess physical activity in general isn't for me.
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So they kind of give up on the idea of being physically active altogether and they'll even
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So what you're talking about is that athletic identity and about 25% or 20% of our kids will
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They're going to be active and they're going to play sports.
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They're going to go skiing and do all the other things.
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But it's that other 75% or 80% when they get to that fork in the road that then they can
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identify, and I don't like this phrase, but they identify as non-athletes.
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And you see that traditionally on the ball field or on the hockey rink or wherever where
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And so then the kid starts getting that message and the difference is in 2022 is that they
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can go to the couch and then they can do something that is really cool.
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Whereas back in the day when a kid wasn't good at throwing a football or good at ballet,
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then she would still ride her bike and she would still play with the other kids.
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But now the kids have that option and that option is cool and, as we've said, incredibly
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So you identify yourself as an athlete and that's if you play some sort of sport, whether
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it's football, soccer, basketball, wrestling, whatever, or a non-athlete.
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And what typically happens, you're making the case is that when kids have that, the only
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identity they can have about being physical is athlete, non-athlete.
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If they identify as non-athlete because they just didn't take to a sport, then they have
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a tendency just to not move their body at all in any way.
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And when we ignore this big cohort of children at that age and we let them head for the couch,
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what a horrible thing that is to do and to allow to happen.
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And that's why with physical education, if we keep these kids moving, they at least have
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that fitness to start doing these sports at any age or to start doing the fun things, whether
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it's ballroom dancing or tennis or whatever it might be as they get older.
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But what's happening is children are graduating from high school with zero fitness.
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And so they're never going to pick up that tennis racket or they're never going to start
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doing skiing or whatever that they might do as an adult because they just don't have any
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Well, this is a nice segue to some of your critiques on how America does physical education or helping
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And you make this really compelling, intriguing argument that the development of school sports
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in America has unintentionally caused more kids to not develop a physical identity.
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And this is something that I get a lot of blowback for, but it's something we have to consider.
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Right now, a small percentage generally in the survey that I did for the book, 16%, and that
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was a survey across the United States, 16% of kids are playing three sports a year.
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And that's what we need for them to have fitness, okay, as opposed to one sport.
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So in other words, there's a small percentage of kids that are playing three sports a year.
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And again, those are children we don't have to worry about.
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But this other big cohort is not playing any sports.
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However, the bulk of our money, of our physical education money, if you will, is going to competitive
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So the bulk of our money, and I think it was 86% in the book, 86% of the money is going to 16%
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And that is a big problem because we are spending not millions, but billions of dollars in healthcare
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Again, getting back to what you said way at the beginning, when we have options, when we have
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other things we can do, and with a small reallocation of that money, we could get so many kids fit
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and not have to pay all those healthcare costs.
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And then if the communities could build in competitive sports and such, that would be
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But right now, we've got to stop conflating education and school education with sports
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And so the argument you make is whenever sports in a school is presented as the primary way,
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you're going to get physical activity at school.
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Again, you have that problem of the athlete, non-athlete dichotomy.
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If a kid identifies as an athlete, they're going to play lots of sports, they're going
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But as you said, it's a small percentage of kids that do that.
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So most of the kids, they think, well, I'm not good at football, I'm not good at basketball,
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so I'm not going to really do any physical activity.
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And then they don't develop that physical identity.
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And these kids, though, are not playing on their own.
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So just because you weren't on the basketball team back in the day, you would still go into
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the backyard or out into the schoolyard and shoot baskets and play pond hockey or do whatever.
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But now, the other thing I talk about in the book is that children do not know how to play
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And as a result, unless there is an adult there blowing a whistle, they don't do anything.
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It could not have been set up better for the folks in Silicon Valley because now they've
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And that's what's gone on with this generation of children.
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And I think an interesting point you make, and I don't think a lot of Americans realize
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this, is that the idea of sports being connected to school, that's pretty much a uniquely
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In other countries, schools don't have sports programs.
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And that's why it has to be, in my mind, a community concept, which is, as you point out,
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What happened with us is, in the early 1900s, when we have that huge wave of immigration,
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the idea of organized sports was useful for that immigrant community.
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It was useful for them to learn to take orders, as in the military.
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But unfortunately, we've taken that system that was built for a very specific time in
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And then now we've morphed it into this insane, multi-zillion dollar sports industrial complex,
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where the companies are more than happy to have high school teams spending literally millions
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of dollars a year, especially down south, for these teams.
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And it's just not benefiting us as a society or, certainly, the vast majority of children
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So I think in most schools in America, if you don't, I'm talking about public schools, that's
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If you don't play a sport, then there's some sort of PE requirement.
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I remember when I played football in high school, because I played football, I never had to take
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I never did a PE class because I was doing year-round football because I had the season.
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But you make this case that, okay, here's these kids who aren't athletes.
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But you make the case that our PE classes aren't that great in America today.
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What's the state of American physical education?
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So there are a couple of things to unpack there.
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Number one, the amount of physical education kids get is dependent on the school district.
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So it's anywhere from zero to maybe three days a week at best.
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Almost no school has five days a week of physical education.
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When you get to high school, it gets even worse.
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In one of our local high schools that we were just quoting in the testimony of the state
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house, it's out of eight semesters of high school, you have to do PE once.
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So in other words, it's pretty much non-existent.
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The other thing that we haven't talked about, and when you talk about not going to PE because
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you're doing football, one of the things that PE does, a morning PE class, is it turns
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So even for those kids that are playing field hockey and volleyball and football in the
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afternoon, I want those kids in a PE class at 10 o'clock in the morning because I want
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their brains turned on for algebra and for English and science.
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The other thing is that just because you were doing gymnastics or you're doing football, that
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does not make you an athlete or I should say a fit athlete.
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When you specialize in certain sports, you wind up not being that kid that could climb trees
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and swim and do all the other things that a normal, active, fit person should be doing.
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So PE should help with that and rounding out those rough edges.
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So you're saying you're not against organized sports and not even against organized sports
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It's just that sports should be seen as a supplement to physical education.
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Like every kid should, no matter if you're an athlete or non-athlete, you should be doing
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some type of physical education in your school day.
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That's the key because of the academic influence that that activity has on the brain and because
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it makes you into just a better, fitter individual.
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So just because you play football doesn't mean you know how to lift weights.
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That's something you hopefully would learn in a PE class.
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And we just got to keep getting away from this concept that the organized sports is the panacea,
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not just for fitness, but for psychological health and all these other things.
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And what we should be emphasizing is that every child who graduates from an American high school
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at the age of 18 should have a level of physical fitness.
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And after that, everything can just work itself out.
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The other problem, if you make sports, the only way you get a physical identity in high
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school, oftentimes, you know, you play sport in high school.
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Once you're done with high school, you never play that sport again.
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Like I haven't put on football pads in over 20 years, but I still exercise because I, that's
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I have a physical identity where I lift weights and do things like that.
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We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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So let's talk about this, like the decrease in PE.
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What's interesting, we've been seeing some states, some districts where they don't even
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have a PE requirement, but you highlight in the book, you kind of do a history of physical
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education in America where there's been periods of time where physical education was seen as
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Any moments in history where that it was really a priority?
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And then like, what's, what caused the decline?
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Like, why don't we do as much physical education today?
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One of my favorite things to quote is in 1866, that's 1-866, California, ahead of the curve,
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California said that every child going to school had to have two exercise periods a day.
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And you can, you know, that these kids were not taking the school bus to school and you
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know that they were not going home and watching television.
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But then the real, the one that most of us remember was the President's Council for Physical
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And what happened was President Eisenhower, who, as we all know, was the great general
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in World War II, looked around as president in the late 50s and he says, boy, we've been
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Television was just invented and was becoming a bigger and bigger thing.
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Fewer farmers, more people were living in the city.
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And Ike said, we've got to do something about this.
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So he established the President's Council of Physical Fitness.
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And then the one that people remember is Jack Kennedy took that and really ran with it.
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The problem is, is that the federal government does not have a huge influence on physical activity.
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So, President Kennedy can just say, listen, you know, our kids are unfit and we've got
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And they started this, the Council on Physical Fitness and they got a lot of high schools.
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There were like 4,000 high schools that were involved with this.
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And, and, and now it's, it's still out there, but it's, it's not nearly the same influence
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Now you highlight one high school in the 60s that really took up Kennedy's call to like
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We, we actually did a podcast a couple of years ago, a guy did a documentary about La
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Like this, like you watch these videos, these kids and it's, it's impressive.
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And I would have your, your listeners punch that up because it's fantastic.
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I criticize it a little bit in the book because, you know, all these kids are fit.
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You don't see any of the girls and obviously that's an issue.
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But the one great thing about it is if this was really basic stuff and, and, you know, you
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remember watching the videos, this was not fancy equipment.
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And somebody said, uh, sent something to me yesterday about a play nasium in, where was
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And it was these fancy pieces of equipment you put on a playground and the parent can exercise
00:27:13.860
You're using the kid's weight basically as your lifting weight and stuff.
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But it was this incredibly expensive piece of equipment that's going to break down.
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That's going to get old with the La Sierra thing.
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These kids are swinging on bars, you know, doing pushups, you know, nothing fancy at all.
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All of our movement patterns, they're not different.
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You know, with the same animals that we were 250,000 years ago, we don't need fancy equipment.
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We don't need to rethink things and it's all there.
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We have all the research and it's just a question of getting these kids to that gym class.
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The minute they get over that threshold, man, they are moving.
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What's interesting in the, the La Sierra documentary, the filmmaker interviewed students who went
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And I guess last year they started, uh, it became co-ed, the PE program later on in the 70s.
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So there were some women they were able to interview.
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And it was interesting, like all of them, uh, talked about like that helped them develop.
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They didn't say these words, but it said it helped them develop a physical identity.
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You had, you know, you talked to some, I think one guy like had some sort of surgery
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And like, he went back to his days in La Sierra.
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It's like, well, you just get a little bit better every day by walking a little bit further.
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And so that's the power of, of a good physical education program.
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It can instill that in you and it will last you until you're 60, 70 years old.
00:28:39.540
And, and what we have today is this Naperville, Illinois, if there's anybody from Naperville
00:28:44.320
high school, uh, give me a shout and let me know how your experience was.
00:28:47.820
But I, I talk about that in the book and we have examples of this.
00:29:05.600
We're not trying to make our bodies do something that it's not meant to do.
00:29:10.460
We were meant to run and walk 10 miles a day as hunter gatherers.
00:29:17.060
And that's what, you know, we, we have that inner need to do.
00:29:20.020
We have this primitive part of our brain and we have to use it on a daily basis for things
00:29:25.960
So besides spending less time, making kids spend less time in physical education, the
00:29:31.500
other problem with PE is like when they do go, the classes aren't that great.
00:29:35.800
I remember this is 20 years ago, you know, I'd, sometimes you'd walk through a PE class
00:29:40.120
and you see it going on and like half the kids were just sitting on the bleachers and
00:29:44.720
then the other kids were like playing basketball.
00:29:48.480
So there's, I mean, so like when you, I get kind of, can you describe like, what is, what
00:29:53.440
Is that indicative of what a typical PE class in America looks like?
00:29:56.880
It's just half the kids participating, half the kids not.
00:30:01.760
And it's the kids with the physical identities that are out there participating and the kids
00:30:07.700
One of the PE teachers we interviewed for the book, she said she's gotten to the point
00:30:13.560
where she has to look under kids' hats if they're wearing a wool beanie or something
00:30:18.120
because they have earphones in and they're talking to their friends in PE class, you know,
00:30:23.700
their friends probably somewhere else in the school.
00:30:26.140
It's absolutely incredible what the kids without a physical identity will do to get out of activity.
00:30:34.100
And that's why in the book, we delineate, we give you a month of PE classes and we delineate
00:30:40.560
exactly what these kids can be doing for that 30 or 45 minutes that you have them.
00:30:46.340
And that's getting them moving because that's what's going to give us not only the health
00:30:52.900
If you don't get that heart rate up every kid, then you're not going to get any of the
00:30:59.520
So yeah, the PE teachers, that old PE teacher has to move out of the way.
00:31:06.340
If that's the way you're running your class, if half of your kids are just sitting around,
00:31:11.020
you better rethink what's going on because these kids are not getting a physical education.
00:31:18.340
Well, and one of the arguments you make in terms of we need to do to revamp physical
00:31:22.760
education is you actually have to have some standards.
00:31:25.120
Like you actually have to hold these kids accountable.
00:31:29.460
Like if a kid's not doing well in math, well, the teacher's going to sit down with them and
00:31:33.720
say, hey, you know, what can we do to help you with your math?
00:31:36.520
But when it comes to physical education, if a kid doesn't participate, for some reason,
00:31:40.800
like we feel like we can't force a kid to do PE.
00:31:44.020
It's like, well, you know, they don't see themselves as an athlete.
00:31:47.180
But you're making this case like, no, we have to hold these kids accountable and actually
00:31:51.260
have some standards that we're trying to help them shoot for when it comes to their
00:31:56.840
Physical education is the most important class your child is going to in school.
00:32:04.480
What our schools almost have to become now is physical education first, second, and third.
00:32:11.680
That's got to be the main focus because the kids are not fit enough to learn science and
00:32:19.160
You can learn a lot of science and math on the internet.
00:32:24.200
And nobody else has said this, and I'm sure I'm going to be a hassle for this, but what
00:32:30.500
the kids are not getting at home and they're not getting on the weekends and in the summer,
00:32:35.300
unless they have motivated parents, they're not getting any physical education.
00:32:39.860
So our schools should become, for 180 days a year, the main thing we're teaching, unquote,
00:32:50.080
In other words, the main thing we're doing with our kids is getting them moving.
00:32:53.940
That is the absolute best thing we can do for their education and for their health and for
00:33:03.600
You can pick up that extra math time or that extra English time on the computer, on your
00:33:11.120
But unless you have the health to learn these things, it's just not going to happen.
00:33:15.320
My main mantra is there's no STEM without fitness.
00:33:21.920
We've had guests on the podcast talking about the cognitive benefits of fitness, particularly
00:33:26.160
in children and schools that make play or physical activity priority.
00:33:32.860
But what's interesting, a lot of public schools particularly have a lot of pressure to perform
00:33:38.980
So to prepare for the standardized test, they take away from PE or outdoor time or play time
00:33:45.660
And it's like, again, you're saying, what are you doing?
00:33:47.680
If you just made PE a priority, this could probably solve that problem of trying to help kids
00:33:58.680
What's the most important thing we can do to stave off Alzheimer's disease?
00:34:07.440
And the best way to get a STEM, get a smart, healthy kid is exercise.
00:34:15.300
And that's what we absolutely have to be emphasizing.
00:34:18.640
And as you point out, when we took all the time away from PE, which was mainly where
00:34:24.020
the time came from, for No Child Left Behind in 2002, nothing changed.
00:34:29.580
Nothing really changed with our math and English scores because the kids are not fit enough
00:34:40.060
The physical education teacher is the first violin in the school.
00:34:43.360
That's the person who's really running things, and that's the person who's going to make the
00:34:49.480
When I was doing my psychiatric rotation at the VA hospital, there was a psychologist,
00:34:57.640
And the social worker was the guy who was in charge of getting the VA benefits and stuff
00:35:03.820
And he said to me, he says, I cure more patients than any of the psychologists and the
00:35:11.100
And they actually laughed and they nodded because he was right.
00:35:15.240
In other words, that's what we have to be doing in the school.
00:35:19.320
The PE teacher, and you alluded to it before, there's a lot of social issues, again, historic
00:35:29.520
And a lot of kids hated it because they were getting their glasses knocked off, being hit
00:35:36.980
We've got to get rid of all that stuff, and we've got to make it fun again because literally
00:35:45.260
So PE in America, most schools probably aren't doing it.
00:35:49.920
If the kid is doing it, they're probably not doing anything in the class.
00:35:53.120
It's like a blow-off class where you can get an EZA.
00:35:56.800
You mentioned that one in Illinois that's doing a good job of PE.
00:36:02.480
Well, the problem with them is they have a lot of money.
00:36:07.020
And so if you, again, when you punch up the La Sierra films, punch up the Naperville, Illinois
00:36:12.920
films, and they have pools, and they have kayaks, and they have a beautiful track, and they
00:36:23.680
And if we can talk about that unpleasant topic of money, I'm not a technology guy.
00:36:34.860
I just want to go out and play and hike and get out in the woods.
00:36:43.960
And so with a small investment in technology, at our one school, we just have a step recorder.
00:36:50.160
So if the kid is standing there, they don't stand there, they walk in place because they
00:36:57.280
And so there are some technology that can be really useful.
00:37:01.080
And because such a big percentage of kids have iPhones and personal phones already, we
00:37:09.120
can use that for some quantitative information.
00:37:13.060
So again, something to motivate the kids, similar to the Fitbits and the Apple Watches.
00:37:18.980
What sort of, like you mentioned in the book, you have an ideal, like a month-long class of
00:37:27.180
Like what kind of stuff would you like to see kids doing in a PE class?
00:37:30.660
And again, this is under the assumption, your assumption is every kid in the school should
00:37:34.940
be doing PE, whether they're playing a sport or not.
00:37:37.800
So with that said, what would you have these kids be doing in PE?
00:37:41.120
Yeah, so you need to be able to have some certain functional movement patterns.
00:37:53.020
Ideally, kids could be swimming and cycling, but that's not something you're going to get
00:38:02.200
So you need to have certain objects flying around.
00:38:04.760
So, so to a certain extent, but it doesn't have to be a volleyball or some projectile
00:38:12.080
You need to be able to swing, you know, hockey stick or a bat or this kind of thing.
00:38:19.620
And they have these big, safe toys now, for lack of a better word, that the kids can use.
00:38:26.260
And again, on the scheme of things compared to a football team, they're cheap, cheap, cheap.
00:38:34.700
They have the kids doing these movement patterns.
00:38:36.940
Obviously core exercises are huge, but it can be fun if you just do it right.
00:38:43.980
And getting out, getting out and running full speed can be fun.
00:38:48.660
If you do it right, if you motivate the kids, if you make it a game and you make it something
00:38:53.440
that they want to participate in and that they see the benefit of, and they're going to see
00:38:58.600
the benefit in their fitness and they're going to see the benefit in, in, in their fun factor.
00:39:03.840
No, a lot of the activities, a lot of them are just games where they're running around.
00:39:08.200
Like your goal is just to get these kids heart going and get a little sweaty so that they
00:39:15.720
That's at the end of the day, that's really all that matters.
00:39:19.480
If it, you know, no kid wants to necessarily just run for 30 minutes, but you know what?
00:39:27.180
Get them sweaty, get that heart pounding, because that's going to get that brain pounding.
00:39:31.060
And that's, what's going to really make, make the effect, but you know, they can be
00:39:35.440
crawling and they can be kicking and they can be doing all sorts of fun stuff.
00:39:40.220
And most importantly, whenever you can, it's getting the kids outside because we do want
00:39:45.540
these kids to get addicted to mother nature and get rid of their, get rid of their addiction
00:39:51.460
I was thinking as you were talking sort of what your goals are for PE, a great platform
00:39:56.500
that you can help teach kids these, you know, basic functional movements is MoveNAT.
00:40:03.960
So yeah, it was started by this guy, Erwan LaCour.
00:40:05.900
It's based on this thing from the 19th century in France, this guy named Georges Herbert, who
00:40:11.420
had developed this physical culture method called the natural method.
00:40:14.900
And it was all about just teaching and training people how to do basic movements, running,
00:40:23.880
And he said, if you can just focus on those things, you're going to be good as a human
00:40:27.920
And like, I think MoveNAT would be a great platform to teach these kids as move.
00:40:32.320
Because it's fun, it doesn't require any equipment, so there'd be like no extra costs.
00:40:39.720
I would look into that if you're looking in for another way to encourage better PE.
00:40:50.740
Dudley Sargent was around 100 years ago, and his name is on the physical therapy school
00:40:57.380
And one of the things I mentioned in the book is that if Dudley Sargent came back and he
00:41:02.460
saw what was going on in a PE class today, he would be horrified.
00:41:06.760
On the other hand, if William Osler showed up and he came to my operating theater today,
00:41:15.380
PE has not made the gains, but it's also, they don't need to make a lot of gains.
00:41:20.240
We have this, as you point out, back in the 1800s, these basic movements are the same
00:41:27.140
There's nothing magical about this because we are the same human beings as we were 100
00:41:38.620
So let's say there's a parent listening to this and they're looking at their kid's PE
00:41:41.640
class and like, boy, yeah, my kid's PE class, not great.
00:41:44.980
Any advice to get administrators on board with revamping PE?
00:41:49.680
Because it just seems like PE is one of those things that school districts and school boards
00:41:55.680
And I interview on my website, the survivalofthefit.net, I interview a principal, elementary school
00:42:04.640
She says, you know, we get to these meetings, principal meetings, and PE is at the end of
00:42:11.460
So yes, for your listeners, survivalofthefit.net.
00:42:15.320
And there, there are letters that you can download to send to your school administrators, to send
00:42:25.980
And we can get this revolution, what I call the PE revolution, going from below.
00:42:31.460
The other thing is, as I said earlier, I was down at our statehouse last week.
00:42:39.020
So we have a bill in the New Hampshire statehouse right now that's to mandate PE for every kid
00:42:45.820
And if we can, we, if we can do this pincer mechanism from both sides, if we can get the
00:42:50.900
grassroots going and we can get things going in state legislatures, that's when we're going
00:42:58.480
I mean, at least the way you describe in the book, I mean, you can just go to your administrator
00:43:01.900
or school board and say, look, I got something that won't cost that much more extra money
00:43:08.260
And it can help with behavior problems in classroom.
00:43:14.300
And they're like, oh yeah, I would totally, yeah, let's do that.
00:43:16.200
And it's like, well, yeah, just get the kid moving.
00:43:20.780
And, and it's amazing because it's exactly what you say.
00:43:24.760
This is one of those topics where nobody disagrees with me.
00:43:35.440
And every American out there says, yeah, kids don't play.
00:43:39.720
Kids aren't having as much fun as we had when we were kids.
00:43:44.080
There's no controversy here, but where the controversy exists is that they're going to
00:43:49.120
get in there and they're going to say, well, we're mandated to have X number of minutes
00:43:53.240
of English every day and X number of minutes of math every day and on and on and on.
00:43:59.960
But what I would tell that administrator and that principal is that any data you have from
00:44:07.360
education that's more than 10 years old is useless.
00:44:11.240
It's absolutely useless because the world changed in the last 10 years.
00:44:16.040
When we weren't looking, the kids became severely addicted to these two-dimensional entertainments.
00:44:23.860
And as you point out, they're on these bloody things for seven and a half hours a day.
00:44:33.360
Anything you know about education, anything you want to think about in terms of teaching
00:44:38.140
math or science or English, forget about all that stuff because this crisis has overwhelmed
00:44:47.360
And let's say there's a parent, they're making these moves to help PE get better in their
00:44:52.420
But it's just, you know, you're dealing with bureaucracy.
00:44:57.420
Any advice for parents who have kids who are in a school that don't have a robust PE program
00:45:05.160
The main thing is don't let your child lose the physical identity.
00:45:09.200
Your two-year-old, your three-year-old is fine.
00:45:20.740
It's just if you allow that child to keep their physical identity, they will because
00:45:26.920
mother nature is still more interesting than any video game.
00:45:31.800
If you want to get your kid involved with organized sports and stuff, that's fine too.
00:45:37.160
But make sure the child knows it's their sport.
00:45:43.480
They want you there to take them there and be supportive and stuff.
00:45:48.940
You don't need to scream at anybody, the coaches or the refs or the kid for that matter.
00:45:56.540
And obviously on the weekends and in the summer, but you want to make, you know, you can look
00:46:06.040
Well, maybe they would like to do a mountain biking clinic or it's some kind of swimming
00:46:10.620
activity or horseback riding or any of these things, but they got to get outside and that's
00:46:18.580
And that's where the positive addiction is going to come.
00:46:21.400
And I imagine just being an example yourself, like your kids pick up on that, like have
00:46:27.980
And Brett, that's one of the big problems now is that the adults have lost their physical
00:46:32.140
identity and they have a bad food in the cupboard and they're not being active on the
00:46:40.040
We're dealing with some parents that just aren't on board, but the vast majority of
00:46:49.680
Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:47:03.500
And I would just implore anybody to shoot me an email, go to the website, pick up the book.
00:47:08.940
It's available at all the local outlets, your indie bookstore outlets and such, and be part
00:47:14.520
of this PE revolution because truly this is the most important thing.
00:47:18.380
And we've seen this in the last two years with COVID.
00:47:21.160
Fitness is absolutely paramount to everything and it can help and change so many things for the
00:47:35.620
He's the author of the book, Survival of the Fit.
00:47:37.740
It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:47:39.920
You can find more information about his book at his website, survivalofthefit.net.
00:47:43.720
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash PE, where you can find links to resources,
00:47:56.660
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.
00:47:59.500
Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives,
00:48:03.240
as well as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much anything
00:48:06.700
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00:48:14.820
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00:48:19.960
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00:48:26.660
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00:48:30.260
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00:48:33.240
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