Make Parents Accountable for Children’s Fitness

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More positive impacts of aerobic activity. Wish I had a dollar for everyone of these types of articles I’ve read recently. Key paragraph from a NYT blog titled “Can Exercise Makes Kids Smarter?” “. . . the researchers, in their separate reports, noted that the hippocampus and basal ganglia regions interact in the human brain, structurally and functionally. Together they allow some of the most intricate thinking. If exercise is responsible for increasing the size of these regions and strengthening the connection between them, being fit may ‘enhance neurocognition’ in young people.”

Later in the post the blogger references research that claims 25% of school-aged children are sedentary. The conventional conclusion, recommit to physical education in schools. Before doing that, it’s important to ask who should be accountable for K-12 students’ relative fitness, their teachers or their parents and guardians? Recommitting to physical education in schools assumes it’s their teachers, but I assume two things: 1) public school teachers are being held accountable for far too many non-acacademic social/economic/health-related problems and 2) parents or guardians should be held most accountable for their children’s relative fitness.

Consequently, I propose doing away with traditional team-sport based physical education in elementary, middle, and high schools and in its place breaking up the school day with two or three ten minute-long calisthenic/walking/yoga breaks. In addition, I propose mothballing every school bus in urban and suburban districts and banning parents and guardians from driving their able-bodied students to school. Similarly, I propose banning urban and suburban high school students from driving to school. Under my proposal, every able-bodied urban/suburban K-12 student will have to walk or ride bicycles to school every day.

The protests will take the following forms: 1) it’s too far and will take too long; 2) at times throughout the year it’s far too cold, dark, and wet; 3) the neighborhoods we’d have to walk/bike through aren’t safe enough; 4) it violates freedom of choice.

In order. 1) Move closer or enroll your child in your neighborhood school. My tenth grade daughter lives 1.75 miles from her locker. Most people can walk 16 minutes/mile, so in her case it would take approximately 28 minutes to walk to school or about 15 more than in a car given the before school traffic jam on the streets and in the school lot. She’d have to go to bed 15-20 minutes early which is tragic because she’d probably miss “SuperNanny.” So it’s an extra 30 minutes a day, but not really since I’ve eliminated physical education. In actuality, she saves 25 minutes a day. If she rides her bike at a comfortable 12mph, she’d reduce her commute to about the same time as a car. I can hear her, “What about my gargantuan textbooks and violin?” “Get an iPad and I didn’t hear you practice last night.”

2) Inevitably, parents/guardians would have to walk with young children which would create community and also contribute to their fitness. And a little physical toughness would be a very good thing.

3) This might be just the impetus to make them safer. It’s illogical for some to claim we’re the “greatest country in the world” if some of our neighborhoods aren’t safe enough to walk through. Again, groups of parents taking turns escorting children in the mornings and afternoons would most likely have a very positive ripple effect on the safety of dicey neighborhoods.

4) True, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Consider not just the health benefits, but the economic ones. Imagine what school districts could do with their transportation savings. Reduce property taxes, offer more extracurriculars, reduce class size, update their technology tools.

To make my proposal more pragmatic I propose letting any student (and all bass players) that can verify that they’re getting at least 30 minutes of cardiovascular activity a day (through after school sports or independent play that a coach or non-parent/guardian adult can vouch for) opt out. Ideally, this will lead to swimming, cross country, and other teams being overwhelmed by new students turning out, which in turn will require districts to devote some of their transportation savings to these activities. It may also provide coaching opportunities for the displaced physical education teachers, the only real losers in my proposal.

Or parents and other citizens can keep blaming teachers for problems mostly outside of their control.

Three Changes

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Life in the U.S. will be considerably different in twenty years as result of three changes that few people think about much at all. While we watch “reality television,” obsess about celebrities, follow sports as if which team wins really matters in the grand scheme of things, and shop til’ we drop, these changes will remake the United States in profound, yet unknowable ways.

1) Young women are running circles around young men in secondary schools and in colleges and universities. I’ve written about the implications of this before.

2) The world’s economic power is shifting to the east.

3) The earth is warming much more rapidly than anticipated.

What specific, symbolic, yet tangible changes might wake people up to these fundamental shifts? This example is far too subtle, but still worth noting. With respect to the first change, last year, for the first time ever, women earned more Ph.Ds than men. Another more dramatic example I anticipate happening sometime in the next twenty years, the first female President of the United States.

The second change isn’t as worrisome to me as to citizens whose identities are primarily national in orientation. I reject the zero sum assumptions of the global economic race metaphor. I celebrate the fact that hundreds of million impoverished, rural Chinese and east-Indians, fellow human beings, are experiencing markedly improved qualities of life.

Number three is the most vexing because reducing C02 emissions will require international cooperation on a level never before demonstrated by the world’s governments.

Like waking from a collective slumber, twenty years from now many will wonder when and how women became so much more influential than men, when and how three billion Chinese and east-Indians became so much more influential than 400-500 million Americans, and when and how we made such a mess of the natural world.

Christine O’Donnell

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This is funny. From wikipedia:

She attended her university’s commencement ceremony in 1993 but did not receive a degree, due to outstanding unpaid tuition.

Her apparent familiarity with debt means she might do well in Congress. One wonders though, what are the odds if she loses (the special Senate election in Delaware) on November 2nd that she attends the swearing in of newly elected Senators anyways?

Positive School Culture

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The “secret” of creating a positive school culture is to attend to the details. The larger feel of a school, its overarching ethos, often hinges on subtleties like student friendly signs like this one. A single sign is relatively inconsequential, but a constructive tipping point can be reached when positive signage is combined with other student friendly practices.

Beautifully Sad

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College drop off one is in the books. How was it? Beautifully sad. After the final hugs, we finally boarded the airport shuttle bus. Eighteen made it especially tough because she wouldn’t walk away. She just waited and watched, never budging. I guess I should have known that was coming, but Fifteen had to inform me that Eighteen’s always stood frozen in time watching whatever conveyances take her loved ones away. Points off for not knowing that.

I was surprised by the GalPal’s relative calmness. Later she informed me she’d been crying quite a bit in private over the last few weeks. Her spirituality made all the difference. Her epiphany? Ultimately, Eighteen belongs to God. We’ve just been taking care of her the last eighteen years. She’s also convinced the distance will prove instrumental in Eighteen assuming adult responsibilities.

Lots of thoughts were swirling around in my head on the shuttle bus ride to the airport. The overarching one was how beautifully sad the separation was. I suppose some parents are glad when their young adult children finally leave the nest. That, in my mind, would be sad sad.

It was a reminder that in life whenever we choose intimacy (by partnering with someone for long stretches of life or by choosing to reproduce), we inevitably increase the risk of painful separation brought about by human fallibility and/or the natural passage of time.

Another thought was how nice it was that I didn’t have to give the final pep talk I had tentatively planned titled, “Work Even Harder, Honor your Grandparents, Don’t Eat Too Many Chocolate Cocoa Puffs, and Be Sure to Get Enough Sleep” because we spent four days together, days marked by dinners out where I told a few college and life parables that communicated everything I had wanted to. I know her well, she listened carefully, I felt no need to elaborate.

The weirdest thing about the four days was how comfortable Eighteen was in her own skin, even when surrounded by her sometimes annoying sister, mother, (and always) annoying father. Day four, after moving in to her dorm room, I suggested she go to the dorm’s dining hall for lunch and “meet us back here” by the student store cafe. “No, I’d rather eat with you guys.” It wasn’t the decision of a shy, anxious, introverted first year, but that of a young woman who appreciates her family and wanted to enjoy our visit to the very end. Despite the antics of her perpetually silly family, there was never a hint of embarrassment, just a mix of fondness and gratitude.

A silver lining of the trip was the thoughtful way Fifteen seemed to process a visit to a neighboring college, her dad’s dinnertime parables, and her sister’s first day of college orientation. She’s always done well in school, but now I think she’s even more motivated to do her best.

The first five-six days at home have been different, but nice. Last week I bought a smaller piece of halibut, only half a gallon of chocolate milk, and the GalPal and I have had enjoyed more time alone.

And the inevitable, natural passing of time marches on.

Left to Right. . . Two College Women and a High Schooler Ponder Their Future

Patraeus

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Full title “Patreaus Gives FL Lunatic More Attention Than He Ever Envisioned”. Patreaus is an extremely impressive individual and we’re all indebted to his unparalled service. However, last week he made a big mistake when he brought global attention to a FL pastor of a 50 person church (of which apparently 12-15 show up most Sundays).

Patreaus has no regrets. Here he is in a recent Christian Science Monitor article. “I’m not commenting on an issue of free speech. I’m providing an assessment of the likely impact of an action by a fellow American citizen on the safety of our troopers and civilians. I think I’ve got an obligation to those I’m privileged to lead to provide such an assessment.”

“It’s perfectly fine for a four-star general whose mission depends on developing goodwill to say that the action of this small group of extremists in Florida is going to undermine what we’re trying to do,” says Christopher Swift, a fellow at the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. That doesn’t mean, he adds, “that they are going to shut down these folks. He’s concerned about an 18-year-old private running into an 18-year-old Afghan. How is that Afghan going to give the American soldier the benefit of the doubt when he has pictures of Koran-burning on his mobile phone? Petraeus is right to call that out.”

I strongly disagree. Patreaus and Swift have forgotten what everyone learns on playgrounds when first starting school. . . the simple effectiveness of ignoring and isolating oneself from problematic people, or in the case of the FL “pastor,” the seemingly unstable.

Here’s what I suspect Patreaus would say to me. “Assume the burning goes ahead in the church’s parking lot. At minimum, the local paper covers it, which would most likely provide all the necessary kindle for a much larger media firestorm anyways.”

We are a rubber-necking, tabloid loving, reality television watching people, so maybe Patreaus is right about that, but the FL “pastor” is absolutely loving his fifteen hours of fame. The way he’s playing it, his fifteen hours is about to turn into fifteen days.

Patreaus has exacerbated a problem that all of us, bloggers included, should have ignored. Odds are had we turned our back to the burning and not written or spoken about it, it wouldn’t have ended up on any Afghans’ mobile phones.

Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

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Best (and lengthiest) sentence I’ve read in a long time.

When Seth, at a dinner party, mentioned Patty for the third or fourth time, Merrie went noveau red in the face and declared that there was no larger consciousness, no solidarity, no political substance, no fungible structure, no true communitarianism in Patty Berglund’s supposed neighborliness, it was all just regressive housewifely bullshit, and, in Merrie’s opinion, if you were to scratch below the nicey-nice surface you might be surprised to find something rather selfish and hard and competitive and Reaganite in Patty; it was obvious that the only things that mattered to her were her children and her house—not her neighbors, not the poor, not her country, not her parents, not even her own husband.

I did not read The Corrections, but may have to now. Franzen is pure genius at capturing interpersonal conflicts based upon class differences and contrasting world views.

I highly recommend Freedom.

Resilience

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I’ve been thinking about how different my daughters’ lives are and the seventeen year old central character’s in Winter’s Bone.

Winter’s Bone has the feel of a documentary/commercial hybrid. It’s the story of a seventeen year old woman taking complete care of her mentally out of it mother, 12 year old brother, and six year old sister in a desperately poor, rural, Appalachia-like environ.

Her dad is elsewhere cooking meth and he’s put the house up as collateral on a bond and then missed his court date. As a result, the house will be repossessed if he’s not located within a week. The bulk of the film is the daughter trying to locate the father. In the hands of these particular filmmakers, it’s a brutal, powerful, mesmerizing story.

Despite the increasing prominence of national chain stores in this country, this film was a reminder that substantive regional and subcultural differences still exist.

My daughters have a legion of educated, financially secure parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older cousins. They’re entering adulthood with a nine-person offensive line to run behind. The central character in Winter’s Bone had an extended family wracked by poverty, substance abuse, and violence. When the ball was hiked to her, she had no one to block for her.

Despite all the countervailing evidence, many Americans believe every young adult has an equal opportunity to flourish. Did the drug users in Winter’s Bone choose separately to take drugs or did they succumb to pervasive environmental influences? Were they immoral, undisciplined psychological weaklings or rather was their demise practically inevitable and entirely predictable from a socio-psychological point of view?

Even though the central character turns out okay because of her uncommon resilience, we need social, economic, political, and education reforms to expand the life opportunities of poor young people. The challenge is implementing those reforms without forcefully capping other young people’s life opportunities. Exceedingly difficult to pull off, especially in a recessionary era.

Sometimes I wonder if my daughters might be too privileged to develop the type of resilience they’ll have to draw upon to be successful adults. They don’t project a sense of entitlement, and they are socially aware, but they could be even more so.

Eighteen’s fancy pants college should show the class of 2014 Winter’s Bone so that they more fully appreciate the amazing opportunities their college experience will provide them.

[first Pad post, harder to edit sans mouse, so DKB cut me some slack]

Libertarian Cubism

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Ever seen a plexiglass smoke cubicle in an international airport? Tiny with a few stools around a high table. Need a smoke? No need to leave the airport, just pop into a smoke cube and spark up. Sparking up is not really necessary though because you can easily get your nicotine fix just by breathing in the Cheech and Chong second hand cloud. Visibility is about a foot so you have to look very closely to see anyone. I can’t fathom sitting next to a smoke cuber in coach on an international flight.

Smoke cubes are an interesting libertarian solution to individual differences. In essence, airport officials are saying, “Go crazy smokers with .01% of the airport.” Apart from higher group health care costs, why should government limit people’s freedom to fill their lungs with carcinogens, suffer more health problems, and probably die prematurely?

Maybe we should embrace libertarian cubism and extend their use. For example, in the Pacific Northwest we could use some “the weather is depressing” cubes for people like Y-guy who I heard complaining vociferously this morning, the first cloudy/rainy day in recent memory. Pacific Northwest summers are idyllic, sunny and in the 70’s, but some people like Y-guy never get enough vitamin D and consequently suffer from perpetual Seasonal Affective Disorder. The chronically SAD. This morning Y-guy tried to put a damper on my life-giving swim workout by proclaiming, “Hell, it will probably rain for the next 11 months!”

Just as Y-guy should be free to smoke, he should be free to be a walking, talking, downward spiral of negativity and pessimism. I just don’t want to be subjected to his depressing monologue. What if we had a “weather is depressing” cube in the Y locker room for Y-guy and his equally depressing friends?

What other examples of libertarian cubism would you like to see introduced in your neighborhoods, workplaces, and surrounding environs?

Gerotranscendence

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Word of the week. Before you start using it in conversations, read about it here.

In other aging-related news, thanks to Ronni Bennett for recommending Positive Momemtum to her readers earlier this week. I “met” Ronni through a Wall Street Journal essay she wrote. I wrote and asked her for some blogging suggestions and she was very generous with her time and insights. Her outstanding blog is titled “Time Goes By” and I highly recommend it to anyone that is getting older. Note that her header is one of the best in the blogosphere.

Please don’t tell Ronni I’m only 48.5 years old because all the bloggers she’s recommended are supposed to be 50+. However, maybe I only think I’m 48.5. Maybe I lost count somewhere like one sometimes does in “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”.

Like a Cuban pitcher, maybe I’m older than I’ve been thinking these last several years. I mean how else to explain this piece of recent mail?

I can’t share with you, my loyal blog readers the first thought that came to mind when I read this piece of mail, without losing the respect of my mother, one of the people whose respect means the most to me, because she finds swearing offensive and objectionable.

Maybe there’s a way around this conundrum. Here’s a hint. My knee-jerk reaction was to say the same thing I said to a running friend recently when he wondered aloud whether my friends and I may have deserved to have a can of beer thrown at us while cycling single file on the edge of the road.

Loss of ability to smell? Hearing loss? Loss of mobility? That’s how you warm me up for your “free” products?! For your information, I just did a little 119 mile bike ride around the Puget Sound. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Send another mailing like that and you’ll be the one’s needing additional security.