Posted on: Thursday, March 11, 2004

EDITORIAL
Fitness contributes to academic success

For a couple of years now, a BOE task force has been working on updating public-school graduation requirements to serve the needs of today's students and prepare them for the next level, whether it be academic or vocational.

However, with increasing pressure to improve academic performance, subjects such as physical education and the arts tend to fall through the cracks.

And that's not entirely OK with the community.

For example, when the task force in 2002 suggested reducing the P.E. requirement from one year to a half-year, opponents pointed to rising obesity rates among Hawai'i's children and teen-agers.

The task force has long since reversed that position in response to the furor. In fact, its recommendation to the BOE Tuesday was keep the P.E. credit and add half a year of an elective P.E. class, such as tennis, golf or dance, to cultivate an even greater interest in life-long fitness.

We applaud any effort to promote physical activity in the schools. A poor diet and physical inactivity caused 400,000 U.S. deaths in 2000, according to a study released Tuesday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More importantly, Islanders clearly see the school as an appropriate environment to reverse a trend of poor diet and inactivity. After all, where else can you force children to take part in healthy activities?

It's true that high school students already have a full plate, with six classes a day. And so fitting in an additional elective won't be easy.

But pitting courses against one another is not the answer either. Perhaps it's time to accept that we need to restructure the school day to respond to the many demands put on it.

One approach is to shift to a modular system, with an "A" through "F" class schedule rather than Monday-Friday. Or, we simply may need a longer school day to cover all the required learning areas, including fitness.

Either of these options requires a lot of thought, work and consultation with the unions.

But think of the alternative. We can keep things as they are and allow our students to use their spare time to go to the mall, eat fast food and play video games.