Summary
The news that nearly one in four D.C. children age 10-17 is obese should worry every District resident. This is the highest child- obesity rate in the nation. We will be paying for the resultant health maladies one way or another in due time, from hospitals to Medicaid and Medicare rolls to the sheer quality of life of the District. Acknowledging this is no act of nanny-statism. A reasonable position begins here: Government is no solution to this problem because health begins at home, where public attitudes must shift. But insofar as government can contribute, public schools are front and center.
Starting in the pre-No Child Left Behind years, the school districts scaled back physical education. They have focused in recent years on health education. For this, read sex education plus a few other programs that have only a marginal impact on students' broader health attitudes. It is time to rethink physical education as a priority - and not just in the nation's capital. Taxpayers are on the hook for some unknown staggering future of obesity-related medical bills; the least we can do is stop the schools from standing idly by as this problem mounts.See the full content of this document
Extract
Childhood Obesity
The National Association for Sport and Physical Education recommends 150 minutes of we...
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