Yesterday was the dreaded Athletics Carnival for year 3-7 kids at Imogen’s school. When Imogen was a toddler she had quite severe asthma that necessitated several stays in hospital. When we moved up here her asthma basically disappeared. Until this year. I have been told by health professionals and parents of other asthmatic kids that this year has been particularly bad for asthmatics.

Now Immy’s asthma has usually be brought on by colds. We knew that if she had a cold it would lead to wheezing and we would see the tracheal tug and cart her off to hospital and if her oxygen saturation level was below 95% she would be admitted. The thing that triggered her asthma a few months ago appeared to be exercise however. Strangely enough, it does not seem to be triggered by dancing or swimming, but by running.

I believe in physical activity for kids and I believe in the HPE syllabus set out by the Queensland Studies Authority. The kids have one PE lesson a week and one swimming lesson a week. Their classroom teachers are encouraged to look at health and both the kids have been exposed to this side of the curriculum in the classroom.

But back to athletics!

Now it may have been a few years since I actually did any curriculum studies at uni, but I still know where to source the syllabus documents. From the Queensland Health and Physical Education syllabus I quote:

Key learning area outcomes
The key learning area outcomes highlight the uniqueness of the Health and
Physical Education key learning area and its particular contribution to lifelong
learning. During the compulsory years of schooling in the Health and Physical
Education key learning area, students develop the knowledge, processes, skills
and attitudes necessary to:
• select and use information and apply problem-solving and decision-making
strategies to:
–make informed decisions about health, physical activity and personal
development;
–evaluate their own actions and the actions of others;
• develop a strong commitment to promoting equity, acknowledging diversity
and establishing supportive environments with respect to health, physical
activity and personal development;
• reflect on and evaluate the influence of biological, social, cultural and
environmental factors on:
–their own and others’ health and personal development;
–their own and others’ attitudes towards, and participation in, physical
activity;
• promote the health of themselves, others and their communities;
• accept their responsibility as an individual member of a group or
community to create and maintain environments supportive of optimum
health;
• develop and refine motor skills necessary for participation in physical activity,
and acquire and apply movement concepts to enhance performance;
• develop positive attitudes towards participation in regular physical activity
and an appreciation of the benefits of physical activity and of the aesthetic
and technical qualities of movement;
• enhance their own and others’ self-concept and self-esteem, and develop the
skills for creating and maintaining positive interactions and relationships.

Now the syllabus is broken into three strands:

1. Promoting the Health of Individuals and Communities
2. Developing Concepts and Skills for Physical Activity
3. Enhancing Personal Development

Now I have looked through these outcomes and nowhere does it say ‘Students will be able to compete against each other in races of 80, 100, 200, 400 and 800m and shotput, long jump and high jump.’

A few weeks ago I had tears from a certain 10yo girl who did not want to run in any of the races. She said it made her wheeze and she was sure she was going to come last anyway. Basically she didn’t want to embarrass herself. I said I would try and speak to the PE teacher. Time slipped away and the note came home in the diary from her teacher last week basically asking if Imogen was fit enough to be running at the Athletics Carnival. I took the oportunity to say of course not, but she could still do the Shotput which she had apparently qualified for.

So we get to the day. We have kids in running skins, we have kids in tears who don’t want to run. We have the 4 housegroups with kids from both campuses chearing louder and louder for their houses. But did this day relate to any of the outcomes listed above, let alone the assessable ones listed under the strands? Not really. If anything it went against some of them- it did not provide a supporting environment for many kids and at the end of the day all it did was glorify bodies. Of course if they had just stood up in assembly comparing leg lengths and muscle sizes and weights there would have been an outcry, but because there was competition it was ok.

These kids had spent an entire term of PE lessons training for the Athletics Day. You could see in the 800m events the kids who sprinted to the front and tired at the end, or the good athletes who stayed back, but still left their run too late. I could not see any point to the day. A lot of the kids who won do Little Athletics outside of school. Cathy Freeman did not win Gold in Sydney by an hour of PE lessons a week! Likewise they do not expect the kids in the orchestra or choir at school to perform at concerts and assemblies and the like by the hour of arts lessons they get each week.

It is time schools woke up to the waste of time that is placed on Athletics and Swimming carnivals and actually looked at the PE syllabus and created ways that kids could have fun with physical activity and promote healthy living and give the kids skills to maintain this healthy living throughout their lives.

I think Immy summed it up rather well when she asked me what job would require her to run 100m really quickly. We decided that if she was a bomb disposal expert who cut the wrong wire she would have to run fast, but really! C’mon schools! Let’s entrench healthy habits in our kids. 15-25% of kids would have received a ribbon or medal yesterday. For a lot of the rest it left bad memories that they will remember for the rest of their lives and could very well lead to bad attitudes to physical fitness and wellbeing.

Here endeth the lesson!

Tags: asthma, athletics, body image, curriculum, fitness, hpe, QSA, syllabus

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Imogen, Teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.