| PROFITING
OFF STUDENT HEALTH MUST NOT BE A CHOICE
There's a lot of nonsense when people talk about choice. I discovered
this a year or so ago while discussing school wellness policies.
As a school board member, I advocated removing unhealthy, sugared
soft drinks from school vending machines. One of my colleagues protested
in defense of choice. She argued that in schools we should teach
students to make good choices. Done well, our students would then
learn to choose healthy beverages and snacks.
I questioned this thinking because the likely result puzzled me.
If successful, students would not longer choose unhealthy beverages.
Our beverage machines would bulge with unsold sugared sodas. What
sense did that make? Would we leave them as bad-health reminders
for our students? Or would we now restock the machines with healthy
drinks? In reality, of course not all students would make healthy
choices. And the most likely persistent soda guzzlers would almost
certainly be our least healthy and most overweight students. Disappointingly,
in my district the choice argument prevailed.
So it was with interest I recently read the news of a proposed
ban by the New York City health department on trans fats in city
restaurants - a measure successfully passed in Denmark without a
citizens' uprising or commercial Mac-bankruptcy. I could almost
hear the protests of the choice proponents. No one, they would argue,
forces young people to eat these foods: these restaurants are simply
providing children with choices.
The thing that troubles me most about this argument is the defense
not of the right to choose - a mostly admirable option - but a stubborn
defense of the right for young people to make BAD choices. Exposing
children to situations where making bad choices is the easiest and
most accessible option is surely irresponsible and unnecessary?
As a parent, I assumed that our role was to try to protect our
children from making bad choices. I never really thought about the
idea of intentionally exposing my kids to bad as well as good choices,
standing back and hoping they would do the right thing. Isn't that
why we hold children's hands when crossing busy streets, support
them as they learn to bike ride, and hold them above the surface
when they first learn to swim?
So why should our schools be any different. Teaching students about
making good choices doesn't mean that we have to provide bad alternatives.
If it did, we might as well station beer and cigarette machines
alongside the sodas and candy. Preparing students for life doesn't
require us to expose them to the kind of humiliating, embarrassing,
cruel and dangerous experiences they will unfortunately face outside
of schools.
With regard to healthy eating, we need to do all we can to develop
the habit of making good choices while children are young. Just
as with physical activity, our mission should be to help students
become habitually healthy eaters. Maybe then they'll have a chance
when we're not there to protect them.
A ban on trans fats in restaurant foods sounds like a great idea
to me. And while we're at it, let's add bans on school-based commercial
marketing and advertising by manufacturers of unhealthy snacks and
drinks. Creating consumers among the captive audience of students
in our schools is entirely inconsistent with the goals of public
education.
We can't beat this obesity crisis through physical education alone.
We need government, industry, media, families, communities, and
schools to work collectively together. Each must share responsibility
for promoting healthy lifestyles among children. If we let the unhealthy
choice proponents have their way, they'll soon be demanding a hands-off
approach to solving obesity and deteriorating kids' health. Well,
they will until they can't get medical help because our doctors
and hospitals are overloaded, health insurance premiums become unaffordable,
and national security is compromised because no one is fit enough
to serve in our armed forces. About then, allowing kids to make
bad choices might not seem such a good idea.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the forum.
Steve Jefferies, pelinks4u publisher
Check out the reader comments to last month's editorial, the commercialization
of PE.
View
Steve's recent presentations
at the KAHPERD 2006 Convention.
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