Some background from the New York Times:
Trump Is Bringing Back the Presidential Fitness Test - The New York Times
"...President Trump signed an executive order to reinstate the Presidential Fitness Test in public schools. The move is part of the administration’s goal to “restore urgency in improving the health of all Americans,” according to a statement released by the White House.
"The test, which was introduced in 1966, has taken several forms over the years. The most recent version included a one-mile run, modified sit-ups, a 30-foot shuttle run, the sit-and-reach flexibility test and a choice between push-ups and pull-ups....the Trump administration has yet to announce which exercises will be included in the new test."
"...In 2012, the Obama administration replaced the Presidential Fitness Test with a program called the Presidential Youth Fitness Program, which was less focused on standardized fitness benchmarks."
"Some fitness and child development experts have criticized the Presidential Fitness Test as too rigid. Children who are the same age, for instance, could be very different sizes or at different developmental stages. And focusing on scores, experts said, could risk turning some children off exercise altogether."
Full disclosure: I was the class klutz. I missed the heyday of the Presidential Fitness Test by being in Catholic grade schools where they did not have formal PE classes. Instead we had several long recesses. I did not excel at that, either. One game I remember was Red Rover. Some of you probably played it; a line of kids joined hands and clasped arms, and the other side would send kids to try to break through. The biggest boy would always head for my skinny little arm, and I would drop my arm out of fear. One kid actually did break an arm, so the teachers forbade Red Rover from then on. There were some other not quite so bad games, I kind of liked Red Light, Green Light, and Cigarette Tag. I made up a game I called Solar System Tag, where you had to get to all eight of the planets to win. Some kids would play that, but most thought it was too dorky. I was too dorky.
Sometimes the girls played softball. My position was outfielder. when the ball went into the sticker patch in the ditch beyond the playground, it was my job to go down and get it.
I actually did like to play croquet and badminton at home. Grandma had given us a set of those games. My brothers did Little League for awhile, and I wasn't too bad at pitching balls to them for practice.
I didn't encounter an actual PE class until 9th grade, when I started public high school. I hated every minute of it, and hated the arsenic green gym outfits we had to wear.
Fortunately 9th grade was all that was required. The other public school kids had had PE in 6th through 9th grades.
Our teacher had two grades he would give: A and D. You got an A if you showed up and halfway tried, and didn't give him grief. You got a D if you were disrespectful or caused trouble with other kids. the reason he gave Ds instead of Fs for the "ne'r-do-wells" is that he didn't want them back the next year to make up the credit. I got an A, even though I still sucked at it.
As an adult I have always enjoyed walking and that is my exercise of choice, so I didn't grow up to be a total couch potato.
In my opinion, the department of Health and Human Services would do much better to concentrate on things like not throwing people off access to their healthcare, not destroying trust in vaccinations, and not cancelling support for cancer research. Making more tests for kids to pass is a distraction from larger issues.
I remember the fitness tests. The boys who excelled at sports (and nothing else) would stand at the sidelines and make nasty comments. I always did the requisite 50 sit ups to make up for the fact that I had less upper body strength and could not do max push ups or run very fast. I had scoliosis, and I was by God determined not to wimp out and get branded the class hunchback.
ReplyDeleteBut I enjoyed PE at times. Took fencing in high school. We had little intramural competitions and I was very good at it. I guess stabbing people was my forte ...
"I actually did like to play croquet and badminton at home."
ReplyDeleteMe, too. We had those games at the cabin. I had completely forgotten about that. I had an archery set up there, too. TV reception at the cabin was not very good, so alternatives were necessary.
I hated PE and recess, too.
Our high school like other high schools in SW Pennsylvania was very sports oriented. Not very academically oriented. Most guys expected to work in the steel mills, and the girls to become housewives.
Not many of us were on the college bound track. I identified with and was friends with the science and math teachers. At the same time, I was very involved with the parish as head of the servers.
My parents were not very into team sports. By high school age my brothers were big tall guys. The coaches at school wanted them to play football. One of the coaches came around and talked to Dad about it. Dad said he wasn't stopping them from playing. If they wanted to they could. But he needed them to help in the field during haying season. Practice started in the summer. If the boys could figure out how to do both, they were welcome to try. But they weren't very interested. The older of the two brothers did figure out how to be in a rock band and do field work too, though. He played guitar and bass in his band all through high school. We joked that the reason he got a masters degree in computer science was to support his music habit. I think he still plays in a grandpa band.
DeleteOh, yes, the haying season! All hands in the fields and the barn. My whole family was out to help my grandfather. I was the water boy. The reward was to ride the wagon back to the barn.
DeleteDuring the years that we had the cabin, an important form of exercise for me was biking, a three speed on relatively flat terrain around the lake, about fifty miles a day. I did this almost every morning when I was at the cabin.
DeleteWhen I was working at the mental health center in Toledo, one summer I wore shorts to the agency picnic. The next day I was told that my "great legs" were the topic of conversation among the women. I just enjoyed the great morning ride around the edge of the lake, mostly on roads that did not have much traffic.
Re Katherine's comments on what HHS could do ...
ReplyDeleteTrump has slapped a 50 percent tariff on India, where a lot of our generic drugs come from. China is the biggest provider--something like 90 percent of our generic Rd and OTC. So most of us will be paying more for our meds, and, if India follows China's lead, will slow the supply of generics to the US to pressure better trade deals.
My chemo pills come from India. Asked the pharmacist yesterday when I went to get refills if she was seeing shortages. She said, "not yet, but that's a fair question."
So many great things coming out of RFKs worm-eaten brain.
I was a miserable athlete and suffered through two years of phys ed classes (freshman and sophomore years) at an all-boys Catholic high school. The "education" consisted of "classes" in which the more popular and/or athletic boys were designated as team captains and allowed to choose, one at a time, players for their teams, until the last boy was chosen. That last boy was usually either me or a fat kid named Tim Skelly. It was humiliating, and I hated it.
ReplyDeletePresident Kennedy's physical fitness test was started my sophomore year. I found out about it the morning of the day I was to take the test. To make a long story short, I was fairly confident I could do everything required except touch my toes. I went off by myself during lunch hour and attempted to touch my toes again and again until I could do it. That afternoon when I took the test, I succeeded in doing all the required exercises. It caused somewhat of a sensation. I remember hearing people in the hallways whispering to each other, "Did you hear Nickol got a perfect score?"
There was no education in my high school physical education. When I went off to Ohio State, physical education was again required, but you were allowed to pick from a wide array of physical activities, and you were actually taught something.
High school phys ed was soul crushing.
I remember the fitness tests getting harder as we got older. There was a 1K run. I didn't know enough to pace myself and barfed after I finished. The teacher apologized to us for not giving us better coaching and gave us a second chance at it if we wanted. I did ok then.
ReplyDeleteOur gym classes were girls-only after grade 6, I think because of the sex ed component. Girls got the Kotex movies with bunnies and flowers. The boys apparently got a movie with some guy in a white lab coat and a pointer talking about nocturnal emissions and venereal disease.
LOL, by starting PE class in 9th grade, I missed the Kotex movie with bunnies and flowers. Needless to say we did not get that in Catholic school. Fortunately my mom clued me in about the basics well ahead of time.
DeleteThe Kotex movie came too late for a lot of us who went thru early puberty. I get that they were trying for a positive spin on things, but the info was laughable. We had two super nice phys ed teachers who provided free sanitary products and deodorant for us girls and were encouraging and sensible about make up and clothes.
DeleteI too am a natural klutz. As a young child in LA I had recess in the Catholic school.we rode bikes and roller skated at home. I was fine with those. I gave those up when we moved to the mountains because there weren’t any mostly flat streets in my neighborhood. I was terrible at sports and hated every minute of high school PE - required 5 days/week for all four years. But I grew up in a lake resort community. Being able to water ski was a social requirement. I had a couple of rich friends with boats. It took me a while, and lots of falls, but eventually I became pretty good at it - single ski, hopping the wake etc. Those summers were the peak of my athletic career. After college I tried many things - tennis, running, gyms, jazzercisr, etc. I usually dropped out of whatever class or program I tried after three sessions. So I walked.
DeleteWe had sex ed in middle school (public school) - they brought in a Protestant minister to teach us about pregnancy, STDs and the other down sides of sexual activity. We had a health class in 9th grade (Catholic) where they may have covered those topics, but I don't remember it. The teacher was about 80 years old. He was a legendary basketball coach, state high school hall-of-fame caliber, whose teaching philosophy was the same as virtually every other PE or similar teacher I had throughout my primary schooling: he saw classroom teaching as very much secondary, almost to the point of being optional. He knew what he was being paid for. He was a nice man, though.
DeleteThere were one or two girls in high school (Catholic) who sort of disappeared; the rumor mill said they were pregnant. Naturally, if a high school boy happened to impregnate anyone, I don't think he was expelled, at least not that I ever heard. My high school years were in the era of The Pill, but in the Catholic culture that prevailed in that community, it's at least somewhat doubtful that many of the girls' parents would have cooperated in getting birth control prescriptions for their sexually active daughters.
At the local high school (public) that my kids attended within the last 10-15 years, free daycare is offered for students who are also moms. I think the students' kids and teachers' kids are all cared for together.
The mechanics of sexual reproduction were covered in 7th grade biology, which was mandatory. Totally clinical with doctor-office type body parts charts. Nothing that indicated The process was enjoyable.
DeleteThe only thing that raised eyebrows was a "Life Today in Red China" film in social studies that showed a fleeting shot of topless women trying on blouses in a government store. The point of the movie was to show the deprivations of life under communism, including no privacy. Our teacher introduced it with the expectation that we were young ladies and gentlemen and were mature enough to comport ourselves as such. However, the next year another teacher stuck her pencil in the projector to block the offending scene, broke the film, and no one ever saw it again. It was a good propaganda film, tho. None of us wanted to go live in Red China after seeing it.
I was never interested in sports. My gym classes were a waste of time. They had no interest in whether I was healthy or not. The gym teacher was only interested in coaching the athletes. It wasn’t until I graduated from college that I was interested in physical fitness, mostly as a part of self defense. I joined a karate school, started running and weightlifting and it was a wonderful experience. I felt as if I was on a low gravity planet. The sense of freedom was exhilirating. Now I’m on the inevitable far side of the parabola and I feel like I’m mostly slowing the descent. I think one of the benefits of physical fitness is better mental fitness.
ReplyDeleteThere were no team sports for girls at my high school, but the gym teacher liked athletic girls. She was married to the football coach. There were two sports for boys - football and basketball. No track, cross- country, and, of course, nobody played soccer in those days much less Lacrosse . Our school ( public) had about 300 students then. We played in the “ Small schools League”. It included another high school farther up the mountain, a couple of Catholic high schools in the city at the bottom of our mountain, The California School for the Deaf, and a small public school in Needles, CA in the desert, on the border between Arizona and California. With the exception of the other mountain high school, our teams had a huge advantage over the others in home games. We were used to the altitude and thinner air. The teams from “ the flatlands” got winded early because of our altitude.
DeleteSpeaking of physical fitness, you can bet the farm that Kennedy's MAHA initiative is not bothering with air quality, which affects the ability to exercise safely in the first place. Apparently the only concerns are food coloring, exercising, and evil mRNA vaccine technology.
ReplyDeleteHere in the Upper Midwest, we are tracking airnow.gov obsessively. Summer has been a drag as we are alternately plagued by hot humid air from the south that keeps the wildfire smoke at bay but makes it too hot to exercise outside or by ash-laden air from the northwest that cools things off but sets off pollution alerts.
I noticed that we are getting both small (PM 2.5) and large (PM10) particulates on the worst wildfire days. This site has an explanation about PMs for anybody interested.
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/inhalable-particulate-matter-and-health
I went to a mixture of Catholic schools and public schools from the fall of 1965 (public school kindergarten - the Catholic schools didn't have kindergarten in my town in those days) through the spring of 1979 (Catholic high school). We had gym class every year. I wasn't a great athlete but also wasn't a klutz. The athletic boys took me as one of their own during grade school. Starting in middle school, the really athletic boys started to separate from the hoi polloi. At that point, either you were on an athletic track, with the benefits of coaching, trainers and an overall focus on athletic development; or you weren't. Basketball had been my sport until then, but my lack of genuine athletic prowess (I didn't have the fast-twitch muscle thing) caught up to me at that point. I ran track for a couple of seasons in middle school but didn't enjoy it. I became an intermediate runner; I'd do well sometimes, and finish last sometimes. The coach couldn't figure it out, and neither could I. In high school, I didn't play any sports but was in the musicals. The dancing helped me develop athletically more than I otherwise would have.
ReplyDeleteWe had the presidential fitness tests, at least in grade school, and maybe in middle school - I don't remember it in high school. I don't have much memory of it. I don't think I ever hit all the benchmarks, but neither did most of the other kids. It was just another in a long line of doing whatever the teacher told you you had to do that day.
In middle school (public school), we had to do tumbling and gymnastics each year. I didn't have the upper body strength, and didn't like the sensation of being upside down, so I really sucked at it. It would have been nice if the teacher would have worked with me to develop my strength, and would have helped me get used to the different body positions, but at least in that school, the gym teachers didn't see that sort of thing (i.e. gym teaching) as part of their job. Either you could do it, or you couldn't; if you couldn't, they barely gave you the time of day. When we played basketball, they suddenly discovered again that I existed and was in the class.
In the public schools here in sububria that my kids attended for middle school and high school, the teachers actually assess each kid's development and fitness level and design a program for each one. Not all of them blossomed into great athletes, but they had a lot of support to work at whatever their deficits were. And I think kids may be nicer today than they were in our day.
I never learned the correct way to hold a pen - still don't do it correctly. When I learned cursive (2nd grade - public school) they tried to show me the proper way to hold a pencil. But for some reason I couldn't do it. Maybe my fingers or hand lacked the requisite strength or coordination. Their solution was, "Try again. Try harder." But it didn't work; I couldn't actually make the letters - could hardly hold on to the pencil at all. So I held it in some other, compensatory way which was not deemed correct and almost certainly isn't optimal from a fine-motor-skills perspective. But it was what I could do. So that's how I learned, and today, in my 60s, I've never unlearned it.
ReplyDeleteWhen our kids were in elementary school (public school), my wife and I had to meet with the development specialists about one or another of the kids who needed some fine motor skills therapy. It being a meeting, I brought a spiral notebook and a pen. The physical therapists were agog at how I held my pen.
When I was in college we took blue book exams which involved writing on-the-spot short essays in longhand. By the end of an exam, my hand was killing me.
I offer this to illustrate that there are things that weren't taught sufficiently in our day for which they do a better job nowadays.
All I remember about learning cursive was our 3rd grade teacher requiring us all to buy Zaner-Blosser ballpoint pens. They were shaped such that they forced you to hold them properly, but it didn't help my handwriting. Same thing on every report card. "Jean is an excellent reader and is nice to others, but she hurries through her arithmetic and has very poor penmanship."
DeleteYeah, my penmanship sucks, too. When I write a check, I can't believe how unreadable it is.
DeleteThe only D I got in school ever was for penmanship. I was a straight A student in academics. The nuns taught us the Palmer method. I held my pencil correctly. It didn’t help. My handwriting never improved. Our eldest son held the pencil right but had - and still has- abominable handwriting. After getting married his wife refused to let him help write thank you notes because it looked so awful. The public school pulled him from classes ( he was an A student in academics) for two years to work with the handwriting specialist. After that they gave up. By college he could take notes on a laptop but still had blue book exams. The middle son never held the pencil right and still doesn’t. But his handwriting was more than acceptable to his teachers. At some point lousy handwriting was lumped into a category of learning disability called dysgraphia.
DeleteI developed a half cursive/half printing method for commenting on student papers. I told them that I would never be offended if they couldn't decipher a note and needed me to translate for them. My notes were, btw, much more thoughtful when I was hand writing them. Something about looking at a student's paper as an artifact made by a real person demanded a thoughtful response. When students submitted papers online and instructors were to select from a collection of canned comments, I was much more perfunctory. No more, "I appreciate the idea you are trying to convey, Kyle, but your research is a bit thin. At passages marked *, you need more evidence. See me if you are fuzzy about the types of evidence discussed in class." Just, "evidence insufficient to support argument."
DeleteI think that you must have been a great teacher because you really cared about your students. Handwritten notes are much, much better than a computer limited selection of almost meaningless comments.
DeleteI suppose the penmanship I was taught in grade school was pretty standard for that time. I remember writing a lot of letters. Of course we didn't have texting and e mail then. I saved a lot of letters from family members. It's a tangible connection to people who aren't here anymore. I still have decent penmanship, and I am the designated form filler and Christmas card writer for our household, since my husband has a pretty severe familial tremor in his right hand.
DeleteA few years back I taught myself semi-uncial calligraphy, like the Celtic manuscripts, and made a few pictures for gifts.
A few years ago I watched a presentation by a calligrapher who was commissioned to do a replica of the Beowulf manuscript. She was not allowed to say whom the work was for (somebody obscenely rich!), but she did it with the understanding that she could discuss what she learned. She did a stroke for stroke copy. Lots of interesting idiosyncracies that she discovered in the way Scribe A formed his letters. He often used a down stroke when he should have gone up, and it made for some odd spacing. There were also times when it was clear that the scored lines on the page were grooved too deep and the ink ran in. Seemed to be an example of someone trying their darndest, but maybe still learning.
DeleteA couple of my friends who had nice handwriting also took up calligraphy. It’s so lovely to look at. But it apparently requires more patience than they had time for except occasionally.
DeleteUntil I read Jean's comment above, I didn't know there was such a thing as *the* Beowulf manuscript - the only one that old. Seems it resides in the British Library. I found one or two websites that offer links to the manuscript online, but the links appear to be broken now; I don't think the entire manuscript is viewable online anymore. There are a few photos at the Beowulf Wikipedia page.
DeleteWe had the opportunity to see the St. John's Bible, when it was at the Joslyn Museum in Omaha:
Deletehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saint_John%27s_Bible#:~:text=The%20Saint%20John%27s%20Bible%20is%20the%20first%20completely,manuscript%20took%20place%20in%20both%20Wales%20and%20Minnesota.
I think it was completed in 2008, completely hand done on vellum. Very impressive.
Images of the entire Beowulf MS are here: https://ebeowulf.uky.edu/ebeo4.0/CD/main.html
DeleteIt was probably bound and rebound a few times, then saved from a fire by being thrown out a window. Some librarians stabilized the pages by gluing them to cardboard frames.
I saw the original in the British Museum. It is very small and beat up.
England had a huge output of books between 600 and 1066, but Vikings burned up a lot of them. Paleographers estimate less than 10 percent of the English books from that period survived.
One of the best preserved books is the St Augustine Gospels, sent to England to St Augustine by Pope Gregory in the 600s. They still get it out once a year for I forget which feast.
I showed students a short documentary about the St John's Bible in the Mass Communications class. It was quite an endeavor!
A lady in England has spent the last 10 years doing a reproduction of the Bayeaux Tapestry. The original is on loan to the British Museum, a move preservationists are hinky about because it was not cared for every well over the centuries. But if you keep these things stashed away where no one can see them, people can't value them.
So much for today's antiquities lesson ...
When I was in middle school, the public library in Niles, MI, where my family lived at the time, had a book that included a fold-out reproduction of the Bayeaux Tapestry - I could spread it out over our living room floor. It included a translation, or at least an explanation, of each scene that the tapestry depicted. I'd love to see it again.
DeleteTrump was a jock in high school. So was Gerald Ford, but Ford seems to have turned out a lot more decently.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if trump really was a jock or if he was a wanna be jock. I think he went to a military boarding school. Did he warm the bench in his high school sports careers or s he the star quarterback? I don’t know. And I don’t trust anything he says about himself. The military boarding school and his warped father may be probably the foundation for his own warped ideas about masculinity. He chose Hegseth because apparently Hegseth is what he admired when young and still does. The wrestling. Etc. All tough guy, macho stuff. The disparagement of McCain and. military who die ( suckers and losers). I’m sure a psychologist would have a field day. I believe trump had to,play sports ( my sons in all boys schools had a sports team requirement) but trump is only a golfer - an activity that my sports loving sons and husband ( all athletes) consider to be more of a hobby - it requires skill, but is not really a jock activity. They don’t look at golfers as “ jocks”.
DeleteI’ve known a few jocks, mostly friends of my husbands and sons who are all decent men. But there is a subgroup that is more trump like than Gerald Ford like.
I assume he spent high school looking to get laid and being a bully, i.e. the same way apparently he has spent his adult life.
DeleteHe's massively insecure - needs his ego to be stroked constantly. Perhaps something happened during his childhood to give him that sort of behavioral issue.
DeleteTrump's niece, Mary Trump, is a psychologist and has written and recorded reams of info about the family's dysfunction and Trump's personality. Take it with a grain of salt; she and her brother, Fred Jr's children, have sued the rest of the family because they say they were crooked out of their inheritance.
DeleteI think Trump is simply addicted to sex (or the appearance of virility), money, and power. He's using the presidency to feed those addictions. Republicans apparently feel they can parlay Trump's addictions into things that have been on their agenda for decades: repatriation of industry, white Christian nationalism, isolationism, the dismantling of the welfare state, etc.