This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
Too
much eating. Too many unhealthy foods. Too many advertisements for food. Too
little activity.
Different
explanations are offered for America's weight problem -- a problem increasingly
shared by other countries. Almost one-fifth of American children and teenagers are
overweight.
|
Dana Cooper hangs upside down on a climbing wall in her P.E. class at Northport High School in New York State |
Schools have been urged to increase physical
education, an important tool for public health. And many have. Yet now comes a study
showing an increase in the number of injuries in "phys ed" class. Injuries
increased one hundred fifty percent between nineteen ninety-seven and two
thousand seven.
The study involved injuries treated in hospital
emergency departments. Only two percent were serious.
The researchers did not try
to identify the causes of the increase, but they have some theories.
Lara
McKenzie from Ohio State University was the lead researcher. She says one
possibility is a decrease in the number of school nurses during the period they
studied. For example, a two thousand four study showed that the number of
school nurses nationally failed to meet federal guidelines.
Schools
without a nurse on duty may be more likely to send an injured child to a
hospital.
Another possible reason for more injuries is a change
in the traditional idea of physical education. This "New P.E."
expands the kinds of sports that are taught. But activities that some schools
offer now, like rock climbing walls and skateboarding, can also expand the risks,
says Cheryl Richardson. She is with the National Association for Sport and
Physical Education.
Also,
she says not all states require P.E. teachers to be specially trained. Untrained
teachers could be less likely to recognize unsafe conditions.
Cheryl
Richardson also points to one of the study's findings -- that injuries are
often the result of contact with a person or a structure. This tells her that
the teachers were not giving each student enough space to move around safely.
Six activities produced seventy percent of all
injuries: running, basketball, football, volleyball, soccer and gymnastics.
The
study appeared online this week in Pediatrics, the journal of the American
Academy of Pediatrics.
The
researchers say larger class sizes are another possible reason for the increase
in injuries. Larger classes can mean less supervision. The National Association
for Sport and Physical Education says twenty to thirty students in a P.E. class
should be the limit.
And that's the VOA Special English
Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember.