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Yahoo!
News Thu,
Dec 18, 2003 Kamehameha
Targets Obesity With New P.E Hawaii
has a weight problem, particularly with the children who are overweight, and
more often than kids on the mainland, according to recent studies. That
led to an experiment at Kamehameha Schools to see if a new style of physical
education can make a difference. The
old P.E. involved lots of running and often lots of standing around, waiting
your turn for limited equipment. However, seventh graders at Kamehameha Schools
are part of an experiment, testing out a new P.E. known as Exemplary Physical
Education Curriculum. "When
you come out I want you to do a set of crunches, pushes and then jog in place
for little while, while your waiting for your next turn in," Kamehameha
Schools P.E. teacher Rick Campbell tells his class. The
new P.E. developed in Michigan doesn't look much different from the old PE,
except the students just keep going and going. "They
want more activity. They want kids active during the whole period,"
Campbell said. The Michigan program also emphasizes some less strenuous and competitive skills and exercise so kids who might not excel at P.E. will still enjoy it. "If
they're not on a team that means you're not an athlete right? But, actually they
are active and that's what's important as long as they are doing
something," Campbell said. Half
of Kamehameha's 7th-grade boys are following the Michigan program, half aren't.
Pedometers measure the activity levels in both new and traditional P.E. In
the end, the new P.E. may not make much of a difference at Kamehameha, which
already has one of the most vigorous physical education programs in the state,
but the hope is if the curriculum catches on, it will lead to more healthy kids
who grow into healthy adults. The
experiment is being monitored by University of Hawaii researcher Dennis Chai and
partly paid for by health insurer Hawaii Medical Services Association. "It's
a long-term study and I am hoping that he'll be able to tell us later on that
EPEC did this thing for a certain number of people and it helped them from
becoming obese," Campbell said. The
sad thing is that right now, daily P.E. is not available in most public schools
where physical education is often the first program cut to save money or make
time. |