Slashdot Mirror
DDR Coming To West Virginia Schools
Next Generation is reporting that Konami is bringing Dance Dance Revolution to 765 state public schools in West Virginia. The move is intended to counteract the growing youth obesity problem facing the United States. From the article: "'Bringing the health benefits and enjoyment that DDR provides to school children is a great way to combat childhood obesity that is caused by the sedentary lifestyle of today's kids,' said Konami's Clara Gilbert, director of business partnerships. 'DDR has been a proven success in schools and this program with the State of West Virginia demonstrates the positive effects that can come from making DDR a part of one's daily routine. This first-of-its-kind partnership will help us continue to demonstrate the benefits of DDR to consumers around the country.'" On one hand, that's awesome. On the other, if I was still in middle school, I think DDRing in front of middle school girls would be a sure way to cause permanent psychic scarring. Update: 01/25 21:34 GMT by Z : HTML is hard. Fixed link.
The story if you want it.
My work here is dung.
whatever happened to exercising without a $500 machine, it might make America's youth less of technology addicts (current company excluded, of course).
My brother bought two pads and DDR Extreme something something over Christmas, and we tried it out over the holidays. It is surprisingly addictive, and gets you sweating in no time. I hate going to the gym and shoving weights around, or spending a half hour pedalling to nowhere. For me, there is no reward in that. But with DDR, I don't notice at all that I have been jumping around for half an hour, and the game aspect in my particular version pushes me to get to the next level in complexity.
Will you be able to 'letter' in DDR? Will there be state championships?
Or will this be more like just a machine in the middle of cafeteria that no one will touch for fear of peers' redicule. I would have tried it back in the day because I had pretty much maxxed out the peer redicule I could get.
OR will it be like racketball played against a gyms collapsed bleechers for two weeks during the required PE class?
Of course, if the machine is not on free play and/or not well maintained.... I actually expect both. I'd be surprised if K didn't expect kids to dump their change into the machines like they do with the soda/snack machines next to them.
There was this game we used to play what was it called?
Oh, right, kickball.
How much did it cost to play this?
The cost of a ball or nothing if you had a butcher shop willing to give you an pig's stomach.
Thank god West Virginia has been blessed with DDR. Were it not for this half a grand machine, they might go down in history as morbidly obese like their forefathers.
What? Their forefathers weren't morbidly obese? You mean, it may be possible to have fun and excersize without some company cashing in off of you? Blasphemy!
My work here is dung.
I play DDR sometimes at the local Peter Piper Pizza. I've seen some overweight kids going to town there. They were pretty good, too.
I don't think it'll be a problem. Yeah, you move your body, but it's all about reacting quickly to stuff on the screen. I mean, basically, it's a videogame.
Game Company Database
The proper role of education is RRR - Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic. The idea that a school (a public one no less) should be enforcing diet or exercise or moral structure or anything other than a basic education is crazy.
How about we stop funding these nutjobs who want to be parents to our children, no educators?
Well this is health education and I think if it can make a difference in people's lives its worth it. Frankly, I'm using it to get back into shape and am beginning to see results and lose weight.
Also, if we take the 3Rs strictly that precludes the teaching of algebra (algebra being beyond the scope of arithmetic), computer science,and trade class, art class, geography or any other science, literary criticism... and just about anything else worth knowing.
Frankly the only nutjob here is you.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
I'm a college student weighing in at over 300lbs., and I also play DDR. I own my own pad and play on occasion, though not nearly as much as I used to.
Honestly, if you gave each kid his own cheapo pad and SM... or even a PS2 and a pad, he won't play it. Before I started playing, I thought that DDR was some stupid game that losers with no life play (like I was one to talk).
It took some peer pressure to start, and I sucked badly. It takes some time to get the coordination before it's more a matter of speed. Obese kids are going to get bored or frustrated by that point, especially in high school. I can't imagine the ridicule that'd be directed at the "dancing bear" in gym class.
So what I'm getting at here is that these kids need a supportive environment to start playing in, much more than anything. DDR is most certainly not fun if you're new to it and uncoordinated.
Exercise will certainly do some good. However, the problem has come from the two great uncontrolled dietary experiments the US has undertaken in the last 50+ years.
The first was the large scale introduction of vegetable oil, often hydrogenated, into the diet, to replace animal fats. There is not, and never was, any scientific basis for exposing mass populations to dietary elements which their evolutionary history could not have prepared them for.
The second was the large scale move to a high carbohydrate diet. it was called low-fat. Low-fat sounds reasonable and uncontroversial. High carbohydrate, which is what it was, has neve been shown to improve the health of any population, and would have been very controversial if labelled as what it was.
The results of the experiments are now coming in. The evidence is that the results are increases in heart disease and diabetes and obesity. The way to solve the problem would be partially exercise, but a more important step would be going back to the diet traditionally eaten around 1900, before the great increase in heart disease. This would be a diet fairly high in animal fats, generally eaten incidentally to eating meat and poultry or dairy products, and one with (complex rather than refined) carbohydrates accounting for a much smaller percentage of calories than today. We would eat grass fed meat, fish and eggs, with fresh vegetables and butter on them, and relatively coarse, though not whole grain, bread. Olive oil would be used in cooking and salad. There would be a total lack of polyunstaturated and hydrogentated vegetable oil, and little or no refined sugar.
Exercise is fine, but exercise while eating faddish garbage is not going to solve the problem.