Slashdot Mirror
Sport Is Unrelated To Obesity In Children
xiox writes "The UK government is planning to stop funding a study to understand obesity in children. The study fits children with accelerometers to measure how much energy each child uses in a day by moving. The results are surprising. Those children who do sports at school do not burn more calories than those who don't. Furthermore there is no correlation between body mass index and the number of calories used! The results are very interesting, suggesting that genetics and diet are the main reasons for childhood obesity, not sport. The UK government is trying to increase the amount of sport in schools."
So you want the nerds to not feel bullied in the gym class with all the kids being stronger and faster than them.
Yet, you want to take the kids who are not so intelligent in math/computers and force them to sit through 'boring' classes where all the nerds have the answers and they get to feel stupid.
How very kind and patriotic of you to want to beat China this way.
We need to stop looking at institutions for all our solutions. Some kids will make better athletes. Some will be better engineers/scientists. Some will be better trades people. Some will be better social workers...Stop trying to make everyone the same. It fails and only leads to the lowest common denominator.
Math gets dummed down for the stupid kids. Play gets reduced because some weak kid hurt his arm on the playground and his whiny mother complains. Sports get dummed down because nerds feel bad they can't do as well...
That my good man is why we're 'losing' to China. The kids have no drive. Everything has to be handed to us and no sacrifices must be made. It's our high quality of life that leads to our downfall. It all started with those in the 60-80s who demanded a quality of life far exceeding what they could afford.
It's good to be a failure and fall once in a while. You might actually learn something that way.