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Heart Monitors In Middle School Gym Class?
An anonymous reader writes "My son brought home an order form from his middle school. Apparently the 7th (his grade) and 8th graders are being asked (required?) to purchase their own straps for the heart monitors they're to wear during gym class. I know nothing yet of the device in question, but have left a voice-mail with the assistant principal asking him to call me so I may ask some questions about the program and the device. My tinfoil-hat concern is that the heart rate data will be tied to each child, then archived and eventually used for/against them down the road when applying for insurance, high-stress jobs, etc. 'I see you had arrhythmia during 7th grade pickle ball? No insurance for you' Has anyone heard of such a program, or had their child(ren) take part in it? Does the device transmit to the laptop the overweight gym teacher will be watching instead of running laps with the kids? Perhaps data is downloaded from the device after the class? Or am I just being paranoid? Thanks for any insight."
This is the prequel to The Matrix. Hunker down fellow humans.
Just duct tape the monitoring equipment in place. No need for fancy straps.
Are people really this paranoid?
Better see a therapist, too.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
They're probably just going to monitor heart rate to optimize aerobic exercise. At a certain point if your heart is beating too fast you'll end up in anaerobic mode.
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4736
That device isn't sophisticated enough to detect arrhythmias. It's heart rate, that's it. And if your child DOES have heart problems, sooner or later he or she will need to see a physician, who will be sure to inform the insurance company of the condition. What I am getting at is that there's no hiding from big brother anyways, so you might as well not worry about the minor infringements of privacy.
This would be a pretty good troll posting. Nicely done, if so.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Supplying that information to anyone else would be a violation of FERPA and HIPAA statutes. In fact, you should hope that they DO leak this information, because then you could sue their asses off.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
TFA rises above paranoia to idiocy.
well just make sure we all have insurance. Look at it in a positive view your kid could have a heart murmor or some heart problem that can be fixed early since any operation is a tremendous shot to the body so any operation before 25 will not result in reduction of life time.
That's nothing!!!111
My kid was drugged and kidnapped, then had an explosive collar put around their neck, and dumped on an Island for a battle to the death.
Also, I think you're over reacting
Now that's a sport I'm glad my school didn't have.
If your child has heart problems, the device will alert staff. Or, they could be like this guy and be on trial for manslaughter.
http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/57036257.html
Lots of others like him too. They probably just want to avoid lawsuits.
It's a fucking middle school.
you're paranoid, doesn't mean they are not out to fsck you in the ass, as you have suspected.
Our country has gone mad, I tell you.
If the Lebowski has taught me anything, you do NOT, repeat, do NOT, fsck a stranger in the ass. Or your neighbor's Corvette gets it.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Apparently they're using it to track how the students are performing during class by downloading the information. HIPAA has to come in to play here? http://unioneagle.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3032&Itemid=30
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
You had a good reason to consult the principal, if you don't get assurances in writing I wouldn't suggest that you allow the device to be used on your child.
Bruce Perens.
Dude, You need to chill. Yes, be concerned that they are asking you to pay for something they obviously didn't fund fully, but using the data against your kid is a bit over the top. Many schools use the data to show your childs progress etc. and track their health during the course of the year.
Schools don't have the money for long term storage of the data.
(FYI, I'm a public school IT director).
More like ignorant! They'd get their asses sued off in a second if they sold children's personal information to outside companies. Everyone knows that (except ignorant, paranoid people apparently)
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
If nothing else, those monitors could provide exculpatory evidence that the school was, in fact, neither cruel nor negligent the next time some kid drops dead running wind sprints in gym class after he and a dozen other slackers complained that they "didn't feel good."
I vote paranoid. In all the places I've heard of this used its only used as a way for the students to collect their own information and to monitor themselves and their own heart rate. These devices are generally only heart rate monitors, in no way are they designed to notice an arrhythmia, and I've never heard of the data being collected in any way. Besides since they've asked you to purchase the equipment, you would be better able to know exactly what the capabilities of the model you were asked to buy then a bunch of random Slashdotters. Stop reading the site and do some research.
I saw something similar in a school where I teach. A research project involving a group of children was asked to participate after parental permission and notification and consent were given, detailing the purpose of the project, asking for permission for blood samples and a complete physical given to the child free of charge. The students were awarded gift certificates and other free items such as calculators, CD carriers, and water bottles. The heart monitors were worn during gym class only, and the heart rates were compared prior to and after exercised to measure heart rate resting times. The data was tied to numbers, not names, and was stored that way, so there were no long term consequences of the test, and all information was shared with parents. If you have not given your permission for this testing, I would certainly be upset as a parent that you have not been given any information as to the use of the data, or the confidentiality of the data.
http://www.suunto.com/ is the leader of hear rate monitoring. I had an device that was attached to computer after exercise and it downloaded data to comp.
I was told they do this to monitor you during gym because they are getting REALLY lazy. The only thing you have to do in class to get a good grade is to keep your heart rate above a certain bpm, and you are done with Gym after a certain number of minutes. They don't teach you crap!
Yes.
Step 1: call school and ask questions
Step 2: post to slashdot if paranoia is justified
You'd really rather know if your child had an arrhythmia. That way you can take preventive measures so they don't just up and die one day because of it.
Yeah, pretty much the same way they look at your 7th grade math scores and decide you can only work at Taco Bell.
I think that looking at health records would be a far cheaper and more reliable way for insurance companies to discriminate against someone.
If your country had a sane health care system, you would not have to worry about things like this. As an European I find it amazing that in a supposedly civilized country a person could be denied health care just when he needs it (pre-existing condition results in policy cancellation, things like that would never fly here...)
There is a *fucking* middle school? Damn stupid conservative parents never let me have any fun when I was a kid!
We had a similar program in my high school several years ago, but it was used as a learning device to show children the benefits of keeping up a good heart rate. It really opened my eyes as to how lazily I ran (minimum rise in heart pace). Use this as an opportunity to teach your child about proper health maintenance, and don't worry about future applications. If this school is anything like most, they will lose the information before it even can be applied to anything.
A heart rate monitor is an incredibly valuable exercise aid.
You want to keep your heart going fast, but not TOO fast. Especially when coupled with treadmills and similar devices, you can stay in the target heart rate zone automatically as the device adjusts the load.
Likewise, its very useful in combination with a GPS-based bicycle computer: it really allows you to see where you are strong, where you are pushing yourself TOO hard, and when you really need to go harder.
Also, exercise heart-rate monitors aren't THAT precise: you can detect a gross abnormality like atrial fibrilation, but nothing subtle.
Test your net with Netalyzr
On polar's website. They're the leader in heart rate monitors - for exercise. No more details that that. It'll tell you your heart rate, your calories burned etc. I've been using one for 10 years now, and as an info-junkie I swear by it.
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
If they sold it, yes, but what if they gave it to the local doctors to be included in their medical file?
it is actually not anything quite so sinister (sort of)...
The monitor is used to record the users heart rate over time - the school uses the results as part of the student's grade - fex you need to do X mins of exercise with your heart rate in 'the zone' to get a certain grade. Because some of the activities measured are 'run X laps of the school' or whatever it helps the teachers know who is doing the 'assignment' and who is just walking and talking with their friends.
Sadly the school here (WA) never seems to have enough of the right sized straps, so there is some rush at the start of class to get the best straps - a badly fitting strap can cause the monitor to give a low result even if you were doing the exercise.
Seems like BS to me that you should have to buy your own tho, but it also gets up my kilt when they send assignments home that require Excel, PPT, etc. and expect that I will go out and buy a license for that.
BUT - that doesn't mean you should go along with it. The thing that gets me is that they're requesting the Students to purchase their own heart rate monitor straps. Why? Explain to me how one could afford heart rate monitors but not the straps that go with them?
Either way - there are cheaper alternatives to monitor heart rate. What happened to the old count the pulses for 30 seconds? Are they concerned with kids lying about it? Well then, make them actually exercise until you can see the physical signs, like sweat, heavier breathing, etc etc.
While I think the whole "Oh no medical records" is paranoia at its finest, it doesn't mean she should have to deal with the ACTUAL baggage thats coming with a heart monitoring program.
They'd only get their asses sued for that if anyone finds out. But yeah, the guy's paranoid.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
So an anonymous reader submits a story of a anonymous person with a child at an anonymous school and that qualifies for the front page? I thought I'd seen useless articles posted at Slashdot but this must be the absolute worst.
You're debating over the "privacy issues" or whatever.
Have you never stopped to wonder how stupidly ridiculous it is to ask a child to use heart monitors while performing basic physical activities? Soon they'll be outlawing sports for kids altogether as they raise the chance of physical injuries or whatever.
And the fact that they might be doing this just to avoid lawsuits is every more disturbing. American society is still one of the greatest around - and I'm not an American - but it seems it's clearly entering a downward-spiral these days. Silly lawsuits, silly laws, "intellectual property", GPS-tracked mileage taxes.
Seriously, you need to save your country.
This is beyond tinfoil. This is the among the stupidest things I've ever read as an ask slashdot. It just goes to show that parental instincts can turn intelligent humans into frightened, protective, stupid animals.
Submitter: A heart rate monitor is just a more accurate way of measuring someone's pulse. Have you ever exercised in your life? Did you put your fingers to your neck to check your pulse? This is the same thing, but with more accurate reading. And it beeps if your heart rate gets too high so you know to slow down.
Do some damn research and try to collect your brains back into your skull. The big scary world isn't trying to ruin your little darling by checking his pulse.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
It might be a doctor saying "This arrythmia dates back to 7th grade? With that vital piece of information, we should really..."
And you fell for it.
How does the school know the name of the kid's doctor? I have never seen that question on an emergency contact form.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
is to remove manditory PE from the schools. Use it as time to learn music, or have a out of class work for an hour to help kids deal with homework.
Here is the thing:
30 minutes of half hearted PE exercise in a gym where you mostly goof off really doesn't provide anything. If the child isn't getting exercise at home and learning proper diets then this isn't going to help them.
Use the money for PE top provide a healthy lunch. No more pizza and cheap hot dogs.
Kids that are inclined to exercise will play at home. Many kids do not get an opportunity to learn music in the home, and just learning to play a little each day stimulates the brain.
no, I do not play music, but I wish all the effort schools spent to get me to wear shorts and sweat had been put into making learn an instrument..any instrument
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Now I've heard everything.
This has to be some legalistic crap. Anybody who has ever done so knows that aerobic exercise feels good. If you're working too hard, you feel breathless. The military have a good way to evaluate this, when they run and sing a cadence.
Somebody needs to tell the pinheads setting this policy that exercise and fitness are functions of sweat, not of technology.
Tragic.
...laura who enjoys aerobic workouts
They used them 10-12 years ago in my highschool (oh fond day I remember seeing my first breast when the most friendly girls pulled their shirts up to put theirs on without going into the locker rooms).. anyway...
Back then all they did was report data into a wristwatch with an LCD. I think there was some way to load it onto a computer that they never used.
Anyway--all they did was use it to optimize/help us "tune" our heart rate while doing running/aerobic exercises to try to find out how healthy we were, how fast our rate was. I think maybe we used them for a month to try to improve our resting/exercise rates and then forgot about it.
Honestly--you should be more concerned about whether or not the gym teachers are competent to interpret the data from it. Mine told me my resting heart rate was dangerously high and constantly told me to run slower. I've never been diagnosed with a condition, but when jogging fast, my rate would break 160 BPM and I'd feel *fine*...when under stress.... well...I'm pretty sure a cardiologist would have freaked out. As best I can tell, they just know statistical averages, and assume every child should fit into it--and if you don't...you're not healthy. Great lesson.
If you're already worried about the data being provided...as other posters have indicated... well...you could clarify that you do not allow it to be shared. But more importantly...hope they do--if you ever catch them you're going to have one of the sweetest lawsuits ever for the FERPA violation.
It sounds to me like your being .... what's the word / phrase I'm searching for .... a concerned parent. Vigilant about the young'un. I.E. what you're supposed to be doing. That duty you owe the kid, yourself and us, the rest of society.
Get the answers to your questions (I don't have 'em). Do the fact-checking. Decide on a course of action.
Now an interesting question arises for Kargeneth's post:
Are people really this paranoid?
You mean the school or the parent?
I sure as hell hope that Obama and the congress/senate outlaws denying insurance based on preexisting conditions. It seems like such an obvious abuse of the uneven patient - insurer relationship and an area sorely in need of regulation.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
While your privacy concerns may be worth exploring, I have the feeling that this situation is quite innocent. The HRM is an extremely valuable tool when exercising, and it is worth knowing how to use it properly. In short, if you are not hitting a target heart rate, you may not be exercising effectively. If you exceed a certain limit, you may be doing yourself actual harm. At some point, a school may even be able to make the argument that this reduces their liability.
Why not ask the teacher what it's being used for? I can think of a couple of things.
Just find out what they are using it for. If you are really paranoid, get the principal to sign some slip saying that can only use it for those purposes.
Not everything has to be sinister. This doesn't seem like any real invasion of privacy. Would you be worried if the kids were running on fancy treadmills that already do this anyway?
Knowing your heart rate can be an important thing in exercising.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Back when I took gym in highschool we had what amounted to a 1 size fit all program. I'll admit it, I was a fat kid. So every Wednesday when we had aerobics and you had to run around the gym so many times, run up/down the stairs so many times, jump rope so many times, etc... and your grade was based on the number of times you completed the cycle I did terrible and got a bad grade. Assuming they make proper use of this heart rate monitor they could grade based on effective exercising per person instead of trying to fit everyone into one category.
I bought some heart-rate straps (displaying on watches) as a donation to a local high school.
The instructor was concerned because his girls had varying degrees of fitness.
Due to different physical conditions, girls performing at the same level might be doing vastly different levels of exertion.
One girl might be running using moderate exertion, while another might have a heart-rate way beyond a sustainable rate.
Several problems turned up.
1) chest straps aren't ideal to put on and take off. Several issues, including modesty.
2) devices didn't fit all people.
3) chest straps had batteries which weren't replaceable! What was the vendor thinking about?
I am a geeky guy. So I think there is great potential to doing real-time measurement, and making real-time adjustment of physical challange.
It seems intuitive that this might result in "optimal" use of time, and possibly a pleasant exercise experience.
Is it a good idea? I don't know.
Can it be abused? Certainly.
Would insurance companies like this info, to avoid insuring people who might make a claim? Of course.
But I suspect most problems will be with over-competitive males trying to cram high expectations down the throats of their students.
It does just that, it counts beats per minute, which is usefull to know during sports excersises. I'm using one myself during sports. The only thing that you can infer from the data is your general level of fitness.
Have you ever been rejected for family medical coverage because your child had a urinary infection once, and a test to make sure it wasn't serious? I have.
Bruce Perens.
I don't think you are nutty for asking like so many of these slashdotters -- electronics are allowing for a frightening level of invasion of privacy, and too many people now don't see their privacy being completely violated as a problem. I could easily see *somebody* just deciding this would be a "revenue stream" or something. 25 years ago, it would have been UNTHINKABLE to have advertising in schools, a few years after that, they had that "Channel 1" which many schools air daily, full of ads. However, I do find it VERY unlikely this info is even being recorded.
That said, I think the school is either 1) using these to tell when exercise level is optimal or 2) to cover their ass so some kid doesn't end up in the hospital just from PE. Or both.
Your kid is fat. (trollin' intended)
A gym teacher is already going to learn many health-related things about a child. The President's physical fitness test (or whatever it's called) produces a nice national fitness benchmark, for instance--one at least as good as a heart rate monitor.
The silliness is in reacting to what is a completely bog-standard piece of athletic gear, just because it is electronic. A stopwatch is also an electronic device for benchmarking students but it rarely produces these types of questions.
And to answer your question, educational health records are generally covered under FERPA not HIPAA.
Learn more:
http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/doc/ferpa-hippa-guidance.pdf
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Without heart monitors and GPS, humans would not have survived into the 21st century.
Dear Slashdot,
My child is now required to wear a heart monitor in gym class *sigh*. How can I hide my childs disabilities from insurance companies as to avoid Denial of Service? The well-being of my child comes second behind higher premiums and fear of big brother. Any suggestions to remedy my concerns?
Truly,
Mr. Tinfoil
Part of Obama's health care reform plan is to make it illegal for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing medical condition. Unbelievable that it's currently legal
So unless employers start asking for employees' complete medical history, the submitter's fears would be baseless
There is a secret device in there that is using WiFi (with it's own cancer-causing radio waves, too) to communicate directly to Obama's death panels in the (former) white house. They are still perfecting the reverse control that can kill your kid right on the spot the moment they figure out his health care will be too expensive, so I would really watch out if they insist on updating the device! Fortunately a tin foil hat pressed firmly around the kids head will stop the transmissions, and for extra security you can also get a surgeon to implant tin foil wrapped right around the kid's heart, too.
Seriously, this is obviously a heart-rate monitor like those in treadmills to measure the quality of aerobic exercise.
If your 12 (?) year old son has an arrythmia he may not live long enough to apply for insurance as an adult -- unless you learn about it now and get treatment. These things don't go away by themselves.
The child is adopted.
I'm pretty sure it was on mine when I was a kid.
I myself had these back when I was in middle school, no information was actually collected, the monitors were worn around the chest and provided the heart information to a beeping watch we wore, when we were finished for the day, the watch was reset for the next kid, I doubt that my 6th grade heart data is in some database now
Do you have a kid? It is required at my sons school. Just in case a medical emergency arises and they need documentation forwarded to another physician or hospital. It is pretty standard on most emergency contact forms actually.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
Also under Obama's plan is the requirement that there be a doctor or other person certified to give physicals (so at least a PA on each campus) during all school hours every day. Would the transition from PE class to student health file happen? Yes. Would that be entered into the national insurance database? Yes. Would the insurance company continue to offer insurance as required by law? Yes. Would they start charging more using "riders" on the account? You better believe it.
Does HIPAA come in to play when they track how fast you can do the 50 yard dash?
It's middle school gym class.
Heart rate monitors cannot detect heart defects. They're simple pieces of athletic equipment that are used to get good aerobic exercise. I think it's great that PE is introducing kids to the concept.
One of the signs of paranoia is a tendency to spin fanciful tales off the slimmest of evidence...it's not to look up what these things are if you're not familiar.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I had to use the same thing for my college wellness class. The heart monitor just measures your heart rate and transmits it to a stopwatch you wear on your wrist. When you're done, it gives you some basic statistics. If you go more than a few feet away from the monitor, the watch doesn't even pick up the signal any more. They're probably teaching the kids, like me, about how heart rate affects the kind of workout you get. Nothing nefarious here, folks. Move along. By the way, the strap is made of stretchy material that holds sweat like nobody's business. It's a good thing each student has to buy their own. Even mine was gross by the end of the semester, and I washed it every week.
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
We used heart-monitors in my 9th grade Cardio Health class. No data is collected. The heart monitors are purely for the students to know their bodies and track their improvement athletically over the course of the semester/year.
I appreciate your concern, but honestly it's nothing to be worried about, millions of people around the world use heart rate monitors without any issue. I actually have to give kudos to your kids' school as well. Learning about proper anerobic/aerobic zones is pretty important when it comes to exercise. Further, be glad they're having your child purchase the strap, as opposed to using someone else's which could lead to ringworm, and a bunch of other gross fungal problems.
Please, mod parent up. Knowing your precise heart rate can not only prevent future damage by overexertion, but it can also show what level you need to be at to maximize the efficiency of the time being spend exercising. It's the human body equivalent of a car's tach. Push it to the red line, you do damage. Don't get it into the power band, and you've effectively wasted the potential performance available.
You think this bad? Sure now they are just monitoring the rate of your child's cardiopulmonary development. and perhaps worse yet, they are probably going to compare your child to all the other children based on this metric. But this is just the tip of iceberg! I know how these public schools work. In a few weeks time you'll get notice that they have also been tracking your child's mental and cognitive development!! And, per their M.O., comparing your child to all the other children. They'll probably even have your child get up in front of all the other children and perform some sort of demonstration or cognitive feat. I've even seen cases where they administer tests and enter the results into your child's permanent record. Let's just hope and pray that the laws of the land will prevent these so-called "tests" from falling into the hands of potential future employers. Or, god forbid, future high schools.
-whoa, I'm jones'ing for a sig right about now...
Particularly since if we did have government run health care, no one would be denied. You should be more worried that we don't get a health care bill passes and some how insurance companies would get this data. Then they would for sure not cover your child since it had a pre-existing condition.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
There is a *fucking* middle school? Damn stupid conservative parents never let me have any fun when I was a kid!
If we use Fark headlines as a base measure, then every school has one teacher who's offering a student or two after-class tutoring. (NOTE: High values on the "I would hit it" scale not guaranteed. Virginity not refundable if you later realize she got fifty "Do not want" images and no "Like the fist of an angry god" images on relevant thread. Dignity not refundable if teacher's mugshot gets used by Farkers as a worksafe replacement for their favorite shock site image.)
This is why the Taliban in winning.
It's no big deal. You're insane.
The idea behind this is to teach kids about their target heart rate. You do a couple of math problems to figure it out and the device beeps when your heart is beating fast enough. It's to teach kids how hard they have to work out. If you're walking around casually its not fast enough.
These are the same things you can buy if you want to go jogging.
You're paranoid, and nuts. Do you really think the gym teacher's handwritten notes about how long your kid is in his target heart
I use a heart monitor strap when at the gym to use on treadmills and elliptical machines to maximize the workout. All it does is transmit the heart rate to machine. They are not bright enough to capture anomalies in the heart beat unless the have advanced a great deal in the last year.
My son is in high school, and they have to wear heart monitors in gym. This is meant to make sure that the kids are actually working hard enough in gym class. If the heart rate isn't high enough, they don't get credit for that gym period! However, the stupid things don't even work. Half the time, the kids are telling the teacher that the heart monitor is reading 00s. "Whoops, I'm dead, Mr. D.!" This also penalizes the kids who are in shape, as they have to work harder to make their heart rates go up. All in all, the kids detest the monitors, as do the parents. They simply do not work as an accurate judge of the level of participation in gym class.
When I was in school, we didn't ever do anything remotely like this. There was no taking of pulses, using fingers or anything else. P.E. simply consisted of playing various sports, and a few sessions of trying to achieve certain "fitness goals" they set out for the class, like running a mile in X number of minutes, or doing X number of sit-ups....
One of my classmates actually died of an undetected circulatory condition... an artery burst in his brain, killing him within minutes. But it wasn't during P.E. class at all... it was while playing in the school band, outdoors, at a function!
I'm not even necessarily opposed to schools trying to go "higher tech" with P.E. by using heart-rate monitors and what-not, but it's certainly something that deserves a little more advance explanation than just a "Please purchase this strap so we can attach this thing!", sent home with daily school papers!
On the practical side, schools don't have any money for the necessities, so I doubt they'd spend any money on equipment to log heart rates of individuals. They're likely just going to use it to optimize physical training for each kid as much as possible. Look on the bright side: if your kid learns now to use a heart rate monitor, he might use one later in life for regular exercise and be overall healthier.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Isn't the purpose of a School to TEACH???
When it comes to monitoring heart rates in Gym Class, there are two ways to go about this
1) Teach them to take their own pulse, and they can learn a valuable skill to be used anytime
or
2) Use Heart Rate Monitors, therefore teaching the students to be peons to the capitalistic sale of gadgets that are only useful when they are present and work
I love gadgets as much as the next geek here on slashdot, but come on... without basic knowledge, how will the next generation be able to function without these tools.
.... this is as bad as the match classes that now teach use of a calculator, as opposed to teaching MATH
I know you are worried about the whole insurance thing, but past that...The school is making you pay for the band? If the school is so intent on implementing these heart-rate monitors, they should pay for it. If they won't fund it, then there shouldn't be any mandatory reason for you to comply. That's just preposterous. If they want to test students' heart rates, they should fund the whole thing.
"Don't make me photoshop it to prove my point!"
These monitors are typically a chest strap paired with a watch. The watch gives BPM information to the user so they can train at a suitable level. Its fine to want to be informed, but why are you asking Slashdot?
The heart rate monitor is actually a fun thing to have.
I usually only wear it when I'm on my bike, and I do find it quite fun to see just for how long I can keep my heart rate at 170+, 175+ and 180+. I'm 32, so my target should really be around 160, but I'm still in really bad shape, so I'm constantly above that if I want to feel like I'm doing something.
But when I started this back in June I could hit a peak of about 180 for maybe a minute before I'd feel like I was dying, and now I can hold 180+ for several minutes. My resting heart rate has dropped from about 80 (!!!) to roughly 65 as well.
I'm using this as a fun toy, and I honestly think that if approached properly in gym, you could get the disinterested kids more interested. If you're giving them grades in gym class (btw, wtf?), don't grade them on how well they play football or whatever, as that'll take away the bad players' motivation. Grade them on how well they've done. If you're already in great shape at the start of the school year and you don't improve, give them an A. If they start in great shape and end up in bad shape, give them a C- or D or something. If they start out in lousy shape and end up in great shape (entirely doable while you're still fat) - give them an A or an A+. Start lousy and keep that - give them a C- or a D.
I imagine this started in the worst way -- some people get hurt, let's monitor everything and maybe they won't get hurt. The problem is that this really destroys any sense of responsibility, or risk-taking in children. It does the same in adults who think that if they insure everything that could ever go wrong, that they'll save money.
It also results in that NASA article the other day, of modern culture trying to explore space safely. It's rediculous.
And as a direct result, I can't find good employees/partners willing to take risks when it comes to anything significant in business. They're worried that something bad might happen. And first, tehy won't do it, then, tehy won't take responsibility for it going badly. Like somehow just because it wasn't their fault means that they shouldn't be held accountable for it.
That's just stupid. And it's incredibly common.
And it has, even my good friends, not understanding what it means to run a business -- and finding it unacceptable that I run my own.
How does the school know the name of the kid's doctor? I have never seen that question on an emergency contact form.
Actually, in our school system (Massachusetts), we have to provide the doctor's name, address, phone number and also insurance policy number.
Heart rate monitors are a great tool for managing your exercise and health. Personally, I'd be happy they're TEACHING my kids how to be healthy, instead of just making them submit to 50 minutes of "PE".
Yeah, and I think the submitter needs to peel a layer or too off the hat.
You stereotypers are all the same...
My kids school is doing the same thing. The results aren't computerized or anything, they just check the kids heart rates to make sure that they really are getting the workout that they are expected to get. Different kids have different fitness levels. You can have two kids trailing the pack when running. One is working his butt off and has a good heart rate, and the other one is fit, but totally slacking. The heart rate would show the difference. My kids school just uses the heart rates to make sure that the kids aren't being lazy. Although I do have my paranoid side to me (who among us geeks doesn't?), this isn't likely to be anything to be paranoid about.
From what I understand, this is getting to be the new thing. PE is finally catching up with the times and using technology to make it more effective. Whodda thunk it?
Why should an insurance company want to pay for your child's existing illness?
Insurance is to insure you against the risk of an expensive injury or illness. It's not a charity or a health care discount subscription plan. If you already have the illness, it's not a risk any more. It's a certainty. So if you haven't already been paying for insurance, you'll have to pay that bill yourself.
You don't buy auto collision insurance to fix your car after you crash. You don't buy fire insurance after your house starts on fire. It should be pretty clear why not. Why do you think health insurance should be any different? Politics?
It isn't monitoring their health status, it is monitoring their excertion level.
You mean the teachers are measuring how much they're crapping in the toilet? Eeww... that's definitely going too far!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
What exactly do you mean by "too fast" where heartrate is concerned? A healthy person isn't likely to damage themselves by overexertion due to heartrate rising too high - they'll just get pain and nausea and will probably stop if it gets too bad. Maybe if you're trying to optimize your level of exertion for maximal endurance a monitor might be useful, but that's a highly specialized type of fitness. For most generally useful exercise going at it hard and listening to your body is enough.
What's wrong is the insurance companies you mention! Very very very very wrong! Like "raping babies *while* eating their brains out" wrong!
A heart monitor is actually quite a useful tool for an optimal individual training.
Just put a copyright on *your* heart data. And never make a contract with such a insurance company. I mean what's the reason when they pay nothing, but you pay a ton to them, anyway? You can just throw money in a box every month, and likely have more off of it. Or do it in the community... oh wait, that would be "socialism". ^^
P.S.: We should extend Godwin's law to socialism, terrorism, and some other things. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
My kids both did this a few years ago and the data was just used in class so they could get some idea of resting and exercise heart rates. The did a variety of activities and kept a record of what there heart rates were and the data was only used by them as a personal comparison.It was up to each student as to whether they shared the info or not.
Assuming your child makes it past his or her 8th birthday without being summarily executed by the Obama Health Care Death Squads, he or she is destined to live a life of suffering and pain as Obama's Socialist Enforcement Police beat him or her into submission with subversive anti-American speeches talking about hard work and success.
DONT LET IT HAPPEN! FIGHT THOSE HEART MONITORS!!!!!!!!!!!!
AAARGGHH! Gotta go! My basement apartment is being invaded by the Obama Thought Police!
I work at middle schools (a few) and I can assure you, they are "Fucking" but not necessarily at Middle School. Not a year goes by without some girl disappearing having been impregnated by her 14 year old boyfriend.
And I bet that would not be as "fun" as you think it was.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
We used these in middle school gym class and that was 11 years ago. No big deal at all.
We learned to take our pulse in grade school. After that, for me at least, there was nothing new in regards to that.
As an adult, whenever I work out I take a heart rate monitor with me. Martial arts, archery, weight lifting, or running I like to know where I'm at. If I'm running I can back my pace down a bit to keep it at good and safe exercise levels, the same is true of martial arts.
When it comes to weight lifting, I can rest up until my heart rate is back to a lower exertion level between sets. And believe me, when you start moving big weights your heart rate will go up in leaps and bounds during the exercise.
Looking back, for football or other team sports I wish we had been able to use an HRM. It would have provided me the info I needed later in life to avoid putting on a lot of the weight I did (though I've subsequently lost it) since I could have used that info to figure out approximately how many calories I was burning.
I had to use those monitors my freshman year of high school. The only thing the teachers used it for was to make sure we kept our heart rate over a certain amount of beats per minute for however long we were supposed to be exercising. Basically, the whole point was to make it harder for us to slack off while the teacher wasn't looking. What they didn't count on was that I figured out how to set the minimum heart rate to whatever I wanted, effectively letting me get an A by strolling leisurely around the track. As far as I know, I'm the only one who figured out how to do it, which isn't saying much for the rest of the class since it took less than 5 minutes of experimenting with the menus for me to figure out how to do it. Don't worry about your privacy on this one; I don't know of too many PE teachers who give enough of a shit to compile a database on all the kids and their data. Also, the monitors are shared between classes, so it would take quite a bit of work to figure out whose results were whose.
From the comments, I suspect that most Slashdot readers don't spend much time in gyms.
Heart rate monitors are very useful. They tell you what resistance level you should be using on the cardio machines. Some of the fancier cardio machines read your heart rate and automatically adjust the resistance level to keep your heart rate in the training zone.
Great for obese kids. And adults. It fine-tunes their workout to a level they can handle while preventing goofing off.
If the school is really doing that, good for them. They're doing it right.
We started using those in our gym classes my sophomore year, and every year, we would take a period to learn how to put the heart monitor on, what all the readings being sent to our watch meant, and how to record the data on a sheet of paper. Then we would have assigned days where they would let us do whatever in the gym (i.e. basketball, running, jump roping, those steps things, etc.) and our grade for the day was dependent on how long we were in our "perfect excersize zone" where our hearts were beating within a certain amount of beats per second, which all the info they recorded on the sheet was our name and how many minutes we logged in the class screwing around for the day.
Its not going to kill your kid. Health insurance isnt going to care that your kids ran around for 24 minutes while only being their heart workout zone for 18 of them during a class. And I will bet your kids will love sweaty elastic straps from the previous kid who probably has fresh poison ivy across his chest. It ensure your kid did something to exercise his body in class. Thats all.
Heart rate monitors are highly overrated.
You can feel how hard you're working out without one (it's basic homeostasis -- any animal with a circulatory system can sense and react to its level of exertion), and if you're really curious you can put your finger on your neck for 15 seconds. The goal of an aerobic workout is to exercise at a moderate level. If you feel like you're going to collapse, you're working too hard. If you don't feel anything afterward, then it wasn't hard enough. Your body is generally very good at telling you how it feels, probably because our species would have died out immediately after evolving if it lacked that capacity.
Heart rate monitors are just another way to separate people from their money in a gadget-obsessed, health-obsessed, society full of people insufficiently trained in critical thinking and psychologically primed by millions of years of evolution to believe whatever testimonial might drop on them from a perceived point of authority -- be it human or machine. And once a monitor has been purchased the user is even more likely to testify to the device's indispensable nature because failing to do so would be admitting the buyer got taken for a ride, and any improvement in fitness will inevitably be attributed to the monitor in spite of the essentially perfect likelihood that the same improvement would have happened anyway.
That's without even getting in to the voodoo of optimum heart rate which has only a rough observational basis from statistical analysis of large groups.
This is a seventh grade gym class for Christ's sake.
There are uses for heart rate monitors in clinical settings, but probably not much use in seventh grade gym class. I'd certainly be pissed if my kid's middle school made me go buy one since, as discussed above, they are unnecessary, at least of little utility or value, cost scarce money that could be spent on something that is useful, distract from the exercise itself, and perpetuate the heart rate monitor industry by erroneously teaching kids that the monitor are useful and really matter.
I see you had arrhythmia during 7th grade pickle ball? No insurance for you
Why not focus on fixing the insurance problem instead of making life more difficult for the public school system? If your 7th-grader actually has arrhythmia, wouldn't you rather find out sooner?
Gym class isn't "gym class." It's physical education. Part of that is learning what aerobic exercise is (raising heart rate above a certain level for a certain amount of time).
Your educators are doing their jobs.
Dr Ratley, Harvard has documented effect of exercise in HS math based on 25 min daily exercise in target zone. http://www.learningreadinesspe.com/vid/vidmain.html NBC http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113506 Naperville HS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano Too much Fox news rots the brain and induces paranoia, but I forgot where that is documented.
...you, maam, are batshit insane!
As Barny Frank would say, on what planet do you spend most of your time? Ma'am, having a conversation with you would be like having a conversation with the dining room table! I have no interest in doing it!
Sheesh!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
What the fuck are you babbling about?
When did the user that submitted the article ever mention anything about politics? Or race? The submitter is concerned with ramifications regarding personal rights.
You're the sort of person who just sits around waiting for anything even similar to a discussion so you can spew out your political beliefs and try to act holier-than-thou.
There's the running joke about slashdotters living in their parents basements and not having a life, but you really don't seem to a have a life. So put down the moral superiority and go get one.
Actually no, I don't. I was recalling from my own experiences from when I was a kid and since. I stand corrected! Thanks for setting me straight. :)
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
ObamaCare is coming, and it will accept anyone without precondition. Watch!
New Economic Perspectives
If they're strapping them on 11 year old kids, I doubt they're of sufficient quality to measure anything more than heart rate. There's certainly nobody at the school capable of diagnosing a heart problem. It's probably just a don't-sue-us-your-kid-was-faulty-when-we-killed-him kind of deal.
Still I would press them on it and get answers, maybe showing up to a school board meeting.
is to remove manditory PE from the schools. Use it as time to learn music, or have a out of class work for an hour to help kids deal with homework.
Here is the thing:
30 minutes of half hearted PE exercise in a gym where you mostly goof off really doesn't provide anything. If the child isn't getting exercise at home and learning proper diets then this isn't going to help them.
Use the money for PE top provide a healthy lunch. No more pizza and cheap hot dogs.
Kids that are inclined to exercise will play at home. Many kids do not get an opportunity to learn music in the home, and just learning to play a little each day stimulates the brain.
no, I do not play music, but I wish all the effort schools spent to get me to wear shorts and sweat had been put into making learn an instrument..any instrument
Mother of god, so much stupidity crammed into a single post I hardly know where to start.
Oh that's a great idea. Just when the obesity epidemic couldn't get much worse, let's drop the one chance many people get to burn a few transfats just because one fatass wanted to learn more music. (Hint: if you regret that you didn't learn how to play an instrument, why don't you just go and learn how to play an instrument?)
OMG, I can't believe that A I just read that, and B you got modded Insightful. Here's a question, what about those who are not inclined to exercise? What do you suggest we do for them? Annual liposuction? What about those who aren't inclined to exercise now but would be more inclined to if they learn an appreciation for sport in school? Would you prefer them to become diabetic pianists? What about those who are inclined to exercise? Would you prefer to deprive them of a shot at some athletic enjoyment during their school years?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Insurance is about amortizing risk. When you have a preexisting condition, it's no longer a risk.
What you're looking for is someone to pay your bills for you - not insurance.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Your paranoia is doing more harm to your child than any potential future insurance company could. I'm amazed you haven't dug a bunker by hand for the day when The Man comes to take your children away from you.
Just buy the heart monitor and allow the school to cover their butts against lawsuits for 12 and 13 year old kids keeling over from heart attacks caused by undiagnosed cardiac issues.
-- Kilnar
Why shouldn't it be legal? Otherwise, what is to stop someone who has chosen not to have insurance (spending his money on other things like cars and boats and fast women) from realizing he's just developed a medical problem and then buying the least amount of insurance he needs to get it taken care of?
You do realize that "insurance" isn't supposed to be some kind of discount medical service provider, don't you? It's supposed to be a gamble -- if you don't need it, that's great and your premiums helped pay for someone who did, but if you do, it covers you based on other people who didn't need it.
Allowing people to wait until they are sick to buy insurance is like ... something to do with a car. How about, like letting someone sitting at the blackjack table wait to see that he's got 21 and the dealer busts before he has to put up a bet on that hand. What casino could survive that kind of operation? What kind of insurance company could survive if every new client showed up with a known condition that was going to cost more to deal with than the one-year premium they could charge?
The answer: only a federally funded free health care "insurance" program, and that's only because EVERYONE will be REQUIRED to pay for everyone else's "insurance".
And yes, it is DISHONEST to claim that such a system won't cause private insurance companies to go out of business and cause people to lose the coverage they already have. It is a LIE to claim that people will be able to keep the same coverage they have, because they can't keep coverage with a company that doesn't exist anymore.
So unless employers start asking for employees' complete medical history, the submitter's fears would be baseless
Employers will have nothing to do with it. Once the feds start handing out "free" health care, they will have no reason to offer health insurance as a benefit of employment, so nobody will have employer-provided insurance. Everyone who has a private plan paid for by his employer will lose it, and every private insurance company that handles those plans will go bankrupt or into some other line of business.
Even if "Obama's plan" never passes, the employer still has nothing to do with it. As soon as Jimmy with the pre-existing condition walks into the doctor's office expecting treatment now that he's got health insurance, the insurance company will get the history.
Now what SHOULD be illegal is for an insurance company to drop a client who has a condition. That's stacking the deck the wrong way. That's saying the casino can kick someone who is winning out just for winning. Oh, wait, they CAN kick you out for winning. Oh well, analogies are analogies because they aren't identical, just similar.
it's a heart RATE monitor. Even with the kids name tied to it it would say, yes his heart rate increased during exercise. Just get the damned thing and be done with it.
I hope the kid is adopted fer gosh sakes.
Why bother
If there's one thing I'm taking away from this discussion, it's a strong confirmation of the Slashdot stereotype: most people here seem so unacquainted with exercise that they are completely unfamiliar with a piece of exercise equipment that has been in common use for well over 20 years.
Speaking of save the country! God forbid we should use technology to help improve our bodies rather than distract our minds.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I would expect it's so kids don't share sweaty straps and spread germs or other funk.
Exercise is great but forced exercise during school distracts from learning. Let people exercise on their own time. This heart rate monitoring issue shows the problems that arise when you force people to engage in exercise, without knowing their health state or medical conditions. Gym doesn't teach people to be healthy, its nothing more than an extra recess period. Teach people about health, like sex, but don't force them to engage in it at school.
Re-read the summary:
Also, health care should be entirely funded by the state. It's unbelievable that people can't get medical treatment because they can't afford it. Charge for premium treatments (braces, liposuction, breast enhancement) at a full rate.
Originally we had no insurance and people who needed care were hit with massive bills. So people started buying insurance so that other people will pay part of their medical expenses in an emergency. So is it really that much of a leap to charge everyone and extend coverage to everyone, instead of charging a some people and only extending coverage to some people?
Yes obviously we can't even come close to affording it, but that's because we're wasting money elsewhere. Heathcare is a priority up there with keeping the roads open and keeping cops on patrol: it's (IMO) non-negotiable. We pay for healthcare and then we ask if we can afford things like everyone owning a car instead of mass transit, paying for 50% of the world's military spending, and saving America's pathetic auto industry.
When I was in junior high (about 10 years ago now), we had heart monitors that we wore in gym class while running and whatnot. We didn't each have to purchase our own strap (although I think I may have preferred this; wearing the heart monitors after the previous class was usually unpleasant). Anyway, the only reason we had them was to monitor our progress over the duration of the year. I've never run into an instance of it coming back to me.
This is very much like being worried because your kid is taking trig, and the teachers were using dependable, hand-crafted slide rules, but decided to end that and switch to programmable calculators with memory, and ZOMG it could remember all your kids math mistakes and thus rule them out of future employment!
You can see where that sentence went silly right? Right about the point where you became afraid of any change, anything at all, that you were completely ignorant about. Ask Slashdot? Really? Ask the fscking gym teacher first.
Your choice. Be reasonable and talk to the teacher, or assume the gummint is out to get you, but you won't home school, so you'll just have to send your kid into school with a gun. Either should solve your problem. One would be very amusing, and you should post the story to Slashdot telling us what happens next.
--
Toro
Geez, if there were something like that when _I_ was a kid, maybe I wouldn't have had to wait until I was in high school to figure it out on my own. Whom do I sue for depriving me of this "education"?
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
Yeah, I really want my school wiring my kid up to some machine without telling me about it or asking my permission. Not.
Let's see, formalized education began with the ancient Egyptians, so we're looking at maybe 5000 years total, and NOW students need heart monitors? Wasteful rubbish. If there's a kid with a heart problem, give HIM the heart monitor.
Tell them you refuse permission. Maybe they'll yank the kid out of PE entirely, which frankly would be best anyway; PE never taught anybody anything useful in its entire existence. Send the kid to study hall instead and make him read Dickens or Shakespeare while other kids are wasting their lives running around with heart monitors on.
I piss off bigots.
I desperately wish I could make fun of you for your paranoia. unfortunately your concerns are terrible necessary considering this(USA) country's shift towards socialism and the opinion of governing bodies that they know what is best for you as well as the tendency to give corporations more rights than citizens.
I used to work at one of the local high schools IT in central Illinois. They use those heart rate monitors to basicly make sure the kids are getting better exersize or in easy to understand terms... help the fat kids work harder.
The school I went too didn't make the kids pay for them, but then agian the school had 2400+ students going there.
They keep all the records on a computer to track the kids progress and thats far as the data goes.
All the talk about foil hats and insurance denails...wow just wow people. If your school does something diffrent well sorry, but not the ones in central illinois. lol
I never even broke a sweat in middle school PE classes, it was such a joke. I'd be surprised if my rate ever went above 90 or so. This is nuts.
It's all I need to say.
I'd be a bit surprised if they could keep your kids address records properly ($50 its in an excel worksheet?) Let alone data-mine heart rate monitors to match to insurance quotes in 10 years.
About heart straps:
They have poor electrical contact with the heart. The lack of adhesive means there is a ton of noise in the signal as the electrodes make and break skin contact. The electrical connection does get better with sweat.
Because the connection is bad, it wouldn't be feasible to detect arrhythmias, etc. This thing is a PULSE monitor, not an ECG.
Training with a heart monitor, meanwhile, is awesome. With this device, you can perform what is called "Sub-aerobic-threshold cardiovascular exercise" which will make you live so long and very potent like a fortune cookie, for SRS.
Sub-aerobic training works like so: First, understand that your muscles have two main 'modes' of operation: Aerobic, and anaerobic. If you want to be thin and live long with great potency, you will want to do the aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise happens as long as you have oxygen to use. As soon as you are running low on oxygen, your muscles switch to the anaerobic mode. Every person has an "Aerobic Threshold" of exertion at which they will 'switch modes' from aerobic to anaerobic exercise.
It happens that, for each exercise and resistance level, your aerobic threshold corresponds to a specific pulse. For example, when I've been sedentary, my aerobic threshold on the recumbent exercise bike, resistance 1, is at pulse rate 157.
By using a pulse rate monitor, you can determine your aerobic threshold for a given exercise. Then, you can train at just below the threshold (stay at the theshold pulse-5). You will be able to train aerobically this way for extended durations, up to many hours at a time (example: hiking). If you exceed the aerobic threshold, the longest a normal individual will be able to continue is 90-120 minutes, and that with some difficulty.
As you continue to spend time training near your aerobic threshold, your lung, lung-heart, heart, and heart-body oxygen throughput will increase. Your lungs will get bigger and grow more sacs and capillaries, your right ventricle will strengthen in balance with your left, your body will grow more capillaries in the muscles, etc. Your total ability to inhale, distribute, and reduce Oxygen, while exhaling it in CO2, will go up.
This kind of training makes you super strong.
If you are interested in the ECG, I recommend you buy the Ramsey Electronics ECG. You can either: (a) listen to your nerve impulses on headphones -- awesome for biofeedback practice, or (b) look at your ECG waveform on your battery-powered, inductor-less, oscilloscope. Excellent stuff.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-435233/Children-banned-playing-tag-school-playground.html
and
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,295165,00.html
and
http://www.exrx.net/Questions/Tag.html
Windows is not the answer.
Windows is the question.
The answer is "NO."
Glen Beck, is that you?
A heart rate monitor is an incredibly valuable exercise aid.
You want to keep your heart going fast, but not TOO fast. Especially when coupled with treadmills and similar devices, you can stay in the target heart rate zone automatically as the device adjusts the load.
Yeah and that's a bunch of bullshit. Going fast but not too fast? What is "fast" and "too fast" and how did you determine what those numbers are? From some stupid calculation based on your age or something? Bzzzt, sorry but your optimum heart rate is going to depend on a hell of a lot of things, not the least of which is your general health level which is an incredibly subjective thing. Age, weight, and other crap truly does not have anything to do with your optimum heart rate yet that's how most people calculate it.
Coming up with correct targets requires a lot more skill and effort than most people are going to go through. Trying to target artificial numbers based on guesses? You could be seriously injured. More important is how it feels to you.
Why shouldn't it be legal?
Well, some places are now declaring that domestic violence is a preexisting condition. It's a wonderful way to prevent someone from ever changing carriers because they would be utterly screwed.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Food is also necessary for survival - but the government only provides it to those who are unable to provide it to themselves -- and then doesn't provide Prime cuts of steak.
Why should health care be any different? Roughly speaking - Food Stamps:Nutrition::Medicaid:Health Care.
Also, you mentioned that "premium" treatments should be charged "at full rate" and gave some examples. I'm curious, do you accept, for example, that spending $200K to extend the life of a terminally ill patient from a statistical six months to seven months would be a "premium" treatment?
It seems that government provided care for the needy could fairly easily be capped by "Provide no treatments that weren't available or wouldn't have commonly been provided 30 years ago unless a newer alternative is cheaper and is statistically no less successful". This would mean that often only generic drugs would be available and that, today, certain expensive (by today's standards) tests (such as PET, MRI, and most CTs) would be unavailable on the government's dime. It wasn't barbaric that the richest people 30 years ago couldn't get access to things that weren't yet invented, why would it be inappropriate to limit free access to these "prime steak" services today? This would keep costs down while not impacting R&D and innovation in pharmaceutical and medical equipment development. Note that many advancements of the last 30 years would be available via the "cheaper" escape clause (such as a surgery that is now commonly done laparoscopically on an outpatient basis rather than via a more invasive procedure which required a multi-day hospital stay).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
...to me that your kid will not be getting the same heart monitor each time. Otherwise, if they weren't 'sharing' monitors, they could just use the strap the monitor came with instead of having what appears to be a hygiene concern.
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a single question: did you have a heart monitor in school? Chances are the answer is "no". You can just say that it didn't prevent him or her to be a fine school principal, therefore your child has a pretty good chance to grow up without it, too.
I teach middle and high school PE and Health in a public school. Last year, I had the opportunity to order a set of heart rate monitors for my classes jumped at the chance. POLAR has a set designed for use in large group settings that make administering the system quite easy. Each student is assigned a watch, a monitor and strap. (The strap is a piece of elastic that attaches to the monitor and goes around the chest, and there are always clean straps available for each student). Students wear the monitors during class, while their heart rate is recorded onto the watch. Students get immediate feedback as to their heart rate and exertion level during any particular activity. Later, this data is download to a computer, for more detailed analysis. Students can see a graph of the HR data through class to identify areas of improvement. In my district, the data is used as their primary grade. If they stay in (or above) their target heart rate zone for 80% of class on a particular day, they've earned an 80% for that day. They don't get any points for being under their zone. In fact, the watch beeps like crazy when a student is out of their zone to get their attention. This system, coupled with daily aerobic and strengthening activities has dramatically improved the fitness level of my students over the course of a year. The HR data is used by me and only me. The district doesn't seem to care about HR data at this time so I wouldn't be concerned about it being filed away for later...yet. Many districts are starting PE initiatives to get kids active, and some of that energy is going into fitness testing, where scores are tracked from yer to year. My understanding is that the scores are used in an academic sense and shouldn't be used in any medical situation. PE Teachers are not doctors so any data collected from us should not be considered by any reasonable insurance company. In short, HR monitors are good for students, teachers and parents, when used properly.
Modern heart rate transmitters/monitors have some provision for coding so in effect they are not "broadcasting" the heart rate. I'm sure such systems are far from secure by Slashdot's standards but they probably rule out all but surreptitious monitoring. If the school's intent is truly as benign as teaching students to monitor their own heart rate, then surely they won't mind buying 1:1 coded equipment (heart straps and monitors) and teaching the kids how to clear the data on the monitors.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
I wasn't replying to the summary. I was replying to the specific things I quoted.
Also, health care should be entirely funded by the state.
Citation required. Why? And don't you dare forget, or try to hide, the fact that "the state" has no money that it hasn't taken away from the taxpayers. So, in essence, you are saying, people who HAVE jobs and money should pay for health care for those who don't. From those according to their abilities to those according to their needs?
It's unbelievable that people can't get medical treatment because they can't afford it.
Yes, it's unbelievable because it doesn't happen. Unlike countries with socialized medicine systems where you can't get medical treatment because there is a waiting line longer you can survive.
So people started buying insurance so that other people will pay part of their medical expenses in an emergency.
That is a false representation of the insurance industry and the reason people buy insurance. People buy insurance IN CASE they need medical treatment, not to force other to pay for their treatment. Most people buy insurance EXPECTING and HOPING never to need to collect; that reasoning cannot be driven by the expectation of collecting more than you pay in.
So is it really that much of a leap to charge everyone and extend coverage to everyone,
Yes. If you want to choose not to have insurance, it should be your right. If you want to work for a company that doesn't provide it, that's your right. There is nothing in the Constitution that says the federal government is required to provide free medical care to everyone. If you think that's only because doctors did not exist in colonial times and the founders just overlooked the matter, think again.
Yes obviously we can't even come close to affording it,
Yes, obviously, so the result will be rationing and shortages and decisions by government desk-jockeys what procedures will be paid for and what won't, and people who need expensive tests won't be able to get them because there isn't enough money to buy the hardware to do the tests...
What a great way to keep the world's best medical care functional.
By the way, this is not conjecture. It's observable fact. Hawaii recently implemented free medical care for all residents under 18. They had to cancel the program because they ran out of money and facilities. It seems that all the parents who WERE paying for health insurance for their kids stopped paying and joined the free program.
Also consider Oregon, the leader of the pack in government run health care. Under the Oregon health plan, the state decides what is paid for and what isn't, and if the plan runs low on money, they simply stop paying for the more expensive procedures. You want to complain about insurance companies allegedly deciding what procedures to approve (not once in my life has an insurance company overridden the decisions of my doctor, so I say "alleged"), you think it's better to have unelected civil servants who have their own health plans telling you what can and can't be done for you?
We pay for healthcare and then we ask if we can afford things like everyone owning a car instead of mass transit,
The day that the government provides free cars to everyone is the day you can make such a ludicrous statement like what you just did. Yes, if the government was providing free cars to everyone, I'd say they'd be better off paying for healthcare. Since they aren't, it's a stupid and dishonest argument to say they ought to be paying for health instead of cars.
What. The. Fuck.
Oh nevermind. I was going to type out a response of how you obviously just want to be a 1 man island and provide for yourself with absolutely no help from anyone else unless you can "afford" it. But then I saw your sig, so you're just trolling and may or may not believe in what you're saying.
What I'm more concerned about is medical equipment being forced onto students at their own expense.
I guess you missed Pres. Obama's address - the plan to remove consideration of pre-existing conditions is coupled with a mandate for everybody to carry health insurance, for exactly this reason.
And that's why Obamacare insurance premiums are going to be astronomically expensive. Everyone will be paying the same amount. That means that young healthy people will be subsidizing old unhealthy people.
It's an enormous de facto tax on young people. But they'll call it "premiums", even though you're forced to pay them against your will.
If these young people could just buy insurance without a ton of government interference, they could get it really cheap. I recently bought temporary insurance recently for about $50 per month.
President Obama didn't tell you that, did he?
Absolutely correct! There are several different target heart rate algorithms, all of which are attempts to fit a simple formula to experimental data that has a surprising amount of non-age & sex related variability. fastest-fascist has it right. If you're health, go at what you think is your fastest _sustainable_ pace and back off a bit if you feel nauseous. I regularly exercise at the top end of the target heart rate range for someone 20 years younger.
You're just being paranoid/over reacting. It's likely just a simple heart monitor belt like this: http://www.amazon.com/Cardiosport-Contour-Lite-Transmitter-Belt/dp/B000BWADL8/ We wore them in gym class back in highschool when we were running and doing aerobics. Luckily we didn't have to pay for them unless you're broke. Really, if this bothers you, you have a lot of other more important things to worry/be paranoid about.
Heart rate monitors monitor -- guess what -- heart rate. Heart rate is how often your heart beats per minutes. For optimal training, heart rate should be kept in a particular (age-dependent) range. That's completely normal training procedure: almost every piece of aerobic exercise equipment at health clubs supports it.
Be happy that your school is teaching your kids something about modern fitness, since you obviously aren't able to teach them.
(my expertise: Olympic athlete and world record holder ... and yes I am still a geek. The two are not mutually exclusive.)
Many people have already stated above... you are being beyond paranoid.
It would only be for increasing the quality of the training for the kids. It allows the teacher to see who is
1) trying but not making a show of it (and maybe trying too hard, and should decrease the intensity for benefit)
2) who is being "soft" (acting like they are having a heart attack, when they are only working at 50% capacity - because they dont want to put in the effort for whatever reason)
Secondly, a HRM cannot give any reliable indicator of abnormal heart rhythms, because they can be affected by being close to power lines, or sometimes being incorrectly worn on chest (sometimes mine can slip around while training - because the band is worn out and I havent bothered to replace it yet - and my HR jumps between my actual 150bpm and 240bpm, and I guarantee it is not my heart). Insurance companies know that any HRM data could not possibly be reliable enough to stand up in court so they wouldnt even bother asking anyone for it.
I personally was delighted to see that in this day and age of lethargy, that a school would take this approach to increasing the QUALITY of the kids' exercise (rather than just forcing them to do more).
Buy the kid the damn HRM... unless you care more for conspiracy than your own child.
Heart rate monitors can and have been used in PE classes to grade students on their exertion rather than their capabilities. In stereotypes: the idea is to reward the nerd busting his ass rather than the jock breezing through, even though the jock might jog faster than the nerd can run.
Just to answer at least one question in the summary: a heart rate monitor does exactly that: it monitors the rate that your heart pumps blood. They are not inherently dangerous; in fact, the opposite could be said. They can tell you when you are working out too hard (in case the pain wasn't enough) so you won't push yourself too hard and injure yourself. They are also widely used for conditioning; I use one myself to keep track of my progress when training for SAR operations, and just about everyone I know who is even somewhat competitive sportswise uses one (this includes cyclists, runners, hikers, etc).
Now, you don't necessarily need to buy one; in fact, if your kid has a wristwatch with a second hand, he already has a heart rate monitor: himself. He can simply take his pulse as the nurse does at the doctor's office, and he's good to go. The advantage that the heart rate monitor buys him is not having to consciously keep track of his heart rate, and depending on the model, all sorts of statistics (my very basic one gives me maximum for the session, average for the session, and time elapsed; others can do charts against GPS tracks).
It's actually kind of good to hear that at least one school somewhere is taking this kind of interest in their kids; at least, taking it on face value that's what it looks like to me. Combined with the correct teaching approach, such as explaining how the circulatory system works and that the harder you work, the faster your heart pumps, and explaining basic aerobic conditioning, this could be a brilliant way to get kids to get more exercise. Not all competition is healthy, and the fact is that heart rate varies wildly even between the most similarly trained individuals; neverthelss, the kids could even be encouraged to condition themselves to see who could get the lowest heart rate on, say, a one mile run (in a set amount of time). Or just encourage to keep beating their own averages by running faster, farther and with a lower overall heart rate (indicating an increase in conditioning).
One of the downsides to a heart rate monitor is that they could grow reliant on it, and not trust their own body's signals to let them know how hard they are working. It's also a shame that the school is insisting (if, indeed, they are) that these are required; they shouldn't be, and the aforementioned watch method is a perfectly suitable, cheap replacement. Again, I'm willing to bet that the school is trying to standardize, not wanting to leave anyone feeling left out, and their budget is probably strained already.
As for the paranoia about this being used against them later in life, first off, that's a problem with our health care system, and the solution is not to ignore our health in the hopes that the insurance companies will as well. Just keep the data private and insist that any school faculty is not allowed to record it unless they meet HIPAA standards. I doubt they do.
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Also, exercise heart-rate monitors aren't THAT precise: you can detect a gross abnormality like atrial fibrilation, but nothing subtle.
Its worth noting that the number of grade-school aged children with atrial fibrillation is pretty close to 0.
How many slashes would a slashdot dot, if a slashdot could dot slashes?
Why do they monitor the hearts of school children? Are they sink? But to your concern. It is illegal (at least in Europe) to use such data for health insurance pricing. It would be against the non-discrimination law. In addition if you live in the USA you might considering to support general health care for everyone. It is better for all of you and as you could see in Europe (e.g. Germany, France, The Netherlands, etc. (not the UK)) in total we pay half of what you pay in the USA and have still a better average service quality. Of course it is a social system. So if you are richer you pay more, so your poor fellow citizens get health care too. But in such a system nobody asks you to input your health data to calculate your personal risk.
There is an excellent book out there titled SPARK! It outlines how a well monitored exercise regiment can help students to excel. One key here is to let them practice in their optimum load during PE - and that's what the HR monitor is for. If that gets rewarded (like "You trained at 80% -the recommended rate for stamina building- all week, that's an A then) even better. By improving fitness levels academic results will improve too. :-) stw
So in summary: sounds like a good idea if implemented well.
I put on my tinfoil hat and did a google search for 7th grade heart monitor, turns out this "story" is posted by anonymous all over the place. odeo.com had the whole slashdot front page as "videos" to watch that were really text. Plenty of other blog or newsish forums had the list of slashdot stories as well. Weird huh
google shows the copyish nature of the web. Reapplying the tin foil, I wonder who actually put this "story" out. Do they want everyone to be afraid of the big scary overbearing government monitoring the children or what? Maybe just an overreaction to the fat kids that have made the news lately by suffering heart attacks at school or sports practice.
Maybe you should read my post - maybe you would have noticed that I specifically mentioned government assistance programs (Medicaid and Food Stamps) for those who need help and was not critical of them.
But, I understand, flaming is probably easier than actually reading or thinking critically.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Weight lifting isn't really aided by knowing your heart rate. You do work in small-ish bursts. i.e. 10 reps, change weight, 10 reps, change weight again, etc.
The best indicator I've found of measuring performance is... surprisingly... the amount of weight you're lifting and the number of times you lift it. (adjust the last two criteria around based on what you're aiming for in terms of muscle strength/endurance)
Your access to a heart rate monitor wouldn't have changed jack shit. Buy a watch and learn to find a pulse and multiply.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
LOL. Like public schools have the resources to create a huge database of children's heart rates. We used heart rate monitors when I was in grade school. It was simply so we could (A) Learn how our hearts work, and (B) Measure athletic improvement.
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you are truly an idiot.
I agree.
Healthcare is a service unlike any other, because without it actual people die. It's not a question of quality of life, it's a question of the existence of life.
The view that people who don't have insurance, or can't afford healthcare should die when they get ill shows the callous disregard for human life, and treatment of people as commodities only to be kept if economically viable that is characteristic of communism.
And before everyone comes out of the woodwork screaming bloody murder about not wanting high taxes like in Europe - the US already has a similar tax burden to Western European countries - it just spends the same size chunk that those countries spend on healthcare on its military.
Yes, you're the very strong good guys, and it's probably your green-ranger like presence which keeps the rest of the largely-free world unmolested, and we're very grateful, but do you really need 12 capital aircraft carriers? and more than an order of magnitude more on defence R&D than the next largest spender?
FGD 135
Everyone has to bear the cost when organizations are afraid of being sued.
You are being paranoid and it troubles me greatly that your retarded ass reproduced.
This is a variable that can be adjusted. I'm sure whatever metric private insurance companies currently use would be fine.
OK, that's an idea. Wait, is this an argument against me, or are you just thinking out loud
Is the principal related to the owner of the company that they are purchasing the monitors from? Is there some kind of kickback?
How timely! This article was just published a few minutes ago:
45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul
It's more likely that the military is funding this than some insurance company. They've done the same thing with shooting clubs in the past--paying for all the bullets, and then asking the best marksmen if they've ever considered becoming a sniper. Wouldn't be too surprising if this program extends into high school, with the most athletic being spoken to by recruiters.
Don't you have some newsletters to be working on in your moms basement about how we never landed on the moon? How do you have time to raise a child?
I'll bet U$ against J$ that this has to do with some kid who had a heart incident during gym class.
His parents sued and now the school is trying to cover it's assets. Just like hospitals which insist that discharged patients leave in a wheelchair.
If you want to prevent excesses like this, just stop filing frivolous lawsuits. If you sit on a jury deciding on a civil case use common sense and think carefully.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Actually, the results will be beamed to the black helicopter hovering over the school just out of range to be seen.
Your next call should be to Child Protective Services to come take your kid away because your are a fucking dumbshit.
The idea that there is no room for private insurance with a public option is ludicrous. I live in Australia where we have Medicare. This allows anybody to get treatment for most things but has a very long queue for elective surgery. The private insurance companies allow you to use the private hospitals to jump the queue in the public version. Also private health cover in Australia will allow you to charge for 'extras' such as Physiotherapy, Chiropractor and alternate medicines (acupuncture etc). The government has also introduced a levy on high income earners that they have to pay towards medicare if they do not have insurance. I am not sure how the USA is going about the introduction of public option but the public and private options can definitely co-exist.
1) Teach them to take their own pulse, and they can learn a valuable skill to be used anytime
or
2) Use Heart Rate Monitors [...] that are only useful when they are present and work
Obligatory car analogy follows:
You can teach a new driver how to calculate his own speed and his own RPMs, but that information is not going to be as useful to him as if it was presented to him in real-time.
And in answer to your #2: No, that's the entire point of learning new habits. You need the most feedback when you're learning (when you're making corrections). Once you've successfully learned a new habit, you don't need all that extra feedback.
I think the trouble is that you've never had your own HRM. The HRMs that you find on machines at the typical gym are lousy.
As a kid I don't ever remember needing a heart monitor to tell me when I wasn't pushing, or when I needed to slow down. My body did that pretty well by itself. Funny... it still does. I've got a heart rate monitor that came with a GPS. I used it a couple of times, went, huh, that's about what I figured, and now it's in a box somewhere.
Maybe kids are different, but when I was in school we enjoyed gym class because it was kind of extra recess with cool equipment. Having to strap on a heart rate monitor to tell us if we were "exercising safely" would have turned it into something more like math class.
Actually, if you want to prevent excesses like this, start demanding fricking tort reform, like some of the rest of us. We need an 'Unemploy the Lawyers Act of 2009' and we need it fast.
wat. You were going on about how employers have nothing to do with it, so I informed you that I was talking about the story summary.
Obviously. Sort of how like the taxpayers provide 13 years (K-12 in maryland at least) of free education to every person -working and non working- in the United States. Think about it: every weekday, most months, for 13 years almost every American child has to be supervised and taught by college-educated adults for 6 hours. Where are we going to get all of that money?! Oh yeah, we've been doing it in every state for decades, and it works. And by the way, wealthy taxpayers probably paid more for your education than you did.
Basically. Is there a Godwin's Law for communism references? Look, not everything in communism is evil and scary. Particularly, socialized education and healthcare have strongly taken root in western Europe. In Finland the government will pay your full tuition, pay your rent while you're a student, and give you a monthly stipend of 200 euros (so you don't have to juggle work and study), as well as give you access to a low-interest loan. My sociology textbook says that in Denmark citizens have free college education, free healthcare, and five weeks of paid vacation leave paid for by the government. "People who lose their jobs receive about 90 percent of their prior income from the government for up to four years." Also if you have a baby the government will pay for leave for both the mother and the father. Canada has very cheap higher education and subsidized healthcare. These are all western, capitalistic societies.
It doesn't have to be that way. Someone pays for quality care now (and still turns a profit) so the money exists.
Like you said, the only money the state has is that which it collected from taxpayers. So get urban Americans out of their gas guzzlers and tax the savings out of their pockets.
Tell that to Massachusetts, where you're required by law to carry health insurance.
Depending on the implementation this is going to be good or bad.
Good if there is some instruction on heart rate ranges that constitute exercise. The kids can participate in an activity and get immediate feedback on if they are getting a training effect. They will know they need to dial up the intensity. It could serve as a valuable tool for getting kids to exercise. It could be really good IF there is good instruction on how to use the technology. There are a bunch of other really nice uses for heart monitors, but they are better suited for things like a high school track team.
More likely, they it is a whole lot of money spent to avoid liability on some fat kid getting a heart attack. It could happen, but more than likely not. The money would be better spent elsewhere.
As far as the paranoia, the things can't really be used to collect data for big brother purposes. The technology would need to make a really big leap to get there, and when it does arrive, it would probably only be used in competitive cycling and other endurance sports for the first few years (if not about a decade). The straps with a basic watch to tell heart rate runs about $40 (Walmart price a couple years ago). Any reader that can do more than give an instantaneous heart rate reading will cost more than that. Get two kids close together and they will get funny readings from interfering with each other.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
30 second google search could have spared you the ridicule you are getting here. They asked you to purchase a 'Strap' not a heart rate monitor first of all. That's for hygiene; the straps get stinky.... Second, they are not EKG machines for goodness sake.
Crawl back into your cave and protect your plot of land; they are coming to take it away from you.
I use one whenever I ride my bicycle. I track my heart rate fairly carefully as I am riding. With all of the sports related concerns about kids and "previously unknown conditions", I see it as a good safety net. I am involved in youth sports programs as well and I could see where it could be some benefit. Come of the kids in my program should spend 60 days with a dietitian before even setting foot on my fields.
Boy, I'm sure glad that we didn't have any health care professionals on campus when I went to school.
Well, except for the school nurse. But she didn't do physicals. Just stuff like scoliosis screenings.
I'd sure like to see a citation for that claim about doctors or PAs on every school campus, though. I've googled in vain.
And I'd like to see a citation for that claim about how the results of student health screenings will end up in insurance company databases.
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You cannot wash away blood with blood
I see you study and raise you 63% of doctors support a mixed public/private option.
so which is it?
It's funny, but the doctor who treated my wife in Canada, under their socialized medicine system, was the most relaxed, mellow doctor we've met.
I work in Norway often, I'm heading there next week, but I haven't gotten to use their socialized medicine yet. Folks there seem happy with it.
I think a public option would also have to subsidize medical education. I hear that AMA has acted to reduce access to medical education in the U.S., but I've not studied the subject. That would have to go.
Bruce Perens.
(Caveat: Are you sure this program isn't part of a research study? If so, most of this discussion is moot.)
;) Two things...
I'm referring to the tinfoil hat, not the heart-rate monitor.
1. You right to be concerned about a program that, although it might be well-intentioned, has clear potential to be misused by a health-insurance company down the road. With that sort of concern, I hope you're for health-care reform.
2. Heart-rate monitors are red herrings. You don't need one to know if you're exercising hard. Trust me, you'll know because you want to get it to be over with and collapse onto the floor. Their value is primarily to endurance athletes trying to tune a specific pace. There many, many other athletes whose sports are of shorter duration who don't benefit much from a heart-rate monitor. Even more importantly, kids shouldn't focus on their heart rate at this stage. They should focus on having fun while exercising and playing, trying different sports, developing motor skills and learning correct for foundational functional movements (e.g., don't round your back in a deadlift).
Good question. The one you cite asks doctors to choose between 3 theoretical plans, two extreme and one in between. Doctors (63%) picked the one in between.
The one I cite asked specifically about Obama's plan. Doctors (65%) were opposed.
So it's fair to conclude that doctors support something moderate, but not Obama's plan.
you aren't being paranoid enough.
In Iowa on Aug. 21, a school administrator ordered 5 high school girls to undergo a strip search after another girl reported a $100 missing from her locker. Iowa law forbids strip searches of students by school officials (I believe only police with parents present can do so), but the administrator claimed local school board policy supersedes state law and did so anyway. Said administrator is now "on leave". Story here.
Remember, it's your child; specifically, 50% you. You have the right to know what's going on, why this is needed/required; what's going to happen with the data. And you have the right to say "No".
Infanticide? Which side would that be? I wasn't aware Herod the Great was still active politically.
I like sprinting balls to the wall to see how high I can get my HR. I've managed to hit 201 playing some 3-on-3 basketball nonstop during a few successive fast breaks. But I have *knocks on wood* excellent cardiac health. My resting HR is 50 and I'm 25. That is what I find fun: sprints to see how quickly I can ramp my HR up, and how high I can make it go.
Granted, I have a very good Polar unit that stores the data and lets me transmit it to the computer later, so it's easy to track "max HR" during a workout. It's not like I stare at the monitor while running or anything. (Although it's a great example of how hypnotic biofeedback can be.)
That's awesome. Such a cool cutting edge thing for schools to do. Recent data has shown that heart rate monitored aerobic PE can boost help grades, decrease discipline problems, mediate learning disabilities, make kids enjoy PE more because they compete against themselves, and lead to a lifetime of exercise. Check out Spark by John Rately - he's a leading child psychiatrist: http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113506/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253071843&sr=8-1
quick.
Well, that's just incorrect. There is no law that says parents must be college educated to home-school their children. Almost every US child IS taught the way you say, but not "almost every American child" HAS to be taught that way. Wouldn't it be nice if the people had a choice in the matter?
These are all western, capitalistic societies.
Marginally capitalistic, and taxed heavily. Not hugely productive, and not a pleasant place to live.
I wrote: "Unlike countries with socialized medicine systems where you can't get medical treatment because there is a waiting line longer you can survive."
It doesn't have to be that way. Someone pays for quality care now (and still turns a profit) so the money exists.
That's right, it doesn't HAVE to be that way, it's just that's what happens when you have the government running the health care system and giving it away to anyone who walks in the door. Hawaii learned the lesson. Yes, some people PAY for quality care because they can pay the taxes AND for the medical care, too, but aren't we supposed to be talking about all the poor US people who can't afford insurance in the first place? Where do THEY get the money to see a black-market doctor when the free one is too busy to deal with their appendicitis or cancer?
Just what good is your "free health care" if you can't get in to see the doctor unless you go to the US and pay for it yourself? Is that really "free"? And remember, those who can't get an appointment to see a doctor in a socialized medicine country aren't prevented from seeing him because they can't pay, it's because there simply isn't enough "free care" to go around to everyone who wants it.
Like you said, the only money the state has is that which it collected from taxpayers. So get urban Americans out of their gas guzzlers and tax the savings out of their pockets.
Spoken like a true communist. If they don't spend it on gasoline so they can go to work every day, take it away from them in taxes so they can't spend it on anything.
Tell that to Massachusetts, where you're required by law to carry health insurance.
The fact that there are stupid government people in Mass doesn't change the fact that it should be your right not to have to buy insurance if you don't want to.
And from what I hear, this law isn't going over so well with the people who are having to pay for it.
My daughter took an online gym class in order to take harder academic classes (midway through her HS years they changed the number of hours in a day but kept the gym requirement - causing conflicts resolved by the district setting up this online gym class). The heart rate monitor did not measure her ECG but rather the number of beats per minute and the duration. She then downloaded this to the server to prove she was indeed doing the required exercise. I suspect this is the root of the schools use of the monitors, and the straps probably get all sweated up, and they have no money - so you have to purchase (and they are yours to keep).
You don't need a monitor to tell you that your exerting yourself. Get down, beat your face, sweat out that fatty poison maggot. Your pathetic if you think you need this. Get old fashioned, stop being a pussy. Besides that, any school which makes it mandatory to buy this useless crap has another thing coming. Our educational system is going down the drain, as a matter of fact, it's been down. I've been out of school for a bit now, and since I've been out, I see their lies, indoctrination, and overall madness more than ever. This all just makes me sick.
I use heart rate monitors daily with my rowing team. They allow you to truely get "into the zone". Think about it.
Telling an athlete to sprint, and to run the fastest they can, is not measurable. You give them a heart rate monitor, alas, sprint so that your heartrate is at least over 190 bpm.
Not only that you can measure change over time.
You are being paranoid. Chill out.
Well, isn't it good then that nobody is saying that people who can't afford healthcare should die? Isn't it good that they GET the healthcare to keep them alive, even if they can't pay for it?
The problem is not providing life-saving procedures to those who need it. It's providing an open-door free health care system where every uninsured goomba doesn't have to care if his illness is trivial and will go away by itself in a day or two, he can go to the emergency room and get it taken care of for free. The problem is a government-run CF where doctors are told how much they can charge for everything, so they have no incentive to upgrade equipment or even stay in practice while hemoraging money.
The REAL problem is a chief executive who is smart enough to know very well the effects his plans will have on private health care and employers, smart enough to know that if he told the truth nobody would support his plans, but unethical enough to choose to lie to get his agenda accomplished.
Yes, you're the very strong good guys, and it's probably your green-ranger like presence which keeps the rest of the largely-free world unmolested, and we're very grateful, but do you really need 12 capital aircraft carriers?
You don't sound so grateful, and you don't get to make those decisions. In fact, since you seem to be admitting you are not in the US, what the fuck are you complaining about?
I'm sure you're fed up of hearing it by now, but... worrying about knowing about health conditions out of fear that it will be used against you means your health-care system is broken, not that you shouldn't check your heart rate. Please don't construe this as coming down on one side or the other of US politics; I, as an englishman, honestly cannot fathom how a system that deprives people of poor health from care is acceptable.
To the OP, if you're so worried about this, get the kid a heart rate monitor yourself, and teach him about optimal heart rates for exercise.
It never ceases to amaze me how much we as parent need to BUY for the schools these days.
It's getting to the point where I might as well home school, I would save more money.
This probably won't effect your insurance premiums. I think the biggest impact this will have will be felt by fat kids when they strap theirs on and find out that even their resting heart rate is much faster than the rest of the kids and then the whole new round of insults that we never ever thought of comes. "heart racer!" "fatty beep beep" or whatever.
Two points made by this submission:
1. The US health care system has become so fucked up and corrupted by insurance companies that people are ACTUALLY worried about losing coverage to such a scenario!!
2. The poster is a bit of a doof, thinking that such records would ever be archived and shared with anyone. You know that "permanent record" they drill into you in high school? Do you seriously believe it has ANY influence on any part of your life past graduation day????
I had these in my gym class in 9th grade four years ago. What was great about them was that we wern't graded on whether we were running the whole time, but whether we could keep our heart rate consistently over 180. This was great because everyone was forced to move at their own pace; atheletes would have to run hard, completely out-of-shape kids could just walk, kids in between like me could push themselves, and all the blonde girls who just stood there are chatted with each other failed miserably. They were also hooked up wirelessly to wristwatches so we could see if we were exercising hard enough, The data was retained for the quarter so at the end they could give us a printout of our progress (which, for anyone who tried, was noticeable- I went from barely able to run a few hundred meters to running a mile and a half a day, minimum.) And no, the data was not retained after the semester ended.
If the school is collecting any data from these devices, that could be considered medical data, and they could be forced to comply with HIPPA. That may be enough to stop them from doing it right there, because it might mean that they have to have a doctor present to collect and maintain the data. If you want to put a stop to it, I suggest you do some googling about HIPPA, print out some scary web pages about it, bring them into the school, and demand that if they don't handle all of the data from the monitors in a HIPPA compliant manner you will be speaking with your lawyer.
kids..paper towels, what effete luxury!
Back in the day..when we lost major chunks of our anatomy playing in the lava pits, we cut filets of cactus for the wounds, stuck them on spiny side in to hold them in place, then wrapped it with raw rattlesnake hide, which we skinned off with our teeth.
And we *liked it*....
Has anyone thought that this may be an educational aid rather than a monitoring device. When I was in primary school they taught us how to monitor our heart rate with our pulse and a watch, and taught us what was the optimal heart rate for cardio workout, anaerobic vc aerobic etc. It makes sense that they would use newer technology if it was available.
I desperately wish I could make fun of you for your paranoia. unfortunately your concerns are terrible necessary considering this(USA) country's shift towards socialism and the opinion of governing bodies that they know what is best for you as well as the tendency to give corporations more rights than citizens.
Seriously. W. T. F.
The school is just telling kids how to monitor their heart rate. Back in my youth, we used to do this with a wristwatch and our fingers on our wrists or necks. They then use the numbers to make sure that kids learn how hard to workout to get the best results out of exercise and to make sure that kids aren't overdoing it -- for their own safety and health, the very things a PE teacher is supposed to care about. The only twist here is that they are using tools that can do the job better than your fingers and a watch.
But, OH NOES SOCIALSIM! TEH EVULZ! You people don't even understand what socialism is and isn't as a purely economic policy (and how it generally stands in opposition to giving corporations more rights than citizens, btw) -- it's just the latest watchword for everything you don't like. Just sad.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
According to the Fortune 500, the health insurance industry is the 9th most profitable out of 52 industries with an average profit of 10.6% of revenues.
I somehow doubt that having to take on people with preexisting conditions will prevent them from charging enough money to put themselves in the poor house.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
1) IANAD but couldn't the purpose of this to be try and catch those nasty, difficult to detect heart conditions that cause otherwise healthy young people to spontaneously drop dead?
2) Continuous monitoring of your body is a good thing, for a number of reasons - just so long as you take care that the information is well handled
3) Join the rest of the civilized world and get fucking universal healthcare already.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I cant be bothered to check too deeply into my reasoning(is that the slashdot effect?). But, I would guess that the schools are protecting themselves from lawsuits so that if little johnny/janey has a heart attack while doing gym the school doesn;t get sued for millions as it would obviously just have to be their fault. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20071214/ai_n21165053/
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
You are way too paranoid. A HRM measure you HR during activity. Mine sometimes shows 190 other times it shows 40. This is pretty normal. If you are not in good shape, getting it below 60 might be difficult, but you can see this on the body shape of the person in question.
Insurance companies can always test a persons maximum heart rate, and see if the person has been living a better than average life. Active people tend to have a higher max HR.
If the insurance company is interested in heart rate anomalies, they will just test you. So no problems there.
I personally think the school should buy 30 HRMs, use them for all the childrens, and clean them in between. Or let children who do not want to share bring their own. Personally, I think a HRM is overvalued as a training tool. Listening to your body is fine. And yes, I have a higher end HRM with logging of data on my training passes, but basicly I ended up using it to confirm what I could feel, and possible for post training analysis, to see the effect of running too fast here would cause slowdown there.
Using it a few times, maybe 5, should be fine for giving the child an idea what he is doing.
The teacher can use it to push the children though, to make sure they are performing to what he likes. But that is bad. Listen to the body. Especially for children.
HRM's on kids in gym class are pointless. In order to be truly effective, they have to be programmed with data that only comes from performing metabolic tests on EACH kid, INDIVIDUALLY. No way the school's going to spend that kind of time on a bunch of rugrats. Likewise, unless they're having you buy some kind of super-mega-intelligent-swissarmyknife monitor, the most it's going to say is "Your heart's going 88 beats per minute." Maybe it'll spit out some sort of "You've burned 42 calories" along with that, but without that metabolic test, that calorie number's bunk. Hell, I've got a $400 watch+strap, and while it gives me lots of other info (calories burned, time spent in exercise zones, peak and average heart rate, average lap time, bluetooth comms for data transfer to my desktop, yaddayadda), it still wouldn't be able to tell me if my heart's about to go into tachycardia, fibrillation, or some other form of improper operation. Sorry, but apart from the "gee whiz" technology factor, there is nothing to be gained by doing this. Throw the kids a soccer ball and tell 'em to keep it on the blacktop.
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
A heart RATE monitor (which is what I'm sure they're actually talking about) is for two things: checking that you're not overdoing things, and checking that you're working hard enough to benefit. For older kids, this is an excellent way of making sure that they're actually working hard enough to get some benefit out of the classes. That's goodness, pure and simple, and if the numbers are recorded they're not going to tell anyone anything that they can't find out by other routes.
The "not overdoing things angle" is important too, though, especially for younger kids. Anyone who's done any training for physical activities with kids will know (as any parent with active kids also learns by experience) that it's important to keep an eye on how hard younger kids push themselves, to make sure they don't overdo things - because they're not good at judging that for themselves, and if you let them they'll keep going to the point at which they simply crash. A heart-rate monitor is just another tool in the trainer's arsenal to make sure that the kids in his or her care are pushing themselves by the right amount to get the best result (and set some healthy habits for the future).
Finding physical activities that the kids enjoy, and involving them on those activities is cool. Forcing kids to do physical activities that are not enjoyable to them is counterproductive. There were two things I enjoyed in PE class. Swimming, weightlifting, and I somewhat enjoyed volleyball (mainly cause the teams were mixed boys and girls). Football, basketball, tennis, running, and calisthenics sucked. I always liked riding my bike, and I did so all through school, and in adult life until side effects of Diabetes made it impossible. I still occasionally enjoy swimming. However, I have avoided all the unpleasant (for me) physical activities that I was forced to do in PE class. PE class should be an elective past 5th grade.
As a kid I don't ever remember needing a heart monitor to tell me when I wasn't pushing, or when I needed to slow down.
It's actually pretty hard to get kids to run even 35-45min, because they lack the ability to pace themselves. They slow down only as they burn out, and after 20min they're unable to continue. An HRM with a zone alarm is just the right tool if you want them to pace themselves.
However, unless they're training for athletic performance and to compete I'm not sure why it would matter.
Currently we have the unfortunate situation where people inside insurance companies determine who gets treated and what specific treatments they get, even down to the details. Those people inside the insurance companies are often MBAs and through control of the purse strings, a 23-year old MBA with not even one term of science can override a medical specialist with three decades of professional experience.
Where is the value-added that we get from insurance companies? Oh. I see. There isn't any.
"Welcome to Urgent Care. Please have a seat / lie on the floor and wait your turn for your case to be addressed. Your turn will be selected based on quarterly profitability estimates."
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Glad we could clear that up for you.
Yay me!
When you weight lift you could also try not to let your heart rest. I've been getting good results by not having a between sets pause. Plus it also works as an aerobic work out.
What you do is take ~10 reps of your maximum then take 10% less weight and continue immediately do this the number of sets you like then continue without pause with the next exercise. you'll quickly be as out of breath as if you were sprinting.
Read this book, 'Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain'. It uses several middle school with rigorous exercise programs as case studies for the effects of exercise on brain functions. Most of the schools use heart monitors to track the progress of the students throughout the year. This isn't to say the health information of the students couldn't be abused down the road, but it seems to be a common thing in schools now.
As a MD with special interest in cardiology (my thesis was on sudden cardiac death) I can only marvel of the stupidity of such requirement. /being able to afford such equipment, the harm to public health would exceed by orders of magnitude any possible harm to a child with hitherto undetected cardiac problem during such exertion.
Disease mongering seems rampant and is dangerous - if only one child per class does not participate in such healthy physical activities for not having
Using such monitors on children with known or suspected heart problems could make sense - but this should be a doctor's role to decide, not some bureaucrat's or teacher's. The rest is just marketing and profiteering.
The idea that there is no room for private insurance with a public option is ludicrous. I live in Australia where we have Medicare. This allows anybody to get treatment for most things but has a very long queue for elective surgery. The private insurance companies allow you to use the private hospitals to jump the queue in the public version. Also private health cover in Australia will allow you to charge for 'extras' such as Physiotherapy, Chiropractor and alternate medicines (acupuncture etc).
In the U.S., my private insurance which is fairly mid-tier only covers in-network facilities. If I try to skip a queue by going out-of-network I pay 50% out of pocket. The insurance doesn't cover elective procedures or experimental ones like chiropractors and acupuncture. I recently got running shoe inserts by a sports orthopedist, which I paid for 100% out of pocket. They'd never pay for any sports medicine, like LT testing or bike fitting, or anything like that. When I had shoulder bursitis and needed surgery to remove a bone spur in the cuff area I had to wait 7 weeks.
And then on top of that I usually get bills for things that should be covered. I once got a $700 bill for a standard blood test. It can take a few months for the insurance company and provider to figure out how much to bill and who pays. It's utterly byzantine, and the bureaucracy is impenetrable for an outsider like me. Basically, the system here is utter garbage.
And I'm a principal engineer who makes $145k/yr not counting stock options. I don't have crap insurance - it has high limits and in the end does pay. Shitty low-end plans have low limits and frequently drop you entirely if you get sick and lose your job (meaning the group administrator isn't likely to retaliate since you're no longer an employee).
I miss being a libertarian, because the world was so much simpler. Government=bad. Business=freedom. But the entire libertarian viewpoint (capitalize it or not, your choice) is basically blind to any abuse of power that is motivated by financial profit. They correctly see the dangers in government power, but non-government coercion, especially when money is involved, doesn't even register. I had to break with it because I felt that I was achieving clarity at the expense of ignoring what was right before my eyes.
Related to the story, I'd guess the heart monitors in question are pulse monitors, not cardiac monitors that give you an EKG reading.
Most heart rate monitors don't store and allow the download of heart rate data. The ones that do are much more xpensive than the ones that don't. If you're really worried about it, Call the school and ask them what the model number of the hrm is, and go online and look up whether or not it has that feature. You're school is doing pretty well financially if it can afford the ones that hook up to your pc.
Even if stores the hrm data, I doubt they are archiving that stuff. It's a pain in the neck storing my own hrm data. Doing so for a class of 20-40 people? Who has the time? My personal opinion is your concerns fall into the tinfoil hat category, but check with the school and ask them.
HRM's are very useful training tools, and I think it's a great idea to have your kids learn how to use them. It will help your kids identify and develop a feeling for different levels of exertion. They're a great way of making sure you are working at a healthy and productive level. The assumption of all the posts I've read seems to be that the school is being paranoid, but the OP doesn't seem to be sure if the kids are being asked, or are being required to wear the things. If the school is doing it out of concerns for safety, they are probably being excessively paranoid. But whatever the motivation, HRM's are a great tool to teach kids a bit of connectivity with their body, and could very well help them lean good habits for lifelong fitness. I used an HRM as part of my training for a number of years. Nowadays I'm familiar enough with my biofeedback to identify what training zone and level of exertion I'm at, so I don't wear it all the time. But even so, I find it a handy tool from time to time. Sometimes it's useful to make sure I'm not slacking off, sometimes it's useful to make sure I'm not overtraining.
Read, Spark, it talks all about what these programs are about and how they are being used to actually teach something about the science behind exercise to kids.
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John J. Ratey and Eric Hagerman (Hardcover - Jan 10, 2008)
One fool asks a stupid question and others wasted their precious time replying it !!!
Mr. Moderator- please do not allow such stupid questions...
Seriously, if this school district is anything like ours, he'll have nothing to worry about. I doubt that they have anyone who can coherently warehouse any of this data to be used for anything besides making sure they're not overtaxing the overweight kids. They probably don't even keep the data very long if they download it at all. Our school supposedly has "state of the art technology", yet they still insist that I fill out about 5 "emergency contact" cards and keep them in a paper file. Schools are notoriously backward when it comes to technology.
in the process of keeping kids healthy during school hours and during sporting events, especially in light of what recently happened in Louisville, KY. Max Gilpin was killed when his coach, Jason Stinson, wouldn't allow the team to have any water breaks nor keep track of the team's vital signs.
When my boys started school in (Massachusetts, yeah, I know...liberal heaven), I was told they couldn't bring ANYTHING peanut related to school (food stuffs).
All because of worst case scenario children.
The better question, why the hell are children developing extreme allergies now and not 10-40 years prior?
My kids weren't even allowed to bring food that had been processed in a plant where peanuts had also been processed.
People suck...
You're not being paranoid for recognizing patterns, remembering history and knowing the motivations of those around you. Frankly I'd tell the school my child doesn't need one and then sign the required waver I'll never sue if Johnny drops during track and field.
With that said, heart rate monitors are a great tool to teach a child about exercise. Lessons most likely remembered and used the rest of his/her life. Buy two and spend some time with your child.
Is it for profit? Yes. Some entrepreneur got a great idea and sold it to the districts. Can even be used to defend against wrongful death lawsuits. (motivation)
Will the data be personalized and retained? Yes. (history)
Will this data be used "against" your family? Not yet. That probably won't happen for 10+ years. (pattern)
-[d]-
When I was in 7th/8th grade about 10 years ago we used heart monitors but it was just to show us how to use them and what a healthy heart rate was. The only difference now is that the schools don't have money to pay for the supplies. Why would the local governments be colluding with insurance companies? Plus they're not allowed to release information to the public I don't think. You trust them with your address, phone number, Social Security...get my point?
I don't think there's any need for paranoia.
It's simple ass covering by the school.
With declining Phy Ed budgets (meaning more students per teacher) and more and more obese kids, the school feels it's in its best (legalistic) interest to introduce heart monitoring, and I'm sure there's a procedure for saying "If Chubby Chuck's heart rate goes over 150, he needs to stop."
That way, when Chubby Chuck, Chubby Charlene, and Chubby Kenny all keel over because their hearts exploded, not used to any physical strain despite hours of Facebook, really exciting Montel Williams shows, and regular running (all over Azeroth), the school can be seen to have taken 'reasonable precautions' and not get sued.
That's all. They don't give a crap about the numbers or even who your kid is...unless their heart rate hits their lawyer-inspired target.
-Styopa
Caffeine is a tranquilizer until the changes that occur during puberty. Only then does it become a stimulant. When people notice little Johnny bouncing off the walls after drinking a Coke, it's because of the sugar, not the caffeine.
A sip of coffee will help your pre-pubescent to sleep.
But, then again, 8th graders are post-pubescent, aren't they?
We need PE because, if you haven't noticed, even young children in the USA are disgusting fat asses. It is unhealthy, it is costly to society, and it is a reflection on self control and self respect.
Blar.
Actually, if you want to prevent excesses like this, start demanding fricking tort reform, like some of the rest of us. We need an 'Unemploy the Lawyers Act of 2009' and we need it fast.
If only 1965 really WAS "The Year They Hanged The Lawyers..."
"Get the facts first. You can distort them later." -Mark Twain
"But I don't think of you."
Go to the Bookstore, get a copy of the book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey. Exercising at your target heart rate at least 20 minutes per day is a good thing. Some people are the slowest in their gym class and are at 95% of their target heart rate, the data from the heart monitor lets each child find their own pace, the grade Grade fo Gynms class - hilarious concept) is based on just achieving your personal goal for the week.
If more people exercised like they should, then healtcare costs WOULD be A LOT lower without Congress doing anything. Teaching kids about their bodies and how to listen to them will be financially very beneficial.
Exactly. PE isn't supposed to be about training athletes, or even about serious obesity treatment. It's supposed to be about teaching some basic fitness skills.
A unit on aerobic exercise using heart rate monitors is probably okay, if you can afford the equipment, and maybe that's what the school has in mind. But if you use them all the time all you're teaching the kids is that you NEED fancy equipment to exercise. You can DIE if you're not careful! Look at how many posters in this discussion think there's a significant risk to exercising without a heart rate monitor.
One of the things we learned in our cross country running unit was how to pace ourselves. I was a sprinter in high school so learning to run anything over 100 m was difficult, but there were a few natural distance runners. One year this guy forgot we were running cross country one day and showed up in rubber boots. No problem, he ran 5 km in them, and still beat us all.
Insurance is supposed to amortize the cost of unexpected events over time and the population. Once you allow the insurance companies information to allow redefinition of "unexpected" you're on a slope - if they could predict perfectly they could deny coverage for everyone who is going to have a problem down the road. At that point, the people who are eligible would not buy insurance, because hopefully they too could predict the future and know they don't need it. In the other direction, with competition, if one company can lower premiums by not covering people who will cost more, they can win more business and hence burden the competition with those high risk people.
The solution at first seems obvious - mandate non-discrimination and a willingness to accept all comers. The problem is that some policies will not cover some things, and people will change company/policy when the need to. That will raise prices on those polices and we're back to screwing the people who need it. So the next obvious thing to do is mandate that policies cover "everything" for some suitable definition of "everything". Then the insurance companies have no way to differentiate (ATM I wonder if this is OK). Then we're getting very close to government control. The problem with that is of course that the government can't manage things well, and if it does it cost more than anything.
No, I don't have a solution, I'm just clarifying the problems for myself out loud. Did I miss anything important?
"You people don't even understand what socialism is and isn't as a purely economic policy"
the word itself discounts your theory. Nazi means national socialist party and socialism is almost entirely based on Marx' works which clearly describe many bad things that you must do to become socialist.(the Nazis discriminated/culled by race instead of class which is what labeled them as not true socialists but the soviet union was very very close and maybe the only true Marxist government, and it was evil. the soviets killed more Ukrainians than the Nazis did Jews!)
Go to the UK and ask them how their shift to socialism is going.
Oh, and the heart monitors in many school districts have a USB port and can be uploaded to a program on the teachers desktop to monitor a child's progress. take just one more step and have that data put in the students transcript and this isn't such a far fetched concern.
and by the way, a stop watch and and counting heartbeats is more than effective enough. how much precision is really useful for this? not that much.
I've seen a lot of posts, many filled with wild speculation. It's really quite simple. In the USA if your employer provides health insurance, then almost always they have deals with the provider that the provider has to take everyone who is an employee of the company and provide health insurance, regardless of any pre-existing conditions. Small businesses may not provide any insurance, so it's different for them. With nothing but some non-medically trained person telling you what a heart rate is, I doubt this is very useful. The school might want to know it as the US is quite litigious and in theory, a child with some unknown medical condition might be at risk while exercising. Seeing a heart rate significantly above average might indicate a potential problem, which could cause the school to recommend a doctor visit. Young people die all the time for undetected heart conditions. It happens a lot with basketball and football (American football, I mean) players. I do actually understand the concern, but I have a feeling it's mostly about protecting the school should some kid drop dead of a heart attack in gym class. Do note that the heart rates of children are naturally higher than those of adults. I don't know at what age this changes.
I'm sure it was fun during the actual fucking. It's the 18-21 years AFTER the fucking that wasn't much fun.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
If you want to prevent excesses like this, just start filing frivolous lawsuits against such excesses - such lawsuits have been shown to affect policy.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
"OMG they want to know how far I drove last year. They can use calculus to find out that I went to the 7/11!"
Yes, paranoia runs high. It runs high because we know what you apparently don't know: LAWS CHANGE.
Let's say it turns out that the 7/11 corporation has been funnelling profits to a terrorist group. And they've found that agents posing as customers have been pushing money into the tills to finance plots. Now pass a law that 7/11 must provide security camera footage or whatever to allow a search for those terrorists.
Suddenly, your having been at the 7/11 at any time in the last year MAKES YOU A SUSPECT. Not a problem in a world where once you leave, no one knows you were there. But if that data is kept?
Next time you're on a surveillance camera doing nothing illegal, think to yourself "What if what I'm doing were MADE illegal in the future?" They will have insta-evidence against you.
I'll bet U$ against J$ that this has to do with some kid who had a heart incident during gym class.
I think you all are paranoid. The heart monitors are probably used for one simple purpose: to teach kids about the relation of heart rate and exercise. If they have kids doing any kind of cardiovascular exercise, knowing your heart rate would be quite useful.
Imagine a world where people understood what exercise is and what it does for your body.
Bullish Machine Tzar
I know this all happens! Its just like when you go to the gym and get on the exercise bike or treadmill or whatever cardio machines they might have did you know they actually measure your heart rate! With out your express permission. They try and hide it in very likely places so they can easily steal the rate of your heart, innocent things like handles and bars that you need to hold on to or fall off or over. Just by Touching these surfaces they gather all your personal heart rate information! I know all this information is then send to a large central database on a super computer where it is shared by all sorts of evil empires. Insurance companies, The Government, CIA, FBI, you name it they have your heart rate! Who knows what nefarious uses they are using it for! I have a secret though, before I go to the gym I scotch tape my hands so that when I grip things they can't steal my heart rate. Keep that on the down low however I don't want the heart rate police squads using tasked satellites to track my movements, I use a tinfoil hat disguised as a bike helmet (which means I need to wear spandex around a lot, a sacrifice I am willing to make!) to fool them!
Anyway I have to go offline. I try to limit my internet connect to 60 second intervals to keep the NSA on their toes! Good Luck!
On the pro side, this could help warn coaches/teacher/whatever that a student is about to have a heart attack which has happened a few times in the past couple of years. On the con side of things, the data could be used against you when applying for insurance or a job. It's no different than the argument over universal health care. Yay! We all get coverage and we don't have to pay for it. Boo! Your tax bill just quadrupled and you get less coverage than you did before.
What do you think a heart monitor is? Have you ever used any gym equipment? It's pretty standard for a lot of gym equipment to monitor your heart rate if you hold onto some metal contacts... but its also common to have something that plugs into a jack and then clips onto your finger or ear to monitor your pulse. It just gives you feedback about how hard you are exercising and if you need to work harder or if you're over-exerting yourself.
The responses here seem to indicate everyone thinks this is some sort of PDA the kids will be actually wearing like a wireless mic, logging data as they run around and play baseball or something....
I think the person who asked this question should be more worried about her kid being denied insurance because he inherited stupidity and crippling paranoia from his parents. Forget about heart conditions.
#1, if your kid has an arrhythmia, and they find it this way, they did you a favor. Undetected, your kid will simply drop dead one day from physical exertion. Personally, I'd rather know about it before the death occurs and seek treatment.
#2, they aren't using the HR monitors to make sure your kid isn't going to die, or look for problems. They are teaching them cardio training, and how your body responds to it. They may even be giving them VO2 max tests so they can show the kids how to maximize their workouts to burn fat, carbs etc as efficiently as possible. This can get results 4x faster than exercising blindly. See if you keep your heart rate in the fat burning max range, you burn fat instead of just carbs. This helps you get healthy faster.
Buy the damned HR monitor. Your kid will thank you for it later. It sounds like their PE instructor knows what they are doing. Let your kid learn from someone who knows what they are doing. This is a Good Thing(tm). It also helps kids stay interested since an HR monitor gives them feedback. I don't know about you, but having this feedback while I'm exercising is pretty damned cool, in addition to enabling me to workout smart instead of blind.
It's good to see immediate benefits to your efforts. Watching your heart rate get slower while doing the same thing you were doing last week is concrete evidence that you are getting fit.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Wait, you just read about it on a website, but you've been using one for 10 years?
I've been reading websites for at least 15 years. I've been reading internet posts for 25 years. Did you just wake up from a long nap?
Why are you buying individual straps for the kids anyway? Shouldn't these monitors already come with straps? We had to reuse gym equipment used by other students all the time. They'll complain about wearing the sweaty disgusting things, but who cares. This is gym class, they're supposed to be miserable.
Dear Anonymous
If your school has heart monitors for children in middleschool, you are already putting your child in the hands of morons.
I would suggest to you to move to a different locale where money is actually put toward education instead of covering teachers asses.
This is indeed a cancer that only grows until school is only a giant day care and any education children receive is incedental to ridiculous levels of safety, political correctness and of course furthering the lifestyles of NEA members.
Go Now! Pick up your child from school and run Run RUN!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Someone was just telling me about a documentary they saw where they took a group of kids with ADHD, put them on treadmills and made them raise their heart rates to a certain point for a certain length of time each morning. The result was that the ADHD practically disappeared and the students were much more mentally active and focused on their studies for the rest of the day. I wonder if this is what's behind the heart monitors here.
Holy crap you are paranoid. Slow your roll. Your kid is going to wear his heart rate monitor, and then just record his heart rate before and after his weekly mile run on some piece of paper that will be all crumpled and dirty by the end of the year from being stuffed in and out of his gym locker.
But these days it sometimes pays to be a little paranoid. I noticed that most of the posts were about politics/social commentary/corporate evil, etc. etc. (And not really answering your question. I wouldn't worry too much about it, but if the Assistant Principle comes back with anything but, "We want to make sure that they stay within the min/max HR for their age range during PE," then I would start to worry. You've got two things on your side. So far, it doesn't seem like a mandatory program, and the only thing more screwed up than trying to share data with all the insurance companies would be the goverment doing the collection via the educational system. -D
As mentioned in some of the other replies, monitoring based on heart rate is the goal.
If you want the reasoning behind it read this book:
Spark ( http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113506 )
- Quick Summary: Exercise is f'ing awesome for the brain, and you learn better if you exercise (especially in the morning)
I wish I had been taught PE with a heart rate monitor in school.
I am the director and head teacher for a circus school. We are currently looking at purchasing a 15 pack of heart monitors, and the associated base station and software as both a teaching aid, and as a research tool. While I don't have a link to the 15 pack, here is a link to the 6-pack.
The thing is, these monitors are NOT medical grade. They are fairly accurate, but I would,'t put them in the same league as the monitor on and AED machine. These things just don't have the ability (at present) to record that level of detail. In addition, the software packages I have seen does not tie to any kind of central database or student information system. We can't link it with a students records. AND its VERY limited in how much it will record.
Even if these things were medical grade equipment, and even if the software would connect to other databases, how could you possibly ensure that the teacher got each kid the correct monitor every class, or that the teacher connected the software to the right user when they synced it? You would have data integrity issues out the wazoo.
At the end of the day, these things are designed as teaching aids, and they really are very good tools for helping kids (and adults) to see and understand where their cardo function is, and where it should be for things like loosing weight, gaining muscle mass and improving muscle tone. They are not so good for long-term recording of medical info.
I would have loved this in high school. Our teachers couldn't be arsed to actually teach or supervise, so we'd just have to run laps for 20 minutes straight some days while they wandered off and chatted with friends or whatever. I remember some times where I'd run so hard I could feel my teeth throbbing and hear my heartbeat in my ears while I tried not to get sick.
Incidentally, what a stupid way to teach the importance of exercise. If I wasn't into biking naturally, I'd probably have taken that as a queue to avoid exercise whenever possible since it was so hellish at school. Done right, it's actually fun and healthy...
Oddly, only the women's PE classes, but I presume the male classes chose to spend their money elsewhere. They use them simply to see if they are getting into their target heart rate while they were running around or if the teachers needed to beat their asses harder. Your child's school's technology may be different, but with our district, they're writing down HR data in their own notebooks to track it (presumably printing is an option as well, but when you're outside. . . ), so any data collected was penned by the student's own hand. I was surprised that there were no permission slips to even have this data streamed on a display, but their absence in an otherwise permission slip-heavy public school makes me fairly sure nothing was being saved.
Also, just as an aside, heart rate monitors are most likely not going to catch arrhythmias. Anything that a school or government/private grant has funded is probably not going to be of high enough quality to even let somebody go in with calipers and measure the distance between the complexes in the waveforms (if that's the form of output used). Even if the output looks like your standard quick-look EKG format, any arrhythmia that's asymptomatic enough for a kid to be even attempting to do gym class is probably subtle enough that anybody who's not a doctor is going to miss it. A dangerously high or low heart rate it could catch, and there are exceptions, obviously (stable SVT, etc.) but in general, it's probably not going to help a whole lot in that regard.
HRM's only store BPM. It won't record abnormal rhythms, so you need not worry about it. Get a strap and have your child enjoy gym class.
I'm not in the U.S. either, but as an outside observer from a country with very effective socialized medicine, I can't help but pitty the people who:
1) Lose their house because they need surgury
2) Can't understand why a pre-existing condition means they shouldn't get insurance....(ie.it's not their fault they have a faulty heart valve at 5 years old)
3) Turn down the gift of socialized medicine. What happened to "all for one, one for all" and all that. If everyone contributes equally as part of their tax burden, which is already proportionate to their income, how is that not for the net good of all?
Yes.
I used these in high school. They are not tied to students. They are to ensure that students are maintaining a healthy heart rate, something that everyone should do while exercising.
the word itself discounts your theory. Nazi means national socialist party and socialism is almost entirely based on Marx' works which clearly describe many bad things that you must do to become socialist.(the Nazis discriminated/culled by race instead of class which is what labeled them as not true socialists but the soviet union was very very close and maybe the only true Marxist government, and it was evil. the soviets killed more Ukrainians than the Nazis did Jews!)
Uhhh... what.
First of all, I'd love to hear exactly where Marx's works "clearly describe many bad things that you must do to become socialist." I'm pretty sure that killing people is no where in the Communist Manifesto or any of his other works. If that's not the case, then I invite you to provide a citation -- not some other loony's rantings but to actual documents written by Karl Marx.
Though, I seriously doubt you've ever read any of his work -- or even a good summary of his work -- if you think that socialism as he advocated has anything to do with the racial policies of Nazi Germany. No more than Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" had to do with us torturing Arabs in Guantanimo Bay.
Socialism is about a society ruled by the working class, with all capital used in production owned by the workers who used it instead of a separate investor class. It has egalitarian distribution of resources as a goal. That's it. That's socialism in it's entirety. (Communism in contrast had the goal of a classless society through state ownership of property.) Read up on it.
Also, the Nazis were a fascist party which won votes as an alternative to the democratic and communistic parties taking hold in the Weimar Republic. If you knew anything about the Nazis other than their name, you'd know that they accused both laissez-faire capitalism and communism of both being failed ideologies. The Nazis explicitly sought to preserve the middle class instead of to purely side with the poorer working class. It was a nationalist party first, and "socialist" party purely as a matter of propoganda to sell it to the public.
If you really think the Nazis were socialist, you need to read up on the 1934 Charter of Labor. It set up a system in which the entrepreneur made all the decisions for a company, and the workers owed him a duty of faithfulness. (Companies did have advisory boards where workers could advise the owner of a factory, and the state could outright replace them, so it's not a particularly free-market system either.)
As for the Holodomor in Ukraine, well, not much to say there. That was what happens when people put ideology above common sense and human decency. China's Great Leap Forward was another fine example of that. Our own history on slavery, child labor, and murderous strike breaking shows examples where putting capitalism over human decency led to horrors as well, so I'm not sure exactly why we should consider one philosophy more or less dangerous than the other. Anyway, I think I've wasted too much time recapping world history and to a crazy, grossly ignorant AC, but...
Oh, and the heart monitors in many school districts have a USB port and can be uploaded to a program on the teachers desktop to monitor a child's progress. take just one more step and have that data put in the students transcript and this isn't such a far fetched concern.
Except they'd then have to comply with HIPPA and all of its restraints on sharing of medical data. Oh, wait, I forgot -- government regulation is all evil or something. Whatever, let's put aside the legal liabilities involved.
Guess what? When I was a kid, our PE teacher had this radical technology called a clipboard that he used to record all our heart rates. It was just one more step to put that in paper files for each student, and I guess that makes it not a
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Holy shit people. Slow the fuck down. You're all assuming that this is for some sort of evil data mining conspiracy. It almost certainly isn't. They are almost certainly asking the kids to provide their own elastic strap for the heart monitor, the thing that tell them and most gym-quality cardio equipment how fast their heart is beating. The sensor and watches (if they use the watches) are plastic and cleanable whereas the elastic strap isn't (short of a wash cycle in a washing machine). They just want the kids to bring their own strap so that they are only wiping germs and dried sweat onto their body that came from their body anyways (ie, not sharing that which carries carries germs). This isn't a big deal. Did you flip out when your kids were in elementary school and the teacher told you as a parent that your kid had to bring their own comb or brush to school instead of sharing with everyone else? It's not the big deal that everyone is making it out to be.