Introduction: What was that about anyways?

We all remember it: middle school gym class, shuttle runs, sit ups, pull ups, flexibility and that dreaded mile run. It was the presidential fitness test, the teacher told us. But why did we have to endure that? Why does the president have interest in youth fitness? What was the point?

The answers to those questions are the purpose of this blog. For the past 60 years, the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition has been implementing measured fitness tests on schoolchildren and giving awards based on fitness level. The history and philosophy of this practice in schools needs to be looked at and evaluated for its message and purpose.



Some links for research and further reading:
http://www.fitness.gov/about-pcfsn/our-history/

https://www.presidentschallenge.org/challenge/physical/benchmarks.shtml

http://wellandgood.com/2012/02/20/10-things-you-never-knew-about-the-presidents-physical-fitness-challenge

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/11/24/365716113/tools-of-the-trade-the-presidential-physical-fitness-test

http://weighttraining.com/blog/what-is-the-president-s-challenge-fitness-test

http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Physical-Fitness.aspx?view=print

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Fat_(song)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/09/1305530/-Apple-s-Chicken-Fat-Ads-Hark-Back-to-a-Political-Era-Long-Gone#

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK241311/

The President and Physical Fitness Education: A 60 Year Affair

It all started with an article...

Published in the Journal of the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation in 1953 by Dr. Hans Kraus and Ruth P. Hirschland, the article expressed concern for the youth of America. According to their study,"56.6 per cent between the ages of six and nineteen failed to meet even a minimum standard required for health". In other words, the physical fitness of the youth in America was on the decline. Their second study surveyed the physical fitness of American youth with a comparison to children in European countries. In that study, American youth proved to be inferior to European youth in the issue of physical fitness.

In a culture that was competing with the world to prove its superiority, this simply would not stand. So, in 1956 under the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the President's Council on Youth Fitness was born, and the interest of the President in the issue of youth fitness began.

Where the Eisenhower administration planted the seeds, the Kennedy administration made the movement blossom. In order to include people of all ages, he changed the name of the council to the President's Council on Physical Fitness and launched a campaign and a program designed to reach every child in public school.

Enlisting the help of Robert Preston and Meredith Wilson, Kennedy commissioned the "Chicken Fat" song. It was recorded as the new youth fitness anthem and 3 million copies were distributed to schools nationwide.

Kennedy was a man dedicated to the encouragement of physical fitness in America. He took on the issue unlike any other president. He published an article in Sports Illustrated entitled "The Soft American". He appointed Bud Wilkinson, University of Oklahoma football coach, to be the director of the President's Council on Youth Fitness. 

In 1962, Kennedy did something that was very odd but also proved a point. Theodore Roosevelt had issued an executive order during his presidency calling for a challenge of the US Marine officers to hike 50 miles in 20 hours. Kennedy discovered the order and decided to issue the same challenge to White House staff and the American public. In 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy completed the hike in his leather oxford shoes, trudging through snow and slush.

Under Lyndon B. Johnson, the second national fitness survey was administered and the Presidential Physical Fitness Award was instituted. 

In 1990, Arnold Schwarzenegger was appointed to be Chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and sports by President George H.W Bush.

Under President George W. Bush, the two websites www.fitness.gov and www.presidentschallenge.org were launched. 

The Philosophy of Presidential Fitness: Examining the Underlying Beliefs

Physical fitness is an important issue for this nation to face, the obesity rate is going up and so is the rate of income inequality. Physical fitness education is also important, but something needs to be done about the way that the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition conducts its mission. Awarding children based on their physical fitness is unfair, psychologically damaging and counterproductive. It needs to stop.

The chart below from the CDC shows the rates of obesity among children and adolescents

Physical fitness is an issue that is often out of the control of the child, since children cannot control what their parents can afford to feed them. It is no secret that the least expensive food is often devoid of any real nutritional value and the required exercise to burn off the empty calories is difficult to achieve. So when little Johnny gets skipped over for an award because his single mother can only afford to feed him mac and cheese, he feels like there is something wrong with him and his feelings are hurt. Any child who is left out for an award is hurt, especially when it isn't their fault.

Physical fitness test day is a dreaded time for students who aren't physically fit. Struggling with weight issues is so incredibly hard for a child, especially in a culture that places so much value on being thin. Self-esteem for these children is non existent on test day, when all the children line up to run a mile.

Little Johnny didn't get very much sleep last night because he overheard his single mother talking with the landlord about late rent payments. He didn't eat a very healthy dinner, some macaroni and cheese with hot dogs. So when he goes to school the next morning to take the physical fitness test he is dreading it the entire time. He lined up with the rest of the students for the mile run, when he tried to run he got winded so he decided the best thing to do would be to try his best to walk it out. His more physically fit friends lapped him and with each pass of another person he felt worse and worse.

It is a bit dramatized, but it is a reality that thousands of children living in poverty face every day. What is the point of inflicting this kind of emotional torture on children? What is the point of giving a child an award based on how many push ups they can do or how fast they can run? The government and school systems that implement this test must believe that competition and awards motivate children to do better. Actually it is quite the opposite.

The experts like Alfie Kohn agree that awards do not work, motivation for anything including physical fitness can not be forced- it must come intrinsically. From the flap of his book Punished By Rewards 

"Our basic strategy for raising children, teaching students, and managing workers can be summarized in six words: Do this and you'll get that. We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in much the same way that we train the family pet.

In this groundbreaking book, Alfie Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm.  Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals.

Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives. Programs that use rewards to change people's behavior are similarly ineffective over the long run. Promising goodies to children for good behavior can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. In fact, the more we use artificial inducements to motivate people, the more they lose interest in what we're bribing them to do. Rewards turn play into work, and work into drudgery"

Children are not lab rats, we cannot expect them to be motivated by a certificate to live a healthy lifestyle, and children who have hardly any control over their lifestyle only end up being singled out by this process. Physical education should be just that, education about how to live a healthy lifestyle and a time for fun exercising built in to the school week. Just as general education shouldn't be a competition, neither should physical education. The Presidential Fitness Test should no longer exist.