This man's BMI is over 40 in this picture. According to the ninnies at this school, he would receive a bad grade in fitness. In this pic, his body fat is somewhere less than 5%.
Posted on 05/10/2007 3:00:54 PM PDT by Baladas
Four times during the school year in Campbell County, Wyo., the school sends report cards home. Anxious parents and worried students are provided with the typical grading categories -- academic performance, attendance and a work ethic score.
But here in Gillette, there's an additional grade that has some families up in arms.
It's called the body mass index, or BMI, a calculation based on height and weight that indicates whether your kid is too fat. The school chooses the word "overweight." If your child scores too high, it's the fitness equivalent of a bad grade. When Taylor Barbour came home with a BMI score of 32, seven points over the "normal range," his mother, Rosie Barbour, was none too pleased. Her anger was directed not at her 12-year-old son but at the school.
"It just doesn't have any place in the school," said Barbour. "It's fine if you want to teach them how to eat healthy, and make better choices during health class, but I don't think giving them BMI on their report card" is the answer.
'The Strong Kids Club' On top of that, the school district sent a letter in the mail inviting Taylor -- and 172 other kids with high BMI scores -- to join an exercise program three times of week. It's called the Strong Kids Club and came free to his family, with a promise that "it will be fun."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
OMG! what about their SELF-ESTEEM!!
How do they justify this I wonder? Do they consider this a type of health screening? Schools have screened children for hearing and vision problems for a long time, and require certain immunizations as a health matter.
They should put the kids through physical training, the same sort the military goes through, then grade ‘em on performance. The goal, of course, would be to train them up to military physical standards and better.
It would be good for the kids and good for the country.
I’m fine with it — as long as students are allowed to formally rate and document teachers on their own physical characteristics.
My husband, who taught for many years at a religious school, had to give a grade on the report card for “religious conduct.”
He always left that blank, saying “I’ll let G-D fill in that grade.”
One more example of the public schools attempting to take over the role of parent.
They've been doing it informally since the advent of schools.
Schools need to focus on academics.
I don't trust the BMI thing. There are just too many body types out there. I realize the issue is to deal with childhood obesity but I think there is too much lack of common sense in our schools to carry such a program out.
Two examples: I had a friend who was 6' 4" and really an "Amazon" type woman in regard to bone structure etc. She joined weight watchers (which I support btw) but their scale of appropriate weight for her was totally ridiculus and out of whack for her body type. Second: I have a nephew is looks perfectly normal in regard to weight and heighth. But you try to pick the kid up and he is as heavy as an anvil. I guess he is just really dense. And just for fun a third: It never fails that when I tell people what I weigh they say, "no way!". I've always downed myself because of my weight until finally a Dr. told me they don't consider me overweight...even though on their "scale" I don't fall in the weight range for my age etc.
They’re trying to cut the wrong fat from education.
Well, I guess if you’re of Samoan or Tongan ethnicity, you may as well give up.
This should a warning about how much our society is piling on the schools. Health Education is one thing, but evaluation of body type in a child just adds the hassles that the schools have to deal with in addition to testing and NCLB.
Classrooms used to a more fun, creative places, with a lot of leeway to accomodate parents and the latest teaching techniques. Now they are testing centers, and palaces to politically correct micromanagement.
I’m sure I don’t want BMI measured - I want military type physical training and grading based on performance. I think physical performance is more important that weight, BMI, etc.
Not that I think the BMI index is particularly accurate, but you have to be pretty heavy to get a 32. BMI = ( Weight in Pounds / ( Height in inches ) x ( Height in inches ) ) x 703. Let’s say the 12 YO was 5’ 2” tall. To get a BMI of 32, he’d be around 175 pounds.
This man's BMI is over 40 in this picture. According to the ninnies at this school, he would receive a bad grade in fitness. In this pic, his body fat is somewhere less than 5%.
according to Bull**** the BMI was devloped by a 19th stastican and is irrelevant to actual fitness. I say we aim to change fitness programs in school to heavily focus on weight traning to mess up the socialist sissy’s grading.
There should be a grade that the parents can report back with in regards to “How do you rate the education of your child”?
all my kids get pudgy right before a growth spurt.
They get tub around their bellies, and then BOOM! they stretch and become thin again.
I wonder how that would affect their gpa?
And if THAT doesn't place those pesky kids in lockstep to be perfect, well then we can ALWAYS toss more money at it!
Reaching Utopia doesn't come cheap!
Get a load of this one...
I should add that by having a BMI over 40, this guy is considered “Morbidly Obese”.
With a body fat percentage of less than 5%
Do I need to spell out just how idiotic is is to use BMI for *anything*?
I want military type physical training and grading based on performance.
Tell me how you would grade my child who has Asthma? So far she can run, play and is even in ballet but the chances of her ever being able to train for the military or in that style are not good. It wouldn’t be fair to kids like her that are not able to do those things. I agree a program would be good but I don’t think all children could do it.
Do the new reasons to homeschool ever stop?
I remember some kind of fitness testing we did in school back in the 60s and 70s. It was some kind of JFK-inspired program, I think.
We had to run a half-mile, do a bunch of pushups and pullups, and do the “bent-arm hang”, where you held yourself at eye-level from a chin-up bar until you passed out from the pain.
Anyone else here remember this?
It might help, but consider this:
May 6, 2007
Fat Chance By EMILY BAZELON
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/books/review/Bazelon.t.html
RETHINKING THIN The New Science of Weight Loss — and the Myths and Realities of Dieting.
By Gina Kolata. 257 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $24.
If you had to choose, would you rather be fat or blind? When a researcher asked that question of a group of formerly obese people, 89 percent said they would prefer to lose their sight than their hard-won slimness. “When you’re blind, people want to help you. No one wants to help you when you’re fat,” one explained. Ninety-one percent of the group also chose having a leg amputated over a return to obesity.
This is shocking. But it seems less so by the end of “Rethinking Thin,” a new book about obesity by Gina Kolata, a science reporter for The New York Times. Kolata argues that being fat is not something people have much control over. Most people who are overweight struggle to change their shape throughout their lives, but remain stuck within a relatively narrow weight range set by their genes. For those determined to foil biology, strict dieting is a life sentence. “I am a fat man in a thin man’s body,” an M.I.T. obesity researcher who shed his unwanted pounds years ago tells Kolata.
Rest of review is at the link.
An open question is: does it make a difference to encouraging children to avoid accumulating a lot of “excess” fat cells early in life. Maybe, like cholesterol, it’s not something that can be easily regulated by diet.
Just when you think you’ve heard it all......
c. Maximum allowable percent body fat standards are as follows in table 2. However, all personnel are encouraged to achieve the more stringent Department of Defense (DOD)-wide goal, which is 20 percent body fat for males and 26 percent body fat for females.
Table 2 Maximum allowable percent body fat standards
Age Group: 17–20
Male (% body fat): %20
Female (% body fat): %28
Age Group: 21–27
Male (% body fat): %22
Female (% body fat): %30
Age Group: 28–39
Male (% body fat): %24
Female (% body fat): %32
Age Group: 40 & Older
Male (% body fat): %26
Female (% body fat): %34
Since homeschooling is so efficient and takes so little time, these children have plenty of time to play. Play means exercise which means calories burned and muscles built. Muscle also burns calories at a higher rate.
Also,,,the mom is home to supervise snacks and to provide nutritious meals. Who knows what institutionalized children get in their schools either from the cafeteria, vending machines, teachers, and other students.
Also, those kids in daycare after school are often pacified with food by their babysitters.
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Fair. Fair. Fair.
Can’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Instead, have all the other children unfit because one child has asthma and can’t participate. ( sigh!)
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Sadly, no.
Why on earth are parents still institutionalizing their kids?
No. If the asthma is severe enough, a student should get a medical waiver and then be sent to a different class. Otherwise, he should get graded along with the rest.
It should be about perfomance, not fairness...
But its all just an exercise in wishful thinking.
I lost 80 pounds, and have maintained that weight loss for more than 2 years.
As in the article, I am **constantly** starving! I dream of food when I sleep. I fantasize about food when awake. I watch the clock waiting for the next time I can eat.
I scrupulously measure ***every*** crumb that goes into my mouth, and I absolutely can NOT eat more than 1,200 calories a day. That is equal to about 4 glasses of 1% milk, 4 pieces of bread, 2 eggs, and a banana. Try doing that for the rest of your life!
If I am starving, I know I have eaten enough.
It will be this way until I die.
Only gastric bypass has been shown to reduce appetite. Unfortunately, I was never fat enough to qualify, and I will never qualify at a normal weight.
That I remain thin require the same will-power, brute mental force, and will power that it took for me to earn a doctorate in my profession.
His mom is creating a fat ass. Congrats mom. Physical activity is good for the body and mind.
Obviously the BMI isn’t perfect. It is obvious when someone is overly muscular vs. a fat ass.
strict dieting is a life sentence
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Overwhelming hunger goes along with it. It NEVER goes away.
Imagine how you felt when you were **really**, **really**, hungry?
That is how I feel 24/7.
**Strict** dieting is my constant companion.
When I was growing up there were **no** fat children in my elementary class. (Hey! I was thin!) Chubbiness only seemed to show up in adolescence. Perhaps it is because all the children walked to and from school and went home for lunch. In high school we rode public transportation.
And,,,I have never met a fat homeschooler who has been homeschooled from the beginning.
Tape the teachers and fire the fattys.
This isn’t anything new. I remember my older brother had “obesity” marked on his report card in grade school.
BMI is probably a step in the right direction. (Assuming you think this is the purview of public schools) Weight tables are deceptive, because muscle weighs more than adipose tissue. Very buff, muscle-bound weightlifters bust all sorts of standard “you should weigh ___lbs to be healthy.”
The Presidential Fitness Test (something like that)
I failed. Might have been the pullups. It was pullups for boys. Good thing I didn’t know anything about psychology, or I would have been really screwed up or life.
I remember the physical fitness test. As if I didn’t feel like enough of a loser. By high school we would do the 50 yard dash, the other kid would be ahead of me and I’d just walk the rest of the way figuring it just wasn’t worth it.
BTW, we ran the mile. About half a mile I’d be having a bronchial attack.
So what? I know of at least 6, and 2 of them are the brattiest bullies I have ever met and will not permit my daughter to associate with them. Of course the parents thrive on their "better than anyone" attitudes, and like me, the rest of the homschooling parents do not let their children associate with those 2.
My anecdotal experiences are just as valid as yours - whether you like it or not.
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