Author: Leka Ekambaram
Date: March 27, 2022
EVHS Track
Source: Leka Ekambaram
Picture this: you’re automatically enrolled in a high school course, PE, for your freshman and sophomore year, the next two years after that, smooth sailing. The road, however, is treacherous. Especially in EVHS, you’re faced with running every week, and fitness tests at the end of each semester. Many students of EV find this unnecessary and unfair, due to the program’s physical and mental tolls on their health.
As everyone knows, EV features having to run “cougars” every week, the peppy name for a half-mile. The number of cougars starts out at two in the beginning of the year, but increases slowly to seven at the end of the year, to fulfill the goal of being able to run a 5K, a ESUHSD requirement. Most PE teachers threaten the run as participation and cite having to run seven cougars at the end of the year as mandatory in order to pass the class. Most of these runs, including the end of the year run, are graded based on getting a certain “healthy time”.
“I had a borderline asthma attack once in freshman year, doing a longer run.” Maddie Luttrell, a junior, recounts. “My PE teacher knew too and I had to stop the run because I was so dizzy and couldn't breathe at all. Guess what? She still gave me an F. My grade dropped to a B, and I wasn't qualified to be on the honor roll anymore.”
When asked about the procedure of making students run a certain number of cougar laps per week, until being able to run 7 laps (3.5 miles), Mr. Hanson, a sophomore PE teacher remarks “Well, of course the students don’t like it, but it is necessary for the requirement and makes them more accustomed for this requirement.”
Grading students on physical fitness can be dangerous, especially for those with health conditions like asthma. As high schoolers, many students push themselves to have high grades in all their subjects, and a high grade depending on whether they achieve a golden mean of physical fitness is bound to cause many problems for the students, such as lack of self-worth, and physically harming themselves to reach this mean, which to them, may be nearly impossible, due to their body types and conditions.
About the sole claim to physical inclusiveness in the PE program, Vibha Kashyap also states, “They want us to fit into a perfect mold of a ‘healthy’ person without taking into account anything about our body types [such as lengths of our arms and legs], except our BMI.”
BMI, incorporating both height and weight, is used for determining the passing scores in mile runs by most PE teachers. The way this works is that the lower your BMI is, the faster you have to be able to pass the FitnessGram mile test. This test, however, while conducted in an inclusive manner, only proceeds to harm the students more. Many students have admitted to even purposefully gorging or starving themselves to not only have less stress in running cougars, but to also pass the BMI test.
That’s right, a BMI test. Along with five other tests, featuring activities such as push-ups, curl-ups, trunk lifts, etc. PE teachers inform that students will have to take PE 3 if they fail two out of the six tests, Mr. Hanson saying that “if the student passes either their 9th or 10th grade FitnessGram test, they’re clear to go for the high school’s requirement, according to the State of California.”
This seems to be misinformation on the teachers’ part, according to Ms. Edwards, the assistant principal of educational development. While this misconception may seem minor, it has shown a major effect on EV students taking the PE 1 and 2 courses, all of the freshmen I’ve interviewed believing they needed to pass these tests to not fail PE.
Edwards has also claimed that for the FitnessGram tests, there are only five, discluding BMI, which was apparently only recorded to determine the mile run results. So what should be occurring in PE 1 and 2 FitnessGram testing is 5 tests, that shouldn’t be filed into “passing” or “failing” according to the charts the PE teachers provide. These tests also shouldn’t be determining a student’s grade or passing of a course altogether.
In conclusion, should you be worried about your FitnessGram results if you didn’t “pass” in 9th or 10th grade? No, you should not, for the teachers do not have the power to pass or fail you based on your results.
Overall, the PE system at EV, despite claiming to “promote an active and healthy lifestyle in high schoolers” also manages to cause stress, physical and mental, as well as breed prejudice among aforementioned high schoolers over fitness level. However, the system can be improved. How the FitnessGram tests are conducted cannot be changed, obviously (that would involve action on a much larger scale) but instead of grading them, the best solution seems to be just taking the results and submitting them, without pressuring the student to get a “good score”.
Aarush Joshi states that the PE system would be better in accomplishing its initial goal by not grading students on reaching a certain standard that only a few can reach, such as having to reach a certain time for running cougars each week, stating that “You shouldn’t be tanking someone’s chances of getting into a good college because they aren’t as healthy as an arbitrary system [says they should be].”
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