Should Kids Be Graded On Their Weight?

If my school system started doing this, I would deny them permission to assess my child. That's the family doctor's job, not the school's.

Quite frankly, it is none of their business.

I think you should have to take a test before having kids. And what the test should purport to discover is if you'll let your kids grow up to be fatsos. If yes, no kids for you.

Me, I anticipate having very goodlooking, in shape kids. Beauty pageant types and whatnot.

Agreed. If we grade people on the size of their penises, we can weed out the so called 'bad eggs' or 'low performers' from the rest of the group.

Cheers

I think kids should be graded on the size of various body parts since this often correlates with degree of financial income later in life. And we advertisers sure take advantage of this!

As a person who went to both Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant, I can say that Tech had more emphasis on physical activity than Stuy. Stuy had a double period every other day for science, and when the double period days were not in session, one would have gym. Basically, we had gym every other day..and you needed 7 terms of physical education to graduate.

In Brooklyn Tech, (I spent my freshman year there) We had gym everyday of the week except one day where we had a double.

This initiative sounds completely ridiculous to me. A report card is used to inform the parents of their child's progress in school. Reporting on the child's weight might be helpful if the kid's away at boarding school, but if you see him or her everyday, you know your child is overweight. BMI charts are widely accessible. It seems like this assumes that people don't know or think that obesity is dangerous and life-threatening, which I don't think is true. Much like smoking, people know it's bad for them and they do it anyway and unfortunately they pass those values down to their kids. I don't know why the board of ed would assume that parents who aren't willing to do something about their child's health on their own would so because of this report card initiative.

Like many of the posters above, I thing they should take the sugar and salt-laced food and bev out of the school lunches, teach kids real nutrition in health class (or tie it into math) and make those fat fuckers run around the track like they used to make our lazy asses do. Nutrition and physical fitness are just not part of a lot of people's lives, probably moreso people who live in a big city. Public schools have a great opportunity and, IMO, an obligation to expose kids these ideas.

stuy's gyms and pools were in use. they just split it so you had 1/2 semesters. the worst was swim gym in the mornings because you would shower, go to school, swim, shower, go to class. or at least that's what i did.

and when that half semester was over, you had a free period.

Poorer* whoops

Another issue is that Fast Food is usually the Cheapest Food. And outside the school environment thats usually some of the only food pourer families can afford. Every walked through Harlem and Jamaica and check out how many McD's, KFC's Burger King's there are compared to the rest of the city? Insane.

"Lets see Jimmy, You got an A in Math, a B in English, a A- in Social Studies, all very good, but your BMI says your a complete fatass. You may have the Smarts but your tubby lard self wont live too long to enjoy it after endless coronary bypass surgeries, and even if you do, no one would even think about sleeping with you."

Yes the BMI grading system helps kids get back on track is a GREAT way of reinforcing their self esteem.

The grades would only help for the chubby. For the truly overweight (a group I used to be in, I weighed a good 90 lbs. more in high school than I do now), it's usually tied to emotional issues. Telling them they need to lose weight will not stop their urges anymore than the constant calls for Robert Downey Jr. to stop doing drugs. It's about compulsion once you get really up there. It would likely help to get rid of snack machines and bar outside food (at least for anyone on the school lunch program since it's usually a socioeconomic issue). You could claim it's a distraction issue; it wouldn't be perfect but might help, like at the movies. Also, you could teach more "lifestyle sports." You don't have to be a basketball star to get moving any school has facilities for jogging (the outdoors). Every school with a room has facilities for yoga.

A report card is used to let parents know about the progress of their kids. If the kids aren't doing well in math, the parents should sit down with the math homework at night. I had a teacher tell my parents that I didn't read my novels, which led to my dad reading The Good Earth at the same time I was to motivate me to get it done [and btw, it sucked]. If a kid is obese, a parent should know that too and adjust the lifestyle of the child. A report card is a good wake-up call for parents.

Food industry's contribution to school systems tends to be vastly overstated. At the risk of channelling Fast Food Nation and Super Size Me, schools can cut out the Coca Colas and the Taco Bells and still not be that worse off.

Still, it has to start with educating parents. You can't raise your kids on McD's and BK, and it is possible to serve quick, cheap balanced meals.

i agree that getting rid of junk food (vending machines) would be a good step, but the obesity problem was well underway before corporate infiltration of our schools so i doubt that would have a huge impact.

Do that, and they will suddenly take thier money out of alot of programs the Junk Food companies themselves invest in schools. See all that Gym Equiptment, school books and new PC's? I wonder who pays for alot of that...

And the Term 'Junk Food' is very broad since almost everything they serve is junk, even the food thats ment to be healthy

Well, Brooklyn Tech's two gyms and pool were always in use every semester...

;)

Um, wouldn't it be easier and more effective to just get rid of junk food and soda from schools?

I agree with T.A. - our representatives lack the political nutsack to go after the food industry, so the easier alternative is to punish the helpless and the ignorant.

Now satan. We must exercise tolerance.

D E A T H T O F A T T I E S ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

this is a tough one... i don't think this is a punishment as much as a measure to raise awareness and underscore it's importance to the kid's life. does the grade actually effect the students record or is it merely a message to parents on the report card?

eating habits are shaped when we are kids and trying to change those habits later in life is much more difficult. many parents honestly don't understand that obesity is life-threatening. the expense of medical care due to obesity-related problems often falls on the taxpayer so the argument that it's a waste of money is probably moot. chidhood obesity is an epidemic in amerca, not to mention an embarassment. fat kids usually already have body issues... they need help to resolve it. bringing the problem into open discussion instead of just letting it continue could easily reduce body image problems. if this 'grade' is issued in conjunction with a program to help solve the problem, then i think it could be an effective tool.

i say it's tough because, as i was a chubby kid, this sort of thing (totally depending on how it's implimented) could have been extremely humiliating for me. however, it's taken years of focused willpower and research - not to mention unhealthy experiments - to overcome the way i was raised to eat and exercise. i am very healthy now but i would have appreciated a program like this to thwart those problems much earlier in my development. so yes, i think that intervention early on (done in a sensitive manner) would have been worth it.

well, i haven't been in school for a while, but in high school (92-96), i think i only had gym for one semester each school year. it was split up so it was 1/4, 1/4 though. and i've seen some schools which have lost their yards to trailers for classrooms.

Yes Tien,

Please tell us you're kidding... NOW where will kids go to get in on a good game of basketball relays?

"I think a step like this is warranted--perhaps even overdue."?

Kirsten, This is indeed a problem, but IMO giving **BAD** grades to Kids that may have no control over it is Dead wrong.

Many kids see Bad grades as punishment. If a child is overeating due to an eating disorder, do you intend to punish the child or get him help?

Would it be, as you say, PC to get him/her help? or Would it be Non-PC to say "Bad Child! You need to do better in school! No TV for you for 1 month!!"

What a great solution.

Not.

In grade school, I knew a kid who was waaaay overweight. He only Lost weight after spending the Summer with his Grandparents in Puerto Rico. In his case, The problem wasn't him, but his parents.

Would giving him a Poor Grade help? Think about it.

Tien, Please tell me your kidding about the Gyms...

We're Americans. We live in a society of excess. This problem runs deeper then just High School Meals , corporate control and lobbying. Same goes with SUV's and many more examples I dont have enough space to mention. This is just going to get worse until we kick this habit of consuming 20x more then we need.

Regulating the weight of high school students seems like a silly half measure. Government officials are targeting kids' weight because they don't have the political will to go after that companies that produce high-fructose corn syrup bilge.

SD, there's not time/money/space for gym anymore.

When are we going to dispense with all the PC crap and recognize that being overweight IS a life-threatening eating disorder. (One that cripples and kills many more people than anorexia.) Our misguided attempts to protect children's "fragile" self esteem are literally killing them. These days, with Type 2 diabetes running rampant through the grade school population, I think a step like this is warranted--perhaps even overdue. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a kid with hurt feelings than one with diabetes or heart disease.

...

I Marvel at the new and improved ways Politicians come up with to waste Tax Money.

What a boob...

What a great idea; now eating disorders can begin developing in first grade instead of fifth.

When they fill the schools with machines full of soda and junk food and serve crap in the cafeteria what the F did they expect? Isn't the city sponsored by Snapple? I don't konw how anybody survives the New York City school system. No wonder the city has to import is labor pool from elsewhere.