Physical Education and Academics

If you ask some people, they will tell you that physical education classes do nothing but take away from classroom time that could be spent on academic subjects. They feel that students would stand to benefit from more time with books and less time with basketballs. We are here to tell you that this is not true.

We will begin with the obvious health benefits of physical activity. Plain and simple, physical education classes provide children with exercise and developing bodies need exercise. They also teach kids different ways to be physically active by exploring not only popular sports and games, but also standard exercise practices. This helps to instill the importance of exercise in children when they are young while educating them on how to properly exercise. Schools provide our children with the necessary skill sets to be productive adults and knowledge about how to be healthy should be a part of any adult’s skill set.

Now we will move on to the more pressing issue. Does physical education provide any academic benefits? Multiple studies have been done on the subject and they have overwhelmingly come back with the same results. At worst, physical education does not hurt grades, or scoring on tests that measure cognitive ability. At best, it improves all of these measures of academic achievement. Keep in mind that each and every one of these studies uses a control group. The control groups consisted of students who did not receive any physical education classes, but instead received extra coursework pertinent to more traditionally academic subjects such as math, science and language arts. In all studies the control group did not perform any better academically than the group of students who received physical education. In many cases the group that received physical education performed better than the control groups.

Take a look at some of their specific conclusions:

• “A national study conducted in 2006 analyzed data collected from 11,957 adolescents across the U.S. to examine the relationship between physical activity and academic performance. Adolescents who reported either participating in school activities, such as PE and team sports, or playing sports with their parents, were 20 percent more likely than their sedentary peers to earn an “A” in math or English.” Robert Wood Johnson Foundation – Active Living Research

· “Of all the associations examined, slightly more than half (50.5%) were positive, 48% were not significant, and only 1.5% were negative.” Center For Disease Control – The Association Between School-Based Physical Activity, Including Physical Education, and Academic Performance

As we said, at worst students perform the same academically. However if they exercised during a physical education class then they received the additional health benefits that the exercise provided. We fully support physical education as a part of school curriculum. The benefits outweigh the negative aspects and to be honest, we don’t see any negative aspects. If physical education can only serve to help children, be it physically, academically or both, then why not make it a part of the overall education experience?

SOURCES
Hillsborough County Health Department’s Office of Health Equity
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
ABC News
Center for Disease Control