Zachery Yates
English 103
Dr. Stephen Clifford
10 March 2011
Educating a Child Inside and Out “Just say NO!” This is an exclamation that we begin teaching our children in an attempt to keep them safe from harm. “Say no to drugs!” “Say no to strangers!” Our attempts in protecting children from any of the evils of the world usually fall back to having them, “Just say NO!” But, how does this protect them from the pitfalls and dangers of childhood obesity? How can we teach them to say “no” to unhealthy food or habits that are instilled upon them from their school meals, education or classmates’ influences? How can we protect their self-esteem from being damaged from childhood teasing? How can we protect them from the onset of adult disabilities while at an adolescent age? The value of an education has always been deemed as “priceless” but our current education system is allowing one of the key components of a healthy life, inside and out, to be overlooked. The missing piece in our children’s education system is the emphasis being placed on physical fitness. Today’s children are required to proficiently pass certain benchmarks in the areas of Reading, Writing and Math. But, these components are not enough to protect our children and educate our children for the eventual road to adulthood. Physical fitness needs to be recognized as one of the essential areas of childhood growth and education. It must be treated with as much importance as the current mental benchmarks of Reading, Writing and Math. A proposal needs to be passed by the state of California that would require all elementary school children to pass physical fitness evaluations before being allowed to enter the next grade level because placing an emphasis on the physical health of the child is like placing an emphasis on their mental comprehension of Math, English and Reading benchmarks and will help