Why PE Should Be Required from Kindergarten to College
Physical activity improves mental and physical health… and grades.
Any parent of a fidgety kid knows that forcing a student to sit in a classroom several hours a day with little or no physical activity is a recipe for poor academic performance and lots of notes home from the principal. Our youngest son endured a K-12 education in which recess was rare and PE largely nonexistent. “No kid ever wants to sit still for five minutes,” he says now, weeks away from high school graduation. “Let alone seven hours.”
Science is on his side.
The benefits of physical activity on health, mental well-being and brain power for children and adults are well established. Almost any physical activity can make people smarter, studies show. And exercise has been clearly shown to improve academic performance among K-12 students.
Meanwhile, an emerging body of work indicates physical activity can improve GPA for university students and may also reduce dropout rates. Research also suggests that exercise habits picked up from adolescence through college tend to stick with people for life.
Armed with all this evidence, an increasing number of researchers, educators and health advocates are calling for the return of PE in K-12 schools…
