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Parents to blame for fast-food weaklings
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HEALTH professionals, educators and lawmakers have been warning that Chinese teenagers’ physical condition has been steadily deteriorating for at least the past two decades.
Li Youyi, a high school headmaster and deputy to the Beijing People’s Congress, pointed out recently that young people are losing their strength, speed and endurance.
Wu Zhengxian, a veteran math teacher and deputy to the National People’s Congress, early this month pledged urgent action to improve juveniles’ constitution. Wu urged to enact legislation to reduce schools’ responsibility if any student was accidentally injured in physical exercise.
Both Wu and Li stated that lack of regular exercise was the main reason for the declining overall physical strength.
The Ministry of Education requires elementary and high schools to ensure students get at least 60 minutes physical exercise daily, but the policy is seldom implemented, Wu said.
A colleague of mine told me his son, an elementary school student, was allowed for two outdoor physical education classes yet in the current semester.
“But they had to stay in the classroom when the weather is bad outside or the air is heavily polluted,” he said.
Furthermore, school authorities dare not expose children and teenagers to risky activities, for fear of accidents and lawsuits by parents, Wu said.
What a tragedy!
I remember my own school days. During each 10-minute interval between classes, boys and girls rushed to the playground playing games like “eagle catches chicken” or just running and jumping to burn off their energy.
Table tennis and rope skipping were very popular. My favorite was the horizontal bar, which is seldom recommended by teachers nowadays, for fear a student might fall on the sand or padding beneath.
After school, I usually rode a bicycle together with my classmates to explore narrow longtang lanes between shikumen or stone-gated houses. At the same time, our Beijing peers were doing almost the same in hutong.
However, kids in big cities nowadays are picked after class by their parents or grandparents and driven home to do their homework. Each of them is usually isolated in a high- rise condo. They spend their childhood in a concrete forest with fewer friends but endless homework and piano lessons.
Clearly, parents have an obsession — not with their children’s health and well-being — but with long study hours and high grades demonstrated in endless exams. The youth to be admired is the one with the very highest grades (even if he’s weak and introverted).
It was reported that teens in big cities gained more weight and developed wider chests but they are inactive. And they are weak. Only 10 percent of Beijing high school students passed basic physical tests last year, according to Li Hongyi, Party secretary of the Capital University of Physical Education and Sports.
Nutritional imbalance
Nutritional deficiency and imbalances are the other major cause of our children’s physical deterioration, said Wang Hui, director of Food Safety Research Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Many youngsters in cities are fond of junk food, which may cause overweight and obesity. At the same time, their contemporaries in less developed rural areas may not get enough calories and nutrients.”
There are several high schools around our news group building. I have a bird’s eye view from my office. I usually see empty playgrounds, even on sunny days. Students from these schools often flock to nearby stalls, ordering fried chicken, other snacks or milk tea after class.
When I was in high school, I didn’t have the pocket money to buy snacks, but we had at least four PE classes a week and two outdoor activity lessons.
We played basketball, soccer and many other games. Teachers always encouraged us to be brave and tackle the horizontal bars or parallel bars.
I’m no athlete, but I can run 1,000 meters within three minutes and complete eight basketball layups in two minutes.
It seems that parents in big cities have almost zero-tolerance of any potential risk to their only children during exercise, but they have no qualms about allowing their children to eat junk food.
They might not be aware that when their children swallow a hamburger or sausage after class, other boys and girls of a similar age in remote areas are walking for more than an hour to get home, sometimes walking along steep cliffs or paddling boats.
To strengthen our youth requires a long-term national campaign or state legislation like those adopted by our neighbors Japan and South Korea in the past. We have no choice but to change the situation or lose our future. There is no shortcut but a clear goal — regular, rigorous exercise and solid nutrition for boys and girls in both rural and urban areas.
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