There’s a difference between “Knowing something” and having a state-sponsored metric to prove it. Most kids know who the smart and dumb ones are in the class as well.
I was going to be big heh and ignore this. I’m too pissed off.
Let me explain something to you. There is a medical technique called triage. It has several meanings, but the one that applies here is that when treating a patient the first thing to be treated is the most dangerous or life threatening condition first.
I suffer from self image problems. This is not a life-threatening condition. It can lead to behaviors that are life-threatening, but by itself, it is not a risk to life and limb.
I suffer from clinical obesity. This is a life-threatening condition, but more because of long term effects, rather than an immediate threat. I am well aware of the hazards that obesity presents for a healthy life. In addition to the things that SusanSoHelit listed in her post it places great stress on a number of joints in the human body that are already poorly adapted to walking erect. It is a major risk factor for arthritis, too. However, all of these risks, real though they are, are long term, not immediate. Thus, this condition, too, may be ignored while other, more dangerous conditions are treated.
I suffer from chronic depression. This is a life-threatening condition and it is one that is directly, and immediately, life-threatening. People die from depression every day. I’m already being kept from thoughts of suicide mostly because of my religious beliefs. And have been for years, now. I’ve found myself taking risks that any sane person would have avoided, simply because I really don’t give a flying fuck whether I live or die, so long as it’s not suicide.
Can you understand that I view this shit with weight as being rather low on the scale? It’s not pride. It’s not even acceptance, it is simply survival.
Additionally, while I do not claim that the ridicule I experienced every year of my life for my weight is the sole cause of my problems, it is a major factor. There are other factors just as important, in my mind (And at least one other factor is also related to my public school experiences, so I’ll admit this issue is hitting me on two of my hot buttons.) but without any one of these factors I’d not be the mess I am today. Because of this any public program that is as open to abuse as this one is, will have my total opposition. Especially since my concern can be mitigated, at least, by simply not appending the BMI report to the report card. Keep medical crap off the academic report card.
Oh my lord, this sounds like the worst idea ever. I’m sure the depression and shame of a heartless evaluation of one’s weight would perfectly top off the unbelievably affecting pwer of grades.
The person who thought this up is clearly Satan.
When I was in high school I was a serious, serious athlete, and my BMI clocked in at 27. I carried a lot of muscle mass. I’d have been mortified to recieve report card after report card with “Your child is overweight!” printed on it. Yeesh. Like MaddyStrut, I’d never have let my mother put the card on the fridge.
(I can also see how this would fuel the who’s-the-thinnest competitions between the popular girls.)
If they’re going to measure children for health reasons, the least they could do is have a more comprehensive work up, and including blood pressure, cholesteral, etc. (Maybe even body fat content?) in some kind of health report, sent seperatly. That seems more accurate than BMI, which based on the assumption that the “mass” involved is always fat.
I am so angry I don’t even know what to say. Kids should be guided down the right path, but not humiliated like that. Why not just brand them on the public square?
I was a fat kid. My pediatrician put me on diet pills when I was in 4th grade. I have been fighting my weight all of my life and I’m very, very tired. It’s to the point where I just can’t get it together to go onto any type of diet. All of the cruelties, large and small, that have been lobbed my way through the years… Sometimes I think that it would be better if people just came up and slapped me for being fat. The scars on my soul are innumerable.
But I am a good wife, good friend, good at my job and figure that at the age of 46, it’s better to get on with my life than keep tormenting myself over my weight. If I could lose weight, I would have done it by now.
Some people are blind, some are deaf, some can’t walk. Lots of people have it much worse than I do. This is my life. I only have one and I’ll be God damned if it is going to be ruined by a number on a scale. I just work with what I have.
Let me preface this by repeating that the BMI sucks as a measuring tool in this situation. % Body fat would probably be better.
I don’t understand this at all. That report card is chalk full of grades and there don’t seem to be any complaints about those being made public. We grade kids every single day that they are in school. What is the big deal on grading them on their health also? Shit a childs weight is more important than Social Studies or Spanish.
Like I said it isn’t exactly a secret that a child is overweight. But then again parents have a way of seeing past their childs problems or just being too damn lazy to do something about them. Maybe seeing a large number and morbidly obese next to their childs name will spur them into action. This may or may not work but something needs to be done 33% of children being overweight is friggen ridiculus.
Several things to respond to on this point.
- Shame may, indeed, have a place in getting some individuals to lose weight. And certainly there’s some indication that in at least some communities in this country , there isn’t very much shame left to obesity. I would link to the Jan. 2, 2005 NY Times Magazine cover piece, but unfortunately the Times only lets things stay free for 7 days. The article profiled a school in Starr County, Texas. Data for this area:
This is much, much higher than I suspect most of us on this board experienced when we were kids, even if we were only kids a decade or two ago. And further in the article, there’s an even more revealing quote:
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That’s not to say that shame should be the focus, not at all. A little shame goes an extremely long way - and as we note from the above, once a kid’s on the road to serious obesity, it just ain’t gonna work. And I don’t think shame is really a part of this program. People have enormous capacity for self-delusion, especially about their own physical condition - and even greater capacity for delusion about their children’s physical condition. So this wake-up call seems to be really necessary in a lot of cases. The article describes how parents have truly abdicated their responsibility in many cases - with all of the best intentions. (Gonzalez sympathetically, but uncompromisingly, summarizes what he calls the “pobrecito syndrome,” in which parents are constantly giving into their kids’ wishes.
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The concern about report cards is understandable, but something of a red herring any more due to changing technology. Even remote, rural districts mail the report cards home these days - it’s the best way to avoid problems under federal privacy laws. That doesn’t avoid the schoolyard question, but I’m suspicious of whether that’s a really big deal.
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Arkansas is indeed the pioneer on this issue. Governor Mike Huckabee has made this a personal crusade.
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Federal law does not require physical education - my specialty is compliance with federal education program requirements, and trust me this isn’t anywhere in the 650+ pages of the No Child Left Behind Act or the several thousand pages of regulations and guidance the Education Department has issued. It’s something that the director of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports told me she’d like to see changed, in a perfect world - she knows that the temptation for school districts is to beggar phys. ed. in favor of hammering more reading and math (which may not be pedagogically appropriate anyway). There is, indeed, some federal funding for phys. ed. programs, but it’s minuscule - $73.4 million for FY 2005, or less that $2 a kid.
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It is not going to be even remotely easy. The article itself makes that extremely clear. But it does seem to me that this is a relatively low-impact way that can at least motivate some parents to say, “Wow, I need to help my kid.” Given the alternatives, it seems the very least that a conscientious school system can do.
Just a few comments:
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I agree we should get 'em while they’re young. It’s easier to take off 10 pounds than 100.
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Since when does fat acceptance mean that it’s okay to weigh 350 pounds? I thought the message of the fat acceptance movement was to tell people that they should like themselves REGARDLESS of what they weigh; don’t let the scale dictate your self esteem. Don’t put your life on hold, get out there and live your life and not wait for the scale to give you permission. How is that a bad thing?
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I’m losing weight, wanna know why? I don’t like huffing and puffing when I go up a flight of stairs and I’m not about to let a doctor rearrange my internal organs so I can lose weight. It wasn’t shame that drove me to start losing, it was hope and knowledge. The idea that I really could do it. I don’t have anyone in my life telling me how disgusting I am every day, unlike the first, oh, 18 years of my life. Nobody hassles me at the gym. Oh sure, I’m still invisible as far as the fashion industry is concerned (they operate under the assumption that anyone above a size 14 should stay home in a muumuu). Nobody’s shaming me into doing this, though. If I had people shaming me, I doubt I’d be motivated to lose the weight (it sure as hell didn’t work while I was growing up). I’d probably be more motivated to eat a gun.
People are going to make their own choices. Some will choose to eat junk every day, never exercise and die 30 years too soon. Others will choose to go to a surgeon. Others choose to change what they’re eating and get to a gym. When you’re fat you become immune to shame after a while. There’s only so many nasty comments and stares you can take before you start ignoring them: after that, no matter how big you get, you just don’t care anymore. It’s a defense mechanism: if you care, you’ll eventually get suicidal.
Those who are going to remain fat will do so regardless of how much shame you heap on them. I think this is true of all addictions. I know smokers whose children have asthma and all sorts of other respiratory problems because they won’t put down the damn cigarettes. You’d think the shame of knowing they’re ruining their kid’s health would be enough for them to stop, but it’s not. And we all know about what druggies put their families through before they wake up and get clean. Shame never works, I don’t care what your drug of choice is. If shame worked, one night of prime time TV would cause every American to lose weight, stop smoking and get to a salon.
As far as the schools are concerned, considering we are dealing with CHILDREN, the best we can hope for is a wider variety of healthy choices in the cafeteria, get rid of the junk food and actually make PE class FUN Forcing a 4th grader to submit to being weighed and sending home their BMI on their report card isn’t going to make one kid lose weight. All it will do for the overweight kids is further convince them that they’re defective. All it will do for some of the thin kids is further convince them that they’re superior.
Okay, I’m going to tell the truth here. Back in high school, I weighed enough that my BMI would have been 53. That’s right, I was carrying around the equivalent of an entire adult human, in fat. I knew I was fat, so did my family, so did every single person who clapped eyes on me. Thankfully, I was allowed the dignity of being the only person who knew exactly how bad the numbers were.
My obesity was a serious mental and physical problem that I struggled with since I was five years old, and have gotten it down to a more healthful BMI of 24 only in the past few years. To have my BMI calculated at school, the social center of my world, would have been excruciating and just the thought of anyone finding out the numbers, well, humiliation and shame are simply not strong enough words to convey what I would have felt. And that’s just the thought of anyone finding out the numbers. Office staff knowing, maybe I could have lived with that, but if students knew, there’d be no way I could go back to school. At least I’d have to be home schooled, more likely, I’d have had a break drown.
I’m not a delicate flower, nor a drama queen, but at that point in my life, I had had enough shame. That kind of shame is cumulative and I had over a decade of it riding me like the fat that caused it in the first damned place. Not everybody feels this way about their weight, but they could and the negative effects of such information being made public (who do you think folds those report cards and puts them in envelopes? student teacher-assistants) outweigh the benefits.
Send home a simple BMI calculator/workbook, along with nutrition and excercise info. If they’re ready to know the truth, they’ll do the math and read the advice, if not, they’ll toss it in the trash. Either way, no poor kid has to take another blow to their self-esteem.
Oh, what motivated me to lose weight was not shame. I lost weight because I finally got to a point in my life where I was strong enough to overcome the shame and get help. Plus, like Biggirl has written, I ate less and exercised more. Sheesh.
Okay, I didn’t realize that. Thanks for the information.
As for the quote from the NY Times in your post, I don’t know, and can’t comment - I’ve never been anywhere like that. I’ve never lived anywhere I’ve not gotten cracks.
I am very leery of any teacher advocating ‘a little shame’ for any purpose. The lovely, innocent, angels in the schools will see that, and take it as permission to copy, and to improve the commentary. The cracks my teachers gave me were always justified on the basis of trying to help me. Based on the result - I don’t think it had any benefit or purpose, but for their egos. I’m not accusing this principal of being that kind of asshat. I’m not even trying to deny the extent of the problem. I am terrified of the possible results of this program.
Mail the results. And find something other than the BMI to use.
The difference is in the social stigma between failing a class, and in being fat. Certainly while I was in school the teachers didn’t point out the kids who weren’t reading, and say, “If you don’t read you’ll always be dumb.” I had teachers telling me during recess, in front of all my peers, if I didn’t join the informal kickball games, I’d always be fat. What a wonderful example of how to motivate children - to be cruel and ostracise other students, don’t you think?
I don’t know of any student who hasn’t had the experience of failing a test or assignment. I know lots of students who never had to worry about weight. Without personal experience, a lot of children lack empathy, or sympathy. Frankly, your first response to me in this thread seems a perfect example of the response I expect from most students: Judgemental, chock full of assumptions, and wrong. Do you respond to failing grades on academic subjects the same way? I doubt it.
What evidence do you have to support the thesis that your responses aren’t a valid exemplar of the high school level thinking? (I’d expect junior high and elementary school responses to be different - crueller.) Seeing you’re at an University, I’m guessing you’re within a few years of your own high school experience - if anything your response was more moderate than what I expect from high school students.
Well,
What’s the point of any kind of fucking evaluation? Really its just a way of telling the student and the parent of what other people think of their abilities and conditions. I mean, you can use that argument for anything. Why tell someone just how stupid they are when they already know they are stuipd? That’s what school does to some extent. If school were solely based on education then there would be no grades. There is some point where evaluations have to be made and feelings get hurt.
Sorry that some people have feelings that get hurt that they are fat, but it is helpful to some extent for the parents to know just “how” fat they are in comparison to the rest of the students. Never been around some parents who swear how smart their kids are when you truthfully know that its not true? Same thing with obesity. Parents have that sort of ability to look past the shortcomings of their children. Sometimes it is helpful to have a drastic picture. I remember when I was a teenager I had a lot of acne and never really realized how bad it was until I saw a video of myself on tv. Its amazing, but when you look in the mirror you have protection mechanisms, but when you have an external perspective things change.
I think its a good idea.
I can’t speak for everyone, but shame worked just fine for me. I had a BMI around 27-28 in ninth grade - not dangerously fat, but protruding gut and manboobs nevertheless. I tried to ignore the occasional remarks from classmates, but when my JROTC instructor called me a fatass, the die was cast. I stopped eating sweets for the next three years, and resumed to a slight extent afterward.
My BMI is at 21 and change today. Without the comment from that asshole instructor, I’d probably still be scarfing that Little Debbie filth by the box.
Many, many years ago, Someone told me that in germany, you would study in the morning, and take Physical Education in the afternoon. Every single day of the week.
I always thought it was brilliant. I think that’s what’s needed in the U.S
Now, I’m absolutely certain than because Sen. Van de Putte is sincerely concerned about improving the health of her state’s children, she is also pushing to having school lunch funding increased so that the kids can get healthy, nutritious meals with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables and leaner meats instead of the current ones full of starch, fat and sugar. She’d also have to be pushing to have soda and other junk food removed from cafeterias, as well as adding comprehensive health and nutrition lessons to school curriculums.
Because otherwise, this would look like just another feel-good, do-nothing, quick-fix solution. And I’m sure that’s not the case.
Right?
What I think a lot of you don’t realize is that people, especially teenagers, don’t always have reasonable expectations of what they ought to weigh. All though high school, I was slightly overweight. And I do mean slightly - my doctor specifically told me I shouldn’t worry about it. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop me from obsessing about it and feeling fat all the time.
I can easily see people who weren’t concerned about their weight becoming concerned about their weight when they didn’t need to be due to this measure.
Then again, maybe this comes out of my experience at a school where, in a normal graduating class of 30, you were an unusual grade if you didn’t have at least two or three anorexic/bulemic kids.
You don’t care what anyone thinks, and yet you’re willing to endanger your health in order to deny them the satisfaction? Those two statements are contradictory.
Upon reading all of the above and thinking about this in the context of a lot of other education issues, I’d say that shame is necessary, but by no means sufficient. The simple reality of the human condition is that when we feel shame and guilt, it’s often (although not always) for the right reasons - whether it’s “I really should call my grandfather more often,” or “I’ve gotta stop procrastinating” or “I just finished the whole thing?” For children, it’s really the only thing that works - even teenagers generally haven’t developed the cognitive abilitites to understand long-term consequences of their actions.
But as I mentioned in my previous post, a little bit goes an extremely long way. My bet (based on…well, nothing at all) is that it’s probably enough simply to make clear what the standards are as a general matter. I agree that public humiliation is almost always going to backfire, except in extreme circumstances - and behavior that’s destructive mainly of the self doesn’t meet that standard.
More important is to offer encouragement, alternatives, and modeling - and that’s the difficult part. I wish I could quote more of the Times article, which discusses how parents just aren’t modeling the right behaviors for their kids. What is Mom taking to work for her lunch? Does Dad squeeze in a walk after dinner? There are obstacles in many families - but many of them are self-imposed.
Fundamentally, we’re demanding that people do voluntarily what our bodies and minds have evolved to do only unwillingly (that is, seek out extra work and refuse extra food). So it’s going to be a challenge. But eliminating shame entirely from our vocabulary - even though it springs from the best of intentions - is, I think, only going to make matters worse rather than better.
BMI is pointless, especially in children under 10.
What should be done is a height and weight, plotted on centile charts, anyone who croses centile lines (ie, was on the 10th, and falls to the 3rd or rises to the 50th) should be investigated.
If you have short, thin child there could be neglect, malabsorption (eg coeliac disease), a chronic illness, an eating disorder, or they could be just fine.
A short, overweight child could have hypothyroidism (which can cause learning disabilities), growth hormone deficiency, Turner’s syndrome, heading for diabetes and heart disease or they could be normal.
A tall overweight child could be normal, or heading for a precocious puberty or diabetes and heart disease.
A tall, thin child could have Marfan’s syndrome, Klinefelters or could be normal.
Most children (especially children of parents without health insurance) don’t see a doctor unless they are sick, picking up some of these using annual measurements at school would be really helpful in some cases.
Early-onset type 2 diabetes is associated with childhood obesity. It costs the health services millions of dollars a year, and these people face significant morbidity and mortality from the disease in later life. If you are the kind of parent (think South Park’s Mrs Cartman) who believes that your child is “just big-boned” or has “puppy fat”, the school arranging an appointment to discuss your child’s weight could be a very good thing.
On the other hand, it could be nice to have a record of your child’s normal growth and development.
As long as it was done sensitively, it could be a great idea.
And I’m sure you’ve looked into this. Because otherwise you would just be another goof trying to feign intelligence with knee jerk cynicism. And I’m sure that’s not the case.