Schools Take Steps to Counter Youth Obesity

美国学校采取措施对付青少年肥胖症（3）

IN THIS ARTICLE: Many American school children are overweight, but now schools are introducing physical fitness programmes to counter the problem of teenage obesity .----Editor

本文简介：美国许多学龄儿童超重，但现在校方正纷纷开设体格保健课程以对付青少年肥胖症问题。－－编者

[13] She motioned toward Korte and her classmates. "This is more fun, and I like it a lot better."

[14] It seems simple, so sound and rooted in common sense: make PE fun, structure it so children celebrate their strengths and work on their weaknesses and that, in turn, will keep people like Amanda Bush enthusiastic about physical education and help them establish lifelong fitness habits.

[15] "It's not the health objectives that will keep people doing things, frankly," says Judith C Young, director of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education in Reston, outside Washington. "Their motivation is enjoyment, sociability, how it makes them look, how they feel when they're doing it."

[16] Yet, talk to adults who endured PE in junior high and high school a few decades ago, and it is clear that as recently as two decades ago, "fun" wasn't part of the PE lexicon. Today, former PE participants divide almost instantly into opposing camps: the gifted athletes, who played several sports and viewed PE class as one more chance to shine; and everyone else--the klutzes, the shy, the gymimpaired--people who saw in PE a particular brand of frustration and bondage never again to be repeated in life.

[17] Holt-Hale tells an instructive tale, one she keeps on file to remind her colleagues that people may or may not remember good PE classes, but they never forget the bad ones.

[18] It was during a board hearing on recommendations to cut the PE budget in one state, she says, when the board chairman, an obese man, peered over his glasses and stared at the instructors making their case. He was unmoved by their pleas; in logic they could scant ignore, he summarised his opposition with one line: "Physical education never did anything for me."

[13]她打手势示意科特和她的同学，“这更有趣，对此我喜欢得多。”

[14]这似乎很简单，如此合理且源于常识：使体育充满乐趣，把它组织好，那样孩子们就会赞美自己的优点，不断克服自己的弱点，而这些又将使像阿曼达.布什这样的人对体育充满热情，帮助他们养成终生的健康习惯。

[15]“坦率地说，并不是那些健康目标使人们参加运动，”设在华盛顿城外赖斯顿的国家体育与运动协会主任朱迪思·C·扬说。“他们的动机是快乐、社交及参加运动时他们看上去会怎样、感觉又会怎样。”

[16]然而，与几十年前在初中和高中忍受过体育之苦的成年人谈论时，显然就算是20年前，“乐趣”也不在体育词汇之内。今天，从前的体育课的参与者们几乎即刻分成了两个对立阵营：那些有天赋的运动员，他们曾参加多项运动，把体育课看成是又一次显示自己的机会；而另外的那些人----是些笨手笨脚的、文静害羞的、不擅体育的人----他们把体育看成一生中永远不会再重视的一种特殊类型的挫折和束缚。

[17]霍尔特-黑尔常讲一个富有启发性的故事，一个她保存在文档里的故事以告诫她的同事们：人们也许会或也许不会记住那些成功的体育课，但却永远不会忘记那些失败的体育课。

［18］她说，那是在某州一次关于听取削减体育预算建议的会议上，当时那董事会主席，一个过度肥胖的男子，目光透过眼镜上框盯着陈述自己理由的教员们。他丝毫不为他们的恳求所动；在逻辑上他们难以忽视，但他只用一句话概括了他的反对意见：“体育从来没给我带来过什么。”

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