Have you seen the results of the 2024 ParticipACTION Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth?
Sam shared the Map from the Report with the blogger team, which, shows the percentage of youth taking a physical education class across Canada.
Eastern provinces range between 57 and 70% (youth taking physical education class in Canada). Manitoba to BC range between 71.1% to 78.4%. The territories are around 60%. Quebec shows the highest percentage at 95.2%. Ontario shows 58.9%.
The headline questions whether the results surprise me. I would say, without looking at the reasons and factors looked at, I am surprised Ontario is so low. Is funding an issue? Resources available in Northern Ontario?
The Report mentions factors such as: increased screen time, decreased opportunities for active transportation, limited access to green spaces in which to play, costs and financial commitments, and over-programming contributing to time constraints. It also talks about – climate change – the report states that the number of annual weather alerts in Canada having more than doubled in the past 10 years. The report claims it’s hard to ignore the that changing climate is an increasing barrier to getting children and youth active.
The Report talks about how efforts from different sectors may mitigate the affects of climate change on physical activity amongst children. It provides suggestions such as:
- Government investments to increase access to active and public transportation to school
- School boards’ creation of policies to safeguard active play when recess cannot be held outdoors can reduce sedentary and screen time.
- Better filtration (aided by politicians) in community recreational centres.
- Families having discussions about the affects of climate change on physical activity and creating the next generation of environment stewards.
- Most importantly, comprehensive investments and health promotion initiatives that consider climate implications on physical activity among children and youth – with specific emphasis on disadvantaged and equity-denied communities – can help address inequities, making physical activity more accessible for all and a constant asset in a changing climate.
Besides the provincial breakdown and the discussion on climate change, the Report mentions the key findings such as:
Overall Physical Activity Grade 39% of children and youth (five to 17 years of age) in Canada met the recommendation of 60 minutes of moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity per day.
Only 31% of girls, compared to 57% of boys, met the physical activity recommendation. Among youth (12 to 17 years of age), girls did not fare as well amidst the pandemic as well as boys did. In 2020, only 35% of girls and 40% of boys met the physical activity recommendation; however, only boys’ physical activity increased in 2021 (52% met the recommendation), whereas girls’ physical activity levels remained at 35%. Newcomer girls between the ages of five and 17 years were less likely to meet the physical activity recommendation (18%) compared to non-newcomer girls (28%).
No surprise to those of us at FIFI that girls fare worse in these statistics. Do the suggestions address this? They recommend:
Focusing on reducing inequalities and inequities, such as girls’ consistently lower levels of adherence to the physical activity recommendation compared to boys
Funding from various levels of government should continue to be committed for the monitoring of physical activity in children and youth by province/territory.
Physical activity should be promoted early in life and often, and the many ways to incorporate purposeful and incidental daily physical activity should also be identified, to better equip children and youth to face climate-related changes such as heatwaves and air pollution.
One component the Report doesn’t address is the conventional format of gym classes in school.
How does this relate to our FIFI world?
I am a fit feminist now, but as a child and teen, I hated gym class. I was not into fitness. This is not an unusual sentiment amongst over middle aged women. Many people have unhappy memories about school gym classes.
What would have made a different for me? I can’t say for sure but I have pondered whether it would have made a difference if gym classes were offered in varying forms. For example, I still don’t enjoy group sports as an adult. That hasn’t changed. But I found a love for running and strength classes as an adult. What if elementary school and high school had offered more of a “fitness club” style workout? Would more young girls find that interesting and inspiring? What if gym teachers encouraged those kids who are not naturally athletic to focus on what they are good at and teach them to build on that? My memory is that teachers picked out the natural athletes and assumed the rest would just sit on the sidelines, and, that’s exactly what I did, until I was allowed to drop it in Grade 10. Another thing is, gym class was in the middle of the day. There was no time to shower properly. I hated the idea of going back to class sweaty. What if gym class was at the end of the day and there was a way to freshen up before heading home? Then there was the dreaded gym uniform. Like any uniform that is meant for the masses, they never fit my short frame the way I’d like. Let young girls wear what they would wear working out in the park or in a fitness club. I would have loved that as a young person.
What do other FIFI bloggers think?
Christine says: I hated gym class. I was short and inept and I could never really grasp what was going on. I was always picked last or close to last and people groaned about me being on their team. It was upsetting, to say the least. Now that I know about my ADHD, I know that I wasn’t processing the instructions at the same speed and as my peers and that my proprioception issues were interfering with my ability to make my body do what my brain understood. I thought I was just hopelessly uncoordinated but if I had know that coordination could be leaned, could be practiced, I would have felt much better. And if we could have had a wider range of activities it would have helped, too. Also, looking back on it, I feel like a lot of our gym teachers were people who were naturally athletic, naturally drawn to sports, and they didn’t understand that some people are not that way. I understand why sporty are drawn to teach gym and I understand that when you are naturally drawn to something, it’s hard to imagine why someone else wouldn’t be interested. Still, though, but it would have helped me if there was a middle ground, some way to build my interest and skills, instead of people assuming I was lazy or unwilling to do what was being asked of me. I wasn’t being stupid or stubborn, I really didn’t know how to bridge the gap between my skills and the task at hand.
Diane says: I didn’t mind gym class, although I wasn’t very good at most things. I would have preferred it not to be gendered (even if it meant taking boys wrestling when I vastly preferred doing the folk dances the girls had to do). I dropped it after 10th grade simply because I had too many other classes to take and something had to give. I would have been very happy with a longer school day that allowed time for “optional” classes like phys ed, music and art. Although I did squeeze in some sports as an extra-curricular activity, I relied on school buses so getting home was a problem. Normalizing the “options” and making transit available would have helped a lot.
Elan says: I disliked gym in school, and by the time it was optional I was out. Exercise seemed quite goal-oriented; we were expected to run a circuit or did 20 pushups without much incremental progression. Because I appeared as a non-visibly sporty person I didn’t get a lot of personal attention from gym teachers. Like Christine, I think some effort on the part of my gym teachers to connect with me would have gone a long way. Also, I would have enjoyed yoga or rollerskating or bowling, but only the highest grades got to do those activities. Exercise might have been more fun if we could have listened to music or integrate more games.
Cate says: I actually liked gym in school except for the terrible 1970s polyester uniforms we had to wear, and then we didn’t get to shower for some reason that eludes me. So we smelled like baby powder and sweat all day. Also there was no such thing as a sports bra so we wore our regular bras. It’s weird that despite being bookish and not thinking of myself as sporty I didn’t hate gym in HS. I think we switched up what we did every two weeks and there was as much gymnastics, running and folk dance as the team sports I sucked at and I liked getting outside to run. On a short day we ran « to St. Louis and back » (probably about a mile in total » and on a long day to Jefferson (probably 2.5 km or so). I didn’t hate it and I don’t remember anyone being a bully. Health class was also in gym and the syphilitic penis images were much more traumatizing than the physical movement.
Sam says: I took gym from early elementary to grade 9 because I had to. I don’t remember taking it in high school. I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I’m pretty sure I stopped as soon as I could. “Hate” is a pretty strong word for a person who loved school. What’s up with that? First, I was smart and bookish at a time when it seemed you couldn’t be both smart and a jock. You had to choose. I chose books. That’s mistake #1, but it was a mistake I learned from the world around me. Luckily I get the sense that’s changing. Second, I identified as clumsy and uncoordinated. I’m not sure what that was about. I’m not uncoordinated as an adult. I ride my bike. I played soccer reasonably well. I loved martial arts. But as a kid, I told myself, and others told me I had two left feet. I’m not sure where I got that, but it’s also a mistake. Third, I thought I was a chubby kid. Looking back, I see I wasn’t. But it also affected my view of gym which pretty early on turned into exercise to lose weight, to look a certain way, and that ruined physical activity for me. As a kid, I didn’t have access to a good range of athletic bodies. I didn’t know that people who looked like me could be good at sports. was never told you don’t have to be good at them to enjoy sports. Gym class seemed too much about either team sports– volleyball, basketball, etc.–or impossibly tricky physical challenges like the flexed arm hang. Looking back my only fond gym memories involve being taught gym by nuns in Newfoundland. I learned to skate, we went toboganning, and they taught me to jump rope. I would have liked an intro to weight training, yoga, access to sports like rugby (not an option for girls when I was a kid), more swimming, and less ranking based on athletic ability and more joy in the movement for life.
Tracy says: Back in a time when we were quickly pigeon-holed into the sporty kids and the bookworms, I was firmly in the bookworm group. I never had great hand-eye coordination for things like baseball, and I couldn’t get the mechanics of moving forward while dribbling a basketball right, and volleyball — forget it. I was not someone you would pick for team sports. Since gym class was a lot of team sports, I despised it when that’s what we were doing (which seemed like most of the time). I also didn’t have much of a knack for gymnastics—I felt awkward and uncoordinated, lacking in grace and flexibility. And there was that era where we had to do things like calisthenics and national physical tests that included the impossible, like push-ups. Related (I think –we’re going back a long way), my grade-eight gym teacher made me lead the class through some calisthenics-ish arm exercises, and when I was standing at the front of the room with my arms in a T-shape the class began to laugh. It was the first time I discovered that my arms hyperextend at the elbows, so instead of my T running straight across, the bend broke (in the wrong direction) at the elbows. I’m not sure why it was so hilarious, but these moments of childhood public ridicule stick, and I have never forgotten that sense of wanting to crawl out of the room. That and struggling to do a lay-up in basketball with everyone watching are my two most vivid memories of gym class. There were a couple of things I was good at – swimming, which we rarely did in gym class, and broad jump (extremely niche). Outside of school I was an active kid. I rode my bike all around the neighbourhood. My best friend and I used to spend hours and hours roller skating on her cul de sac, which was light on traffic. I did competitive swimming for awhile and even when not doing that, I swam all the time. I engaged in these activities with effortless confidence. But my memories of gym class are of dread, fear of being ridiculed, and a sense of awkward frustration for my lack of natural athletic prowess. I would have skipped it completely if I could. I would much rather have just hidden out in the yearbook office (not surprisingly, I was the editor for two of my four years of high school). But if my memory is right, gym class was mandatory.
Martha says: We only had gym once every 12 days in high school. I wasn’t a fan as I had a horrible time with the bronze, silver and gold participation challenges in grade school. We never had enough time to actually learn game rules. And heaven help you if you weren’t naturally fit or athletic. When my child was in school, we encouraged them to choose a physical activity, a group activity and a cultural activity. I glad the focus in gym these days is more on cultivating movement as a habit. I think we would all be healthier if gum was once a day and there was a focus on trying out all kinds of activities.
Catherine says: Like Cate, I had to endure awful polyester gym outfits, which in our case were one-piece and bright green (my school colors were green and gold: ugh). Trying new physical activities was intrinsically interesting to me, even though I wasn’t good at all of them. But what I noticed was that none of my gym teachers paid much attention to the performance (much less potential) of those of us not on the sports teams. I enjoyed gymnastics and also shot put and was rather good at them right off the bat. But nobody got any mentorship or encouragement.
So, if gym class actually functioned as a real class– with lesson plans to teach us and encourage us to develop our own talents, maybe with projects we could work on with others– what a different experience that would have been! I took a modern dance workshop in college that worked exactly like that. Our teacher took us where we were in terms of dance skills and let us develop a piece in small groups, which was one of the most fun projects I did in college. So how about more of that for younger students taking gym?
How about you readers? Is there something you think would have made you enjoy/participate more in school gym class?
