If you can play well, they don’t let you sit on the sidelines. If only I’d had the sense to trip over my own feet on the first day… think of all the time I might have spent reading instead of playing basketball, softball, and volleyball.

I hated PE as a kid too, but that may have had to do with the fact that it was always team sports, and having been skipped a grade, I was always the smallest and least coordinated of the group. I also wore glasses and have poor depth perception, and my instinctual reaction to a softball coming towards me has always been to run for cover.

If we didn’t have to worry about the litigators, kids should just get at least 30 minutes a day (weather permitting) on a good old-fashioned play ground, with the opportunities for pick up ball games, jump-rope, monkey bars, swings, merry-go-rounds, etc., which gives plenty of options for those interested in team play, and those who prefer solitary or small group play.

Of course, you can get injured on a play ground, so we can’t possibly have that….

I’m a “small government” type, but the idea that poisoining little kids (and teenagers) wtih caffeine on a regular basis has no consequences is a textbook example of denial.

Measuring kids’ BMI’s may run into all sorts of PC objections, what with Fad Advocates running amok these days.

P.E.? God I HATED that when I was a kid. Perhaps that was because of the way in which it was administered- or maybe because I was a fat kid myself. I wonder how realistic reinstituting these classes these classes will be. Too little time to teach the 3 R’s as it is.