The Metrics of Success

Today marks the beginning of a new physical education initiative. Our ninth-grade students will work with faculty to complete their physical fitness assessments, and their scores will be used as a benchmark to measure their progress and improvement over the course of the coming year. Our objective is to provide every student with individualized guidance in improving their health. Not only this: our larger goal is to ensure that students possess the knowledge and mindset that allows them to make fitness a priority into their adult lives.

It would be disingenuous to assert that there has not been a measure of controversy around this initiative, but I believe that to neglect our student’s physical health in order to celebrate their other achievements more fully or exclusively is myopic. Whether for historical reasons or owing to the government-imposed restrictions of the pandemic, the physical education of our students has been accorded too little priority for too long. A remedy for that is long overdue, and it is unsurprising that in many respects, that remedy should feel like a reckoning.

When Ridgeview formed in 2001, the physical welfare of its students was not the main priority. The parents who founded the school were disappointed with the paucity of intellectual and academic rigor within the district schools, and they were hopeful that Ridgeview could complement the excellent elementary education many of their children had received at Liberty Commons. Of course, Ridgeview became more than just a high school and it enrolled students from many different schools, but the administration still regarded athletics as something that fell within the purview of the district schools. This attitude about athletics, whether intentionally or not, informed the attention given to physical education. This attitude represents a profound mistake in providing for the holistic education of students.

John Ratey, a researcher and neuroscientist, wrote a book entitled Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain in 2008 in which he closely examined the physical education initiative at Naperville Central High School in Illinois. This initiative was the product of a collaboration between Phil Lawler and Paul Zientarski, both PE teachers at that school. These men noted in defense of their initiative that it was not for the athletes; in fact, if it targeted certain students, it was for the students who did not have the benefit of the individualized fitness plans their student athlete peers were provided. This point had previously been made by those in the 1960s who took up a similar and legendary initiative at La Sierra High in California, as described poignantly in the documentary The Motivation Factor. We should be emphatic about this point: we should not leave some students behind simply because they have elected not to play a sport. Neither should we assume that because a student is good at one kind of activity, their overall fitness is what it could be.

Ratey, and his coauthor Eric Hagerman, also noted that, “Only 6 percent of U.S. high schools offer a daily physical education class. At the same time, kids are spending an average of 5.5 hours a day in front of a screen of some sort—television, computer, or handheld device.” Bear in mind, the first iPhone arrived in 2007 and these numbers are from 2008. As these devices have become more ubiquitous, screentime for even elementary students has skyrocketed over the past fifteen years. The result of this is diminishing mental health and increasing obesity. Despite defining obesity down, the rate of childhood obesity in the United States stands at 19.3%, making us second only to China. The acorn, however, does not fall too far from the tree: 41.9% of American adults are obese. We are second to none in this. If we do not want our children to face a one-in-two chance of becoming obese, we would be wise to take a page from Zientarski. “I tell people it’s not my job as a PE teacher to make kids fit,” says Zientarski, “My job is to make them know all of the things they need to know to keep themselves fit. Exercise in itself is not fun. It’s work. So if you can make them understand it, show them the benefits—that’s a radical transformation.”

Now, I do take some issue with Zientarski’s claim that it is not fun. As a culture, we absolutely must refute this notion that work is everything that is contrary to fun. It is fun to be fit. It feels good. Sports are exhilarating. The science, in particular, the neuroscience underlying why is compelling. This becomes more obvious at a school like Ridgeview with an ambitious outdoor program: it is easier to enjoy these adventures if your physical health is not an encumbrance preventing you from appreciating the beauty of this world or the time with your friends.

Some have taken issue with the Marine Corps physical fitness standards being used, and tried to claim, usually with a smattering of ad hominem deflections, that Ridgeview is trying to make every student a Marine. Truth be told, there are certainly worse things a person could aspire to, but this was not our objective. These standards were used because they were the most recently and thoroughly researched, and because their times for running and other cardio events had separate scoresheets adjusted for elevation.  

Similar to the above criticism was the argument that not every student had an interest in joining the military. Fair enough, but it is a pretty effete citizenry that is perpetually asserting great and noble ideals with the assumption that those ideals will be defended by someone else. Not every student will choose to serve, but every student should be capable of doing so, and a citizenry incapable of contemplating such a possibility or eventuality cannot be taken seriously in claiming that they have a real interest in civics or a substantive patriotism. At present, just seven percent of Americans have served in the military, and most branches are suffering in terms of recruitment goals. This is due in part to the fact that seventy-seven percent of Americans are disqualified for military service for obesity, drugs, or mental health issues. We can do better, and we should. In a quotation popularly attributed to Thucydides, the Greek historian wrote, “The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”

What we are proposing to do with this initiative is not inconsistent with classical education. It was, bear in mind, Juvenal who is credited with Mens sana in corpore sano—a healthy mind in a healthy body. In fact, it is interesting that Spark was written in 2008, because the mental health epidemic then was not anything like what resulted in the aftermath of 2020. However, Ratey’s research was conclusive: there is a direct correlation between poor physical health and poor mental health. It may not be perfect correlation, but it suggests enough that if we want emotionally resilient adults, we could do much worse than beginning with physically fit children. And, as Ratey’s research also shows, when given strenuous exercise, students performed better academically.

Despite these facts, there will be those who will claim that all this attention on physical fitness, athletics, and the outdoor program are a distraction from the real purpose of schooling. Arguments along these lines usually regard the real purpose of schooling as being preparation for college, by which they mean learning certain subjects, testing well, gaining admission to university, and thereby having a life to be envied. It is odd that charter schools should fan the flames of parental alarmism by participating in this game. A charter school had to fight for its autonomy and parents had to fight for the freedom to send their children to it apparently all so that that charter school could then slavishly obey the government and the elites by subscribing to their definitions of success. Suggestion: It might not be that wisdom, knowledge, or understanding are assessable by psychometricians and colleges looking to increase their revenues by increasing their rejection rates. Nevertheless, it is odder still that Ridgeview would feel compelled to comply with this definition of success in that it teaches a text like José Ortega y Gassett’s Revolt of the Masses.  There is nothing perhaps as ‘mass man’ in mentality than a total inability to examine one’s definition of success, and instead, drifting along without purpose or criticality. Perhaps no recent book does as good a job of demonstrating the sad, if farcical, realities of this definition of success as William Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite. In any event, T.S. Eliot put it nearly as well in writing that, “The danger for these fortunate ones is that if left to themselves they will overspecialize, they will be wholly ignorant of the general interests of human beings.” Physical education, athletics, and the outdoors (along with robotics, signing, drawing, painting, reading for the love of it, dancing, and much else) are important, even critical, because the metrics of our success must correspond with a classical and holistic education.

It is my earnest hope that parents will not only support this initiative by encouraging their children, but that they themselves will see that if it is important for one part of our community—our students—it is important for all parts of our community. If we wish to see our children read, we should be seen reading; if we wish for them to improve their penmanship, we should dedicate some time and energy to improving our own; if we wish to see them try difficult things, they should see us undertake difficult things; and, if we wish for them to tend to their physical and mental health, we should tend to ours and ensure that they see us doing so rather than relegating ourselves to a slothful spectatorship.

We can do better by our children by demanding more of them, and as importantly, more of ourselves. To be sure, that is a poor sales pitch. However, education should concern itself with what it believes human beings can become—not sales, and the school that puts its test scores or its enrollment numbers before the human being it’s privileged enough to have as its charge, should be viewed with deep suspicion. Ridgeview’s students are capable of this and so much more. It falls to us to show them the truth of this and inspire and encourage them.

D. Anderson
Headmaster