Recently Dr. Brass School kicked off its school year with a morning dedicated to promoting an active, healthy lifestyle for its students.
It was an admirable undertaking since we often hear about the health issues of our increasingly sedentary lifestyle, which is beginning at younger ages these days.
To instil our youth the importance of staying active is obviously important since many adult habits have their roots in childhood, so we are more likely to be active as we age if we are active as children.
Having someone such as Canadian Olympic athlete Kelsie Hendry on hand to encourage students to set goals and be active can be nothing but positive. Listening to an athlete, in Hendry's case a pole vaulter, who grew up in Saskatchewan, and made it to the Olympics representing her country has to be an inspiration even to young students. Hendry is an example of what hard work and dedication can accomplish.
While the Dr. Brass event was a positive, there was one aspect which had a somewhat sad commentary on children's lifestyles these days.
The school has a new stocked fitness room available to students. The room, with grant funding, has various pieces of gym equipment, treadmills, stationary bikes and others, in place for student use.
It is disheartening that children in grade school would even consider using indoor gym equipment when the school has a large outdoor playground.
Most of us, at least those over 30, can remember dressing even on the coldest days and venturing out to play on mountains of snow, or winter soccer, or to simply chase around having fun. To be stuck in a school room walking on a treadmill would have been the height of boredom.
Of course these days children seem to increasingly have an aversion to outdoor play.
Certainly in the newspaper business we see evidence of that. It used to be a rather simple thing for a reporter to find kids playing road hockey on a weekend for a photograph for the next edition.
Today you could burn half a tank of gasoline in the car and not find a road game of our favoured winter sport.
It's easy to point the finger at kids being glued to television watching the shows on a multi-channel universe, or playing video games, but while those are a factor, the real issue is how to get children out of the house and back playing physically active games.
The schools are a starting place for that to occur.
In a recent Yorkton This Week website poll only 33.3 per cent of respondents felt enough was being done in schools to promote active children.
While schools might have a larger role to play, and it appears Dr. Brass School is an example of one school doing more, it still comes down to parents making sure their children balance activities sitting in a chair in the house with simply getting out and having active fun.
For the future health of our community as a whole it is important we figure out how we all get more active, our children included.
