According to a slightly more upmarket newspaper than the one I usually rely on for blog entries our children are the least active in the world. I think this is awesome news. We're a world leader at something. Eat that United States! On second thought don't or we may lose our crown. Apparently our lazy little tykes spend most of their time gathering dust or nurturing their type 2 diabetes to full blown self expression. According to people who make a living by being shocked and appalled by such news they are "shocked" and "appalled" by such news.
What they shouldn't be is surprised. There was a time when children were incredibly active. This was when their mothers birthed them in the fields and they were expected to get a days ploughing done before they could receive any breastfeeding. It's been pretty much downhill from there. Fast forward several generations and children got a reasonable amount of exercise by playing outside. Let's not get too sentimental about these good old days though. The reason why children played outside back in the day was they had very little choice. I'm sure some of them liked it but, as a quick reading of a sexual fetish list will indicate, there are some people who will like anything. If the kids wanted to avoid being bored and didn't necessarily want their parents screaming at them every thirty seconds then playing outside was pretty much the only option.
Now options abound and most of them don't require much more physical effort than that required to register a pulse and possibly use a few fingers. Not surprisingly a large number of children have opted for the choice that minimises the risks of getting lost, getting hurt, getting sweaty and you know, doing stuff. Humans have spent centuries trying to minimise the amount of physical labour they do because physical labour is hard. With options abounding children have voted with their backsides which are planted firmly on couches or chairs in front of computer screens.
Nevertheless a generation of bloated, diseased children is concerning or at the very least a source of employment for those who find it concerning. Something must, apparently, be done. Strangely a lot of people think that this something must be done by the government. I find this odd because the government already does quite a lot and many of us aren't really happy with the results. Despite this we keep trying to give it more work. This doesn't strike me as the way to improve efficiency. The government already does everything it can reasonably expected to do in this field. It mandates physical education in schools which is the part of children's life it controls. Apart from that our political and bureaucratic leaders would probably prefer not to get involved and when the government doesn't want to get involved in something I feel we should enthusiastically support it.
As for our children being reduced to a deliquescent, diabetic mass? Possibly the best solution would be for the parents to chase the lazy little bastards out of the house with sticks. That's what they did in the past and it seemed to work.
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