THW Make Gym Class Mandatory Throughout High School.

In this round I will both outline my points and refute my opponents. I was not able to state my points in the last round because, unfortunately, my computer broke down. I am not using this as an excuse, because frankly, as truthful as it is, it's a bad reason. I'm just justifying why I am merging Round 2 and round 3 into one "essay". That said, I'd like to start out with a quote from the Berkeley Daily Planet. The purpose of high school, is to prepare students for a meaningful life in the 21st century; to be a good citizen, economically self-sufficient. .. ", said Terry Doran, School Board president in an article on the Berkeley Daily Planet. I agree that this is the purpose of high school, but disagree that mandating physical education for four years in order to graduate is the right approach to this. Not only does mandating physical education NOT provide to the goal of high schools, it also is severely detrimental to Schools and students in general. Argument 1: It is detrimental to schools and students. School funding in Canada is decided by the province as of today, and this funding is solely dependent on the taxes collected by the providential government. Taxes in Canada are collected as a percentage of income, and so the funding for schools isn't fixed as for the entire country. What this means is that schools in areas with a higher economic status recieve higher funding. Schools like these may not be seriously affected by the new bill, but other schools. with less funding will be. Incorporating a physical education class into the curriculum comes with a serious cost, both monetary and support-related. Mandating a physical education class means that every high school is now mandated to construct a gym-if they don't already have one, to purchase equipment for the class (whether this means basketballs and gymnastic mats, or CPR dummies for the health portion of it), to hire enough teachers to teach all of this, and to hold school board meeting to decide on the curriculum for this class. All of this requires a significant amount of money, which some schools don't have. Mandating schools that are tight on funding to obey this law means that money will now be taken away from Math classes, Science classes, or after school activities. With the money that would be saved by NOT mandating FOUR years of physical education, schools could provide more AP classes, or more after school activities which would offer more to students that four years of learning how to shower properly. To a student that is interested in entering a career in health or gym, benefits from this, but a student interested in the medical field, for example, does not benefit from the funding being directed away from the classes he/she requires. In this way, neither the school nor the students benefit from this law. Argument Two: It will cause rifts between students. Canada is a place of wide ethnic diversity, and with wide ethnic diversity comes diverse opinions. Many parents don't want their students in Sexual Education because of their moral beliefs or simply, their culture. If these credits are required for graduation, suddenly this becomes an issue. Will these missed credits be excused? Whether they do or not, an issue of whether or not the required credits are actually required comes into question. Issues of what should and should not be required in the curriculum will assail the school board. A high school is no place for this type of controversy. To take this a step further, students with disorders(like ASD-holes in the walls of your heart, over-fatigue disorder-makes you extremely fatigued with just an insignificant amount of exercise, blindness, etc) are inhibited from participating in some or all of the activities in gym classes, or maybe even not be able to participate properly. This will lead to rifts between students, and depression in students (according to the Medline Plus's page on depression causes). It also causes bullying and hazing in high schools. According to usnews. com, 47% of reported bullying incidents were sports/phy-ed related. Argument Three: Four years of Physical education classes in High schools is unnecessary. Until today, Physical education is required in Canadian school until 9th grade. The need for mandating 4 MORE years of physical education is unnecessary. 56.3% of students already participate in sports out of school, on average, and a majority of kids already know how to properly take care of them by 9th grade. Not only is four years of physical education, highly unnecessary, it also harms schools by exposing schools to lawsuits. For these Reasons, four years of physical education is highly unnecessary and just a waste of a school's resources and time. Not to mention, an idea that will expose schools to unneeded controversies. For these reasons I urge a CON ballot. Now, to address my opponent's points. My opponenet brought up obesity rates as his first contention. These statistics are true, but physical education is not the way to go. As Mary Strain stated perfectly in the Scholastic Magazine article about the Disadvantages of Physical education, "Many kids take part in P. E. only because it's a requirement and there is no choice. Being forced to participate -- especially in sports children don't prefer or may not feel able to perform -- makes the experience a drudgery and may actually make them less likely to exercise outside the school setting. Some educators advise that schools allow students some choice in P. E. activities to avoid making exercise seem like a hated necessity, rather than healthy and fun. Absent this choice, P. E. may actually have the opposite effect than the one the school intended. ". As she stated, physical education classes aren't the way to solve obesity issues. With more and more students taking classes online, relevant to this debate, physical education, the benefits of physical education such as lowering obesity aren't always existent. Also, There are no issues today with the workforce being too obese to do certain jobs, and none of them were ever forced to take 4 years of physical education, and so there is no evidence that the problems will suddenly emerge now. And as per your third sub-point regarding diabetes and other obesity related diseases, like i stated previously, physical education classes will not help. And as per tax increasing, mandating physical education in ALL schools, like i stated in my first point, will only serve to increase taxes even further. Then, for your second contention, teaching sex Education doesn't have a fixed success rate. For example, Slovakia has the 4th highest teen pregnancy rate at 26.9% according to . http://www.nationmaster.com.... They however, are mandated to teach sex Ed in high school. Taking another approach, India has one of the lower teen pregnancy rates in the world at a mere 7.1%. Here however, Sex Education is not mandatory. South Korea has the lowest teen pregnancy rate in the world at 2.9%, but they don't have a fixed policy on Sex Education. Thus, Sex Education merely provides some knowledge on the workings of sexual interactions, but doesn't prove to effectively counter high birth rates. There is no reason to enforce a law unless it is proven that it benefits the public, and that these benefits outweigh the damages. I have shown through my rebuttle that these "benefits" that my opponent suggested would be effects of mandating physical education, aren't sure to happen. I have shown you the damages that mandating FOUR years of physical education in schools will yield. These tentative benefits that , yes, will work in only specific utopian societies and aren't proven to work everywhere, so not outweigh the damages that i mentioned. There is no reason to spend billions of dollars that we don't Have under the current economy, on a program that might not yield the benefits it claims to.