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Starting early: Involving school children in sports helps to develop their physical fitness.

Despite the fact that the Union Ministry of Human Resources and the Health Ministry are both stressing on incorporating physical education as a mandatory part of the education curriculum, not much headway seems to have been made in translating this into reality. The situation is not helped as we lack the infrastructure to inspire students, especially aspiring sportspersons, to take to physical education in a meaningful way.

Specialists and doctors are emphasising the need for physical activity to prevent lifestyle-induced diseases. But precious little is being done to encourage children and the non-sporting adult to remain physically fit, they say. The problem starts at the school level and remains unresolved even at the university level.

Many schools frequently relegate physical education to the realm of extra-curricular activity. This is not helped by the fact that it is not mandatory for schools to have a playground to earn a licence to run the school. Nor is it compulsory to appoint a sports/physical education teacher. The excuse given is that students must focus on academic work.

Education Department officials admit that there are quite a few schools in Chennai that do not have a playground. What students in these schools get is an apology of a playground and utilities. Such schools lease out a neighbouring vacant plot or use the nearby Corporation playground. Often schools carry on with rudimentary equipment that is not replaced until they wear out completely.

While specialists say it is important to ensure indoor activity rooms where open playgrounds are not available, schools routinely pass this opportunity up for extra classrooms, thus jeopardising the health of a growing population.

“It is important that each person is physically fit,” says Kannan Pugazhendi, a sports medicine specialist. The bottomline of physical fitness is having “good cardio-respiratory activity, flexibility and muscular functions so that you live for a long time without seeking medical help.”

Most people start exercising only after being diagnosed for one or more lifestyle diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and obesity. “The idea [of sports] is to enhance physical education. It is necessary to educate people about the need for a good exercise programme,” Dr. Pugazhendi points out.

“It is important to involve every child in the school in some sport so that they remain fit. We could look at aerobics or aerobic dancing that encourages more participation,” he suggests. “Physical education should be part of the curriculum, making it mandatory for students to pass a test. This would ensure that students have the basic fitness requirement to get to the next class.”

Basic fitness includes components such as health-related and skill-related fitness. The latter focuses on the specific requirement needed for playing at a specific position in a sport. But health-related fitness is about components that everyone should possess. The Sports Medicine Centre Fitness Foundation Academy in Chennai runs programmes for the mainstream people, the visually-impaired, the sporting, the non-athlete and the geriatric population. It also assesses school children’s physical fitness and provides a fitness routine to follow if called for.

R. Thirumalaisamy, vice-chancellor, Tamil Nadu Physical Education and Sports University, reiterates the need for infrastructure. “Teaching technology should be made an integral part of any sports education curriculum and this needs proper infrastructure which most of our educational institutions lack,” he says. Existing facilities are good only for holding competitions.

“Students need consistent exposure to sports technologies and training, something which we are yet to achieve. If we can train students to use top-notch technology tools, then the human resources thus created could be used by private educational institutions to shore up their own training programmes,” he adds.

Technologies such as laying synthetic tracks, modern squash courts and astro turfs could be developed within the country itself if proper technologies are taught in sports classrooms. This would cut costs incurred from importing these and they could also be used to broadbase sports teaching. The future could see use of information technology where sports research institutions should be encouraged to explore ways to develop automated devices, says the vice-chancellor.

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