Faster! Higher! Stronger!
Dec 17, 2008 at 21:25 | Yuliya PopovaFaster! Higher! Stronger! That is the Olympic slogan that propelled generations of athletes to greatness and gold medals in Soviet times.
Slower! Lower! Weaker! This may be the more apt slogan to describe the younger generation coming of age in modern-day Ukraine, according to many educators who are watching the puzzling and alarming problem unfold.
Ukrainian schoolchildren are no longer inspired by the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Worse yet, a third of them can no longer comply with a general fitness program adopted back in those times. A wave of tragic fitness-related deaths that hit Ukraine this school year has stirred debate over what is going wrong and why. Are children today weaker, or do the standards that emphasized excellence over fitness need to change?
These are some of the fatal accidents:
While sprinting to finish 100 meters on time, a teenager collapsed in Zaporizhya;
A 12-year-old girl from Chernivtsi died soon after being rushed to a hospital after a running exercise;
In Lutsk, another teenager collapsed during a warm-up;
A 13-year-old boy in Dniprodzerzhinsk died during a taekwondo competition; and
A 12-year-old girl died during dance rehearsal in Zaporizhya on Nov. 26.
Following the autumn string of deaths that hit schools, the federal government cancelled speed and endurance physical education tests, including long-distance runs and sprints. They have also sparked a broader debate.
Many believe that a generation of fast-food eating, phone-texting, computer users has become softer than their predecessors. Obesity is, after all, starting to become a worldwide health epidemic.
Others think Ukrainian youth are suffering from bad ecology, and suggest that the radioactive fallout from the 1986 Chornobyl accident genetically weakened the new generation.
But perhaps more easily solvable aspects of the problem are coming under scrutiny as well, including poor medical examinations, negligence by teachers and parents, and outdated physical education methods.
Whatever the reason, a startling third of all students in Ukraine get an exemption from physical education classes.
Munching a pastry, not wearing a sports uniform, Maria Kryuchok, 15, is one of them. She sat on a bench recently and skipped that day’s workouts due to a health problem.
“I have a lot of children with special needs who can’t take part in class,” said Natalya Petina, a physical education teacher with 24 years of experience. At her school, Kyiv-Mohyla College, only 30 per cent of children are healthy enough to comply with the official fitness program. “Students have become very weak. Many of them have heart or stomach problems,” she said, watching three other girls join Maria on the bench.
The physical education standards that students have to comply with were adopted in the Soviet Union and are the same for everyone. Children with special needs have no alternative and are only allowed to skip those exercises that medics say they have to avoid.
“We must stop the Soviet practice of total equality in fitness,” said Education Minister Ivan Vakarchuk at the meeting prompted by a series of tragic accidents in class. Vakarchuk said one in five students qualifies for a special needs fitness plan or has a full exemption, while 9 out of 10 children have some kind of health problem.
“There are shameful incidents when students pay for missing a class. Some teachers punish truancy by asking them to run six or ten laps around a stadium. Does this have anything to do with health?” Vakarchuk continued.
Petina said the canceled state norms required eleventh graders to run two kilometers in 10 minutes, “but only a few children can do it.” Petina rebelled by putting away the stopwatch. In the last couple of years, she said, “as long as they come to class and run at any speed, I will not fail them.”
Apart from the ailing health of their students, teachers have to cope with old sports equipment and gyms. “I think all schools have already given up on long jumps because sand pits are either full of dog excrement or broken glass,” Petina said.
Her school is considered one of the best in languages and economics in Kyiv. Ironically, it occupies one of the worst premises. Huddling in a former kindergarten, they do not have a gym. Girls and boys train separately but have one changing room for all. “I think some get exempted from class simply because there are no conditions,” suggested Petina.
In what used to be a music and arts room, a dozen girls have barely enough space for a forward roll. “I am not going to do it on this mat,” complained one of the girls. The mats were too hard, agreed Petina, stepping on a corner to stop it from sliding.
They are not alone struggling without a gym. Vakarchuk said that up to 40 per cent of all schools in Ukraine have no gyms. The rest needs renovation and new equipment.
Health and education ministers have advised to replace fitness tests with games while they come up with a new state program.
But for now, schoolgirls in Petina’s school are resigned to push-ups and sit-ups in the hall the size of a standard classroom. When asked about their preferences, they could not name any other games but basketball, soccer and pioneer ball – a softer version of volleyball. Sports popular in the West, like tennis, squash, or swimming, are luxuries for Ukraine.
Another luxury is sports coaches in some schools. Nine percent of school masters have no professional qualification to teach physical education, the Education Ministry said. “By law, teachers may coach a different class to their own if there is no instructor for that specific discipline at school,” said the ministry’s Serhiy Dyatlenko, who is working on an alternative fitness solution for Ukraine. It means that a math teacher can run physical education for some time and vice versa. “If they want to teach it continuously, they must attend special courses. But yes, it’s a shortcoming,” he admitted.
Spotting unprofessionalism, some parents forge or pay for medical-exemption papers and relieve their children from class altogether. Others ignore organized fitness. Accountant Anna Lyubchenko said her daughter’s physical education teacher quit two weeks ago. “I don’t know what they are doing in class now; perhaps, homework,” she added.
While the United States and Europe are de-emphasizing traditional sports in favor of less-competitive activities to engage all, children in Kyiv still have to skip rope 140 times a minute. Some schools abroad have allowed senior students to play Frisbee in their free time instead of a regular class. Others introduced a blood-pumping “Dance Dance Revolution” game in which younger children combine their passion for computers with dancing.
Ukraine, however, finds it hard to make the switch. “We have a very limited choice of sports activities, and they are rather costly,” Dyatlenko said. “It is all about money, time and desire.”
Dreaming about dancing lessons one day, Maria from the Kyiv-Mohyla College has now resigned herself to full-time studies. Her classes finish at 4:30 p.m. An hour later, she rushes off to extra lessons in math and chemistry. “I get home at nine and start homework.” Sports are off her timetable for now.