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Friday, March 7, 2008
‘Fat’ monitors at Georgia schools?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A recent study evaluating the degree to which students have knowledge of U.S. history, found that high school graduates entering college earned a failing grade. Not to worry, however — in Georgia at least, state legislators have decided that the most important thing they can do for students is to require that schools track students’ “body mass index” (BMI). The Georgia Senate, under Republican control, recently passed a bill that, beginning in public elementary schools, students periodically would have their height and weight measured and recorded, and posted in the aggregate so parents could tell which schools have more fat children than other schools. If parents desire to find out the BMI of their own children attending a school, they would be able to find out privately.
One wonders, of course, why parents could not simply weigh their kids at home, but perhaps that would require more parental control than some parents could assert. More important, Georgia citizens also should question what responsibility of the schools it is to weigh children, especially given that Georgia schools consistently rank at or near the bottom of the national scholastic scales. Apparently, state legislators will rest easier knowing that our students may not be very smart, but at least they may not be as fat as previously.
