Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff, I'm Lorn vogel Bomb, and this is a classic episode of the podcast. Today's delves into the strange history of why we Americans have standardized tests for our middle schoolers' fitness. Of course, fitness is important to feeling good, but why the tests? Hey brain Stuff. I'm Lauren vogel Bomb, and believe it or not, I was never particularly the athletic type. I have vivid middle school memories of being administered a
standardized fitness test during gym class. I don't recall ever being taught how to do pull ups or curl ups, but I sure remember being tested on how many I could do in front of my class. The Presidential Fitness Test was a battery of physical feats designed to assess the health of school age American children. The test has since been retired and replaced by the less arbitrary and more forgiving physical fitness test known as Fitness Graham, but
it left a significant mark on scholastic history. It all started in the early nineteen fifties, when fitness activists doctor Hans Krauss and Bonnie Pruden administered exercise tests to thousands of kids throughout the United States, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria. US kids came up shockingly short. Fifty eight percent of them failed the tests, compared to just eight percent of the European kids. Then President Dwight Eisenhower was not pleased.
He took action by forming the President's Council on Youth Fitness in nineteen fifty six to seek out strategies for improving American kids fitness scores. Concern mounted by the time John F. Kennedy took office in nineteen sixty he penned a Sports Illustrated op ed about the perceived problem, an excerpt in a very real and immediate sense, our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness is a menace to
our security. And so in nineteen sixty six, the Presidential Physical Fitness Challenge commenced, a competition of sorts designed to get kids excited about physical fitness as it related to military service. The challenge included activities like a softball throw, a long jump, and that dreaded pull up, all meant to mimic military tasks like grenade throwing and ladder climbing. To earn the coveted physical fitness awards, kids would have to place in the top eighty fifth percentile based on
national standards. The problem with all this testing, which by the way, was usually done in front of one's peers, was that, according to experts, it didn't resemble the Krause
Weber tests in any way. Rather than focusing on core and arm strength and improved flexibility, the Presidential Physical Fitness Challenge simply reflected the goals and priorities of the country and people who had formed their fitness philosophy during training in World War Two years later, in twenty twelve, the test was finally abolished and replaced by a more comprehensive fitness program designed to support individual goals rather than prescribe
as standard fitness regimen. The change was the result of decades of negative feedback from both students and teachers. Physical education teacher Joanna Faber told NPR the test was totally backward. We knew who was going to be last, and we were in embarrassing them, We were pointing out their weakness. So where does that leave us now? And why are teachers still testing kids at all? We spoke with Marisol Visali, a San Francisco Bay Area physical education teacher and massage therapist.
She said, the reason for the tests, I believe is basically to collect data so the state knows fitness levels of different demographics and counties, schools, cities, etc. But we teachers do our best to turn it into goal setting and teaching students about their bodies. We also turn it into awards for students with the most improvements or best scores to create some buy in and get them motivated
to be fit people. While the current program continues to focus on specific areas of fitness, there's a decidedly less militaristic approach to it. For instance, Fasally says there are different options for each of the five categories that are tested cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance, muscular strength, flexibility, and body
composition which is muscle to fat ratio. These options acknowledge different types of fitness far better than the original test in taking into account the different ways kids' bodies work based on age and sex, and acknowledging that fitness is a spectrum. So how many kids do well on this test? Zali said the number of kids that pass usually depends
on the school. In Burlingame, California, for example, where I teach, most kids pass I'd say eighty five percent, but that has to do with a lot more than just our awesome physical education teachers. She explains that the kids in her community are really active outside of school, whereas in poorer areas the number of kids that pass could be much lower. For many reasons, children might not be active outside of school due to lack of local programs, time,
or funding. Punishing and humiliating tests certainly aren't the way to get kids in shape, but encouraging physical activity of some kind is important, since it's been shown to help kids build cardio fitness, strong bones and muscles, and even
reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, only twenty one point six percent of six to nineteen year old children and adolescents in the United States get sixty or more minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity at least five days per week. But don't be discouraged. Any activity is better than no activity. There are lots of guides online to making fitness fun,
even for the less coordinated among us. Today's episode is based on article could you pass your kids middle School? Fitness tests on how stuffworks dot Com, written by Michelle Constantinovsky. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Playing. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.