A report this week stated that in the Canadian province of Ontario, fewer than half of high school students take a physical education course after year 9. Only a fraction of these kids are involved in school sports programs. The report obviously contributed these figures to the ever growing obesity in teenagers. I made the assumption that this problem was not isolated to Ontario. After a bit of research, the numbers of high school sport participation is down throughout Canada. I even stumbled upon a disturbing article that some schools in Alberta were considering eliminating recess time. After a little deeper research, I found similar statistics in the US, Australia and Great Britain. The figures were not so low in the latter two nations, so for the rest of this article, I will concentrate solely on Canada and the US. Everyone knows the major factors contributing to the current rise in youth obesity: too much time watching tv, using the internet and playing video games, bad eating habits, high divorce rates and increased working hours of parents making it difficult for them to enroll their children in sports leagues, etc. These factors are, in my opinion, the fault of the parent, although I'm certainly not going to tell someone how to raise their children. However, as displayed by my opening two paragraphs, there is more to blame than parents. As an institution, the school has been entrusted by society to prepare children for their adulthood through education, developing interpersonal skills, or making them feel comfortable being in social situations. Whether this is being accomplished or not, is a whole other article all together. But, as far as their physical health is concerned, I feel schools are letting everyone down. Now, I'm going to lay out three items that schools are doing, or not doing, that have negative health effects on children. The first, is school work-load. Canadian and American high school students are assigned, on average, between two and three hours of homework per evening. Adding this to the seven hours they put in at school, that works out to nine to ten hours per day multiplied by five days, plus an extra three hours for the weekend, is 48 - 53 hours of schoolwork a week. Considering most adults do a 40 hour work week, I can only imagine the amount of stress these kids go through. As if being a teenager with dating, acne, parents, etc. wasn't stressful enough. As we all know as adults, stress is considered extremely unhealthy for us. This leads to bad eating habits, loss of appetite, and makes us feel lethargic, not very healthy for growing teenagers. On top of this stress, the work load also reduces a lot of time for young adults to engage in physical activity. After a day at school, coming home, doing homework for three hours, and having dinner, the last thing anyone wants to do is some physical exercise. The second item, as once again exhibited by my first two paragraphs, is that schools are not doing enough to encourage physical education participation. After grade 9, physical education is not mandatory and this needs to change. In my opinion it should be mandatory all the way through high school. Also, not only do they stay in shape, but they will learn other things like stretching, other sports played throughout the world, proper eating habits, sex and human anatomy. All things that they will use throughout their entire adult lives. Now I know a lot of people will say, "oh, but they should be taking a class that they need and to prepare them for the rigors of university, its a useless class, and it will bring down my son's average because he isn't good at sports." Well, if all the the high schools made it mandatory, then it would be a level playing field for university acceptance. It's also well documented that consistent physical activity makes children better students because it gives them higher energy levels, increased concentration levels, and brain stimulation which all help with their studies. Finally, there is no excuse for receiving a bad physical education mark because its scored mainly on effort, its not necessary to be a good athlete. Besides, there is lot of in-class education, so if they are so smart then they should excel in that area. I'm just going to touch briefly on the third item because it is already well documented. I am talking about the unavailability of healthy foods in school cafeterias. If you are not already aware of this, then I suggest you rent the movie-documentary "Super Size Me". Actually, you should rent it anyway as it is just as disturbing as any Michael Moore doc. Basically, the majority of schools offer very simple meals that often do not contain all four food groups as required. Vegetarian dishes are also rarely offered. However, Coke machines and vending machines contained chips and chocolate bars are readily available in nearly all schools throughout Canada and the United States. There has been some outcry by government and parents, but the schools argue that they receive funds for having these machines in their schools and that healthy foods are too expensive. So, threatening higher taxes and more government money, these parents and government officials seem to have quieted. I just want to state in conclusion, that in no way am I trying to blame schools exclusively for this problem, which can really only be described as an epidemic. Society in general is mostly responsible, but that is the Canadian and American way. This is not a problem in proper countries such as France, Italy, or Germany. They have taken measures there to prevent "Americanization" and to promote health and traditions. I only hope that we can turn back the clock a bit on this issue before heart disease, diabetes, and other weight related diseases take a heavy toll on our society. Kelly Zak