PEA RIDGE — Being a teacher since 1976 has given me a perspective on the lives and health of children with whom I have contact. This experience has made me feel increasingly uneasy about the future of the aforementioned children as well as to the future of our country as a whole.

As I was involved early on in my professional career teaching physical education among a lot of other subjects, I attended seminars and workshops that dealt with statistics and predictions of student health outcomes.

Around 1980, I sat before a health professional who bemoaned the steady decline of youth fitness levels since the 1960s, making dire predictions about the future. I attended another workshop around 1990 with the keynote speaker citing even worse statistics, also making even more dark predictions about where the trends are taking our children.

While I haven’t attended a health related seminar since the 1990s, the advent of the computer age has given me access to articles, statistics and general knowledge as to the health of America’s children. The one thing that the stories and articles that I have read over the last 15 years have in common is that they allagree that things are steadily getting worse.

While I consider myself a basically upbeat person, I can’t help but to see ominous signs of a future that most people, especially parents, aren’t aware of.

There was a national poll done last year by one of the government agencies assigned to monitor student health. One astounding fact brought out by their polling was that 90 percent of American parents believe that their kids were healthy and physically fit. These parental “beliefs” smack right into established data that estimates roughly that only about 35 percent of America’s young people could be considered physically fit.

The most recent data supports the conclusion that 15 percent of America’s school children are overweight with another 15 percent saddled with being excessively overweight.

Together with the parental polling data, what this means is that of the 30 percent of American children who are overweight or obese, two/thirds of their parents see them as being physically fit. Along with established data that predicts that 70 percent of children who are overweight at age 13 will remain that way for the rest of their life, these parental mis-beliefs could help lead to lives of sickness and misfortune for their offspring.

A lot of parents believe that if their kid participates in a sport, then he/she necessarily is “fit.” Kids are involved in sports, for the most part, for the fun and socialization. Overweight kids, for understandable reasons, usually dislike exercising. Running wind sprints when you are 20, 30 or 40 pounds overweight hurts. Hurting isn’t fun. Being a lot slower and weaker than other kids plays havoc with the socialization part.

Being laughed at isn’t fun either.

Having good self-esteem goes a long way to helping kids adjust to growing up and dealing with the pressures and demands that are put on them. As one might imagine, having poor self esteem has the opposite effect.

It is estimated that only about 30 percent of America’s youth exercises enough to meet minimal requirements in the elementary ages. That number drops much further when these same children enter junior and senior high school.

Some studies reveal that half of some school populations have already demonstrated early signs of heart disease. Compounding our kids’ lack of exercise is the American diet. Junk food, excessive sweets and a lack of eating the kinds of foods that makes us healthy.

What does all of this mean? It has led to a determination, just recently announced by the government, that for the first time, the life spans of Americans are starting to decrease.

Increased heart problems, increased lung disease and increases in myriad health and wellness issues will darken the futures of a lot of Americans, and when you think about it, all Americans.

Healthcare expenses will go up exponentially no matter what Congress does or doesn’t do. American productivity will go down as will living standards for everyone.

A recent story in the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette gave me even more reason to be concerned for the future. The story concerned a recent report by the Pentagon that revealed that a whopping 75 percent of the nation’s 17- to 24-year-olds are ineligible for military service because they were “overweight and have physical ailments that make them unfit for the armed forces.”

Fully one third of all men and women who have recently tried to join the military have been turned away because they were so far out of shape. This scenario worries a lot of military leaders, such as retired Maj. Gen. James Kelley who said that: “We have the greatest planes, tanks and ships in the world but the key goal is having the right people.”

Kelley heads “Mission: Readiness,” a group made up of retired military leaders. The group believes that the only way to change the dire health status of American youth is to start with the earliest ages. Kelley said: “You can’t wait until high school to change a young person. It has to be done at a very early age.”

The council members fully believe that the poor state of our children’s health threatens our nation’s ability to be able to defend itself in the future.

Whether a child wants a military life or not, all people want a life of some kind, a life free of disease and limitations. Parents have to be able to ascertain the actual health and fitness of our children and then do whatever it takes to make sure that the kids are physically where they need to be. Regular exercise, proper eating habits and healthy lifestyle choices can turn the tide.

Changing habits and lifestyles is hard. However, spending considerable portions of one’s income on health care and suffering through a large part of ones life will be a lot harder.

With all the snow and ice keeping me at home a lot these past few days, I had the opportunity to re-watch the Michael J. Fox classic “Back to the Future: Part 3.” At the end of trilogy, Professor Brown reminded Fox’s character Marty that “you’ve got to remember ... the future isn’t written yet. It is what you make it.”

I truly hope and believe that the downward slide in the health of our nations youth can be reversed. It just has to be.

Sports, Pages 7 on 02/03/2010