What do you think of putting treadmill desks in schools?

[kandrathe]

The problem is what has been proven with numerous studies is that the act of sitting for to long takes years off your life expectancy and increases your risk of heart disease. So no matter how much physical exercise the kids exert at PE, they are still going to die sooner with more ailments then if they were made to even stand at their desk all day, which brings me to Drasca's recent post:

... that the longer you sit in general, the higher your chances of developing serious issues! Sitting more than four-hours a day will slowly kill you, that's an indisputable fact! So standing at desks instead of sitting is actually a fantastic idea and well within the realm of affordability for schools! Need I even mention that once these "sitting" studies are linked to long term obesity and disease (which I honestly believe they will be), then its only a matter of time until parent groups sue the schools for causing their children to become obese and sick through excessive sitting? I'd prefer our schools to be proactive then to follow the examples of our government; legislation through crisis. I'd like to believe our public schools had our children's best interests at heart.

I fear you are taking the sensationalism of these studies as amplified by news reporting and doing what everyone always does... twist the truth to fit the narrative. Correlation does not equal causality.

* How many days did these people do at least 20 minutes of cardio exertion?
* How much and what did these people eat?
* Did they smoke?
* Did they work in an industrial job?
* ad infinitum

Lots and lots, and lots of possible causation's for death -- AND, even if you did link sedentary activity as the reason for heart disease, unmarred by diet, unmarred by exercise, unmarred by genetics, why sitting? Why not sleeping? Why not the jacuzzi? It's not like we can't figure out who's got a slow metabolism, and who's running a highly tuned machine. A ten minute stress test on the treadmill at the doctors office shows exactly who's going to die early.

Then, the intuitive leap is that we must spend billions on specialized exercise equipment to task our children with tortures we'd not choose to endure ourselves. Many studies have shown that older people often die soon after retirement, therefore we should abolish retirement.

But... Yes, we do sit too much. And, yes, I agree that the standard classroom pedagogy model in general is a poor way to educate children, and doubly so for boys (ala testosterone). Let's focus on what works in education, which is the reason they are there -- and salt their day with enough large motor burns such that they jump the jitters out and can concentrate on their lessons.