PHYSICAL EDUCATION, IS IT AN OPTION?

More and more parents are complaining the inactiveness of their children at home. Those parents mostly stated that their children spend their time at hoe sitting in front of a computer’s screen. Watching TV, or just lying at a coach. Their children are rarely engaged with any physical activities outside.

 

            Parents are now relying on the schools to motivate their children to do an activity outside. And schools, because of that, have answered the parents’ worry by offering their students a program called physical education. The question is now “Should we make the program as a required program or should we make the students take it as an option?

            School is basically place where students learn something formally. By attending schools, it is expected that students will gain their knowledge. But, would it be enough? The answer is absolutely “no”. Schools are also a place where students should experience their lives joyfully and healthily. By healthily, it means that schools should make sure that their students fit enough to follow the schools’ activities and thanks to physical education to make it happen. Physical education does not only give a beneficial effect by making students healthy, but it also nurture students’ sense of belonging, friendship, and fairness. How can that be?

            As we know, one of activities offers by physical education can be sport games such s football, rugby, badminton, or volleyball. When the students are to play those games, let us say “football”, what they need to do first is making a team. By making a team, students could learn about teamwork and also organizational skill. Meanwhile, while they have the match, their sense of friendship and fairness could evolve. To sum up, sport could promote the healthiness of students physical and mentally. Then, should physical education be a required subject or an optional one?

            If we look back at the benefits it offers to students, it is not a wrong decision to take physical education as a required subject. It is quite wise move for schools to “force” students to take it for the sake of their daily necessity. If schools take physical education as an optional subject, there are surely students not wanting to take it. Lazy, shy, may be two of many excuses they give. Moreover, we cannot precisely know what students do at their homes. We have no idea whether they just lazily sit on the sofa or they are really engaged in an activity. If we let them to take the subject as an option, we will let lazy students stay lazy, and it means we are failed to encourage them to move.