SAMPLE Argumentative Essay
P.E. Should Be All Inclusive
In a nation whose children are suffering from a severe case of obesity, physical education is now
being removed from schools at alarming rates. The main reason stated for this nefarious development
in U.S. schools is the No Child Left Behind Act, NCLB, and its stringent reliance on academics in the
curriculum. School Districts argue that there simply aren’t enough resources to require schools to reach
the current AYP requirements and include P.E. programs too. The dismantling of physical education
programs is without merit, and will prove deleterious for today’s schoolchildren.
Lack of exercise is harmful for everyone. The L.A. Times quotes a new 2012 study in the Lancet,
a leading medical journal, that states that “lack of exercise kills roughly as many as
smoking.” Yet, schools are reclassifying physical education classes as inferior to those that teach
academics. One main reason they are doing this is in order to elevate their scores in core academic
classes, such as Math or English, and in order to reach the Academic Yearly Progress required by the
NCLB act.
If schools want to increase their students’ grades for NCLB, they should refer to the many
studies available that show that students who exercise regularly have been shown to get better
grades. John Grohol, editor of PsychCentral, who cites an incredible 14 studies on the subject, says,
“Exercise may help children’s thinking by increasing blood and oxygen flow to the brain. It may also help
by increasing levels of norepinephrine and endorphins to decrease stress and improve mood, and
increasing growth factors that help create new nerve cells and support synaptic plasticity.”
Our bodies are unequivocally related to our minds. This is especially true with schoolchildren,
whose bodies and minds are developing simultaneously. “Eight out of 10 youngsters age 13 to 15 don’t
get enough exercise,” according to one of the Lancet studies quoted in the newspaper above. Our
nation’s children are at their most obese at this time, than at any other time in history. This is an
undisputed fact. We can ill afford to take away P.E. from our schools.
Another weak defense that school districts are giving about physical education is that they are
not really taking the program away, they have just decreased its rotation in the curriculum. This stance
is unethical because, in this manner, schools can always argue that they don’t have a P.E. problem. Yet,
first lady Michelle Obama tells that only 2 percent of U.S. high schools have daily P.E. classes. Many
studies have shown that it is regular exercise that gives a human – little or big, the benefits.
In order to avoid being a nation of overweight children, schools cannot continue the practice of
dismantling P.E. There are several studies showing that children that exercise regularly get better
grades. When students don’t exercise, they can become obese. The current P.E. rotations in school are
just not enough to keep U.S. students healthy. We shouldn’t stop important programs like Physical
Education. Exercise is just as important to schoolchildren as academics.