HOPE?

One of my 15-year-old great-nieces informed me that she was taking a class called "hope". "Hmmm", I said. She further explained that it was acutally physical education and "stuff like birth". Oh my God! What are we teaching these kids?

I HOPE I will make it around the track without passing out. ...I HOPE I will get over the vaulting box without crashing on my crotch? I HOPE I can get an epidural when I'm having a baby?

While I was launching into my rant, one of her FB friends chimed in and explained H.O.P.E. - Health Opportunities through Physcial Education. This doesn't help me. Health oportunities? You have an "opportunity" to have a baby? You have an "opportunity" to wear a condom and cut your "opportuntiy" to contract verneral disease? You have an "opportunity" to exercise and maintain an appropriate body weight. When I was in school, those "opportunties" were called "life's realities".

I've been told that I tend to intellectualize and rationalize the world around me; as if that's a bad thing. I contend that referring to physical education and health as HOPE is a huge rationalization. The reality is that physical education provides you with some tools to improve your health and body; health class provides you with eduation on how your body works and suggests alternatives to keeping that body healthy.

Must we re-package everything? Are our children so jaded that we have to lure them into physcial fittess and a healthy lifestyle? Big Brother is alive and living in an advertising agency.