Should sports classes be sacrificed in High School so students can concentrate on academic subjects?

Sports Classes be Dropped in Secondary School For Academic Subjects

When we were school going kids, what did we love the most? Playing with our classmates and eagerly waiting for the games period. Right? We loved to play outdoors. Not caring about the hot weather, the cold weather, we would just run out of our homes to play. At most, every school has two games periods in a week and one sports day in a year. That’s it! In our country, the main focus is paid to studies, or science, to be more accurate. Parents constantly tell their children to get into IITs or AIIMS but how often are children told to focus on their health and do a physical exercise of some sort? Not very often.

Even in schools, a month or two before exams, a notice in bolds is put up on the notice board, ‘No games period till exams are over. No one should be seen in the grounds’. Other subject’s teachers take that period. Why this attitude towards sports and health? Is everybody born to be a doctor or an engineer? What cannot be understood is that what do teachers achieve by eating up the leisure time of the students? Some teachers label it as ‘free period’. Seriously? Such teachers are obese, overweight themselves who never played outside and do not know the importance of physical fitness.

Because there is no importance given to games and sports at the school level, that’s why no importance is given to health at later stages of life either. Physical activity is important for children while they are at their growing stage. Where all subjects are taught in schools, why physical education in neglected? Shouldn’t it be an important subject too?

Many parents argue that in high school, sports classes can be, rather should be sacrificed so that students can focus on their academic performance. Really? Is health something which can be sacrificed? What happened to all those sayings, ‘health is wealth’, ‘a healthy mind resides in a healthy body’?  When was the last time you asked your child if he played?

Girls face a lot of problems later in life because of health issues. No one educates girls about fitness and health, neither at home nor at schools. If you are healthy, of course, you are able to study or work or whatever it is you want to do, a lot better. It is not something to be taken for granted.