If you want to blame someone, there will be quite a lot of people
in the dock. The problem goes back a long way

When I was at school in the 1950s, we used to have compulsory sport three afternoons a week on the school playing fields - cricket, rugby or hockey, depending on the season, and athletics at the start of the summer term. As a treat - when the playing fields were sodden and the weather was at its worst - there were occasional cross-country runs. Then there were the PE lessons in the gym for a double session once a week. What is more, we had ten minutes of exercises (a sort of Swedish drill) at the start of our mid-morning break every weekday. To cap it all, punishments often consisted of runs, press-ups or other bits of exercise.

There were a few outstanding individual sportsmen among the pupils and the school teams did not do badly against other schools, but it was not a particularly sporty school. The educational theory at the time was “mens sana in corpore sano” - a healthy mind in a healthy body. It was unsaid, but in an all-boys school sport was also perhaps seen as something of a distraction.

The rot started to set in when the school was inspected. The inspectors thought that the mid-morning Swedish drill was rather old-fashioned and unnecessary, and of course the pupils were not displeased to have a longer mid-morning break without having to stretch, run on the spot or do legs-astride jumping. So it was done away with.

I believe it was in the late 1970s that the teaching unions took industrial action and worked to rule, seeing classroom teaching as the core activity and declining to offer hobbies, sport and music as part of the education provided by schools. These activities slumped, and it has taken twenty years to re-introduce them.

In the meantime, councils have been able to capitalise on the under-used playing fields, building on them or selling them off.

Sports have often become spectator activities, rather than participant, and children have taken up more sedentary occupations, squatting in front of their computers. They do not even walk to school as much as they used to, as parents want to deliver them safely to the school door by car.

Now, there are grumbles that an undue number of children are overweight, and that we are storing up a legacy for them of heart trouble, diabetes, problems with their joints and a whole raft of other ailments. Indeed, there are predictions that the average life expectancy of today’s children will be lower than their parents’.

So who can we blame for the present sad state of affairs? The children for eating the wrong food and sitting in front of their playstations like couch potatoes. Their parents for letting them graze on burgers and chips and chauffeuring them to school. The teachers for failing to treat education as something that affects body, mind and spirit. Their unions for using educational activities as a weapon when true professionals would put the children first. Council members for selling off playing fields and squandering irreplaceable public assets. Successive Governments for failing to give a lead to counteract all these problems. And me too: I couldn’t stand school sport, and was only too pleased to opt out.

We’ve made a real mess of things. A proper educational curriculum should include a wide range of physical activities, along with all the classroom teaching, cultural activities and leisure pursuits. Every child should be able to find things they enjoy, which make them feel good physically, which help them to develop and where they can gain a sense of achievement. If education is to prepare children and young people to become fully functioning adults, it needs to include sport and other physical activities. The schools need the facilities, and there needs to be scope for children to follow up their interests as spare time leisure activities as well.

I gather that classes which start with exercises find the children are more alert and attentive. So let’s get back to the compulsory Swedish drill as well.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.