Significance and Relevance:

The notion that children are less physically active and less interested in physical activity presents a major obstacle for teachers, parents, and students themselves. As an aspiring future physical educator it is my job to ensure that students learn about physical literacy skills and practice making choices that will ultimately lead to a healthy and well-balanced life down the road. With so many of today’s students having a distain for PE, this makes my job very hard to do. Additionally, the BC government has recently proposed a new curriculum for secondary school physical education; this will have major implications for my inquiry question. Will the new curriculum help re-shape the current culture of PE? Will students become more engaged in healthy living habits? Only time will tell, but this is something I hope to learn more about over the course of my long practicum. Parents are facing similar challenges at home: how do you convince your child that an active lifestyle is healthy and necessary when you are competing with technology that provides a more broad spectrum of engagement, entertainment, and stimulation. It is disturbing realization that the youth of today would rather live in a virtual reality than go outside, exercise, work hard, and become stronger human beings (Winkler, Hebestreit, & Ahrens, 2012; Fox & Hillsdon, 2007). Lastly, students will also experience the consequences of their actions later in life. Their choices in the present (while they may seem like a good idea) will lead to future suffering. With rates of childhood obesity and type II diabetes on the rise, it is critical to engage in healthy decision making for long-term health (Pařízková & Hills, 2001; Thompson, 2015). As someone who was one a high school student I can understand the thought process and rationale of a teenager: why would I care about something now that won’t have an immediate effect on my wellbeing? This mentality is indicative of the “instant gratification” society we live in.