Questions to Which…

The answer is “no”.

Should schoolchildren be made to run a mile every day?

Fuck off already. I used to cycle as a child. I hated running. I still do. What is it with these people and their obsessions about  forcing people to do things?

There is no easier form of exercise than running. You put on your trainers, leave the house, and hey presto, you’re exercising.

Well, there is, you could just walk. It’s easier on the joints, too. But again, I prefer the push-bike. That, too, doesn’t jar the joints. But each to their own. And that’s the point. It is up to parents to ensure that their offspring are healthy and fit. It is not the place of the state. So no one should be forced to do anything that they don’t want to. If they get fat then that’s just too bad. I’m not so old that I cannot remember attempts by my school to force me to play football. That worked really, really well.

8 Comments

  1. o “no one should be forced to do anything that they don’t want to.”
    Really?
    Dont want to go to school. Don’t want to get out of bed. Don’t want to pay for anything.

    • It’s clear from the context that LR has no quarrel with the notion that your parents can force you out of your bed and send you to school. The issue here is whether the state has the same right.

      Stealing is something the state does have a popular mandate to prevent. Forcing children to do what amounts to hard labour that can cause medical problems later in life is not.

      • I wasn’t going to respond to what amounts to trolling. However, seeing that you have; yes, this.

        It was a similar attitude during my school-days that instilled in me a lifelong loathing of sport in general and ball games in particular – along with cross country running.

  2. Making children run….

    You can just hear all the lawyers shouting, ‘Yes please!’

    They would make a fortune from all the twisted knees, sprained ankles, broken bones, abduction and kiddyfiddling along the route, road traffic accidents, overweight kids collapsing and the inevitable albeit infrequent deaths.

    Not to mention kids finding shortcuts, stopping for a smoke, drinking illegal fizzy drinks…

    There seems to be a shortage of brains, ability to reason or indeed an awareness of reality, in those who take it upon themselves to tell everyone else what they should be doing.

  3. “There seems to be a shortage of brains, ability to reason or indeed an awareness of reality, in those who take it upon themselves to tell everyone else what they should be doing.”

    Exhibit A, energy minister Andrea Leadsom, who has decided that an 80% cut in carbon dioxide levels was simply not ambitious enough and that we should put a target of zero emission in law. Let’s hope she is first in line to stop breathing. And eating for that matter, unless farmers are actually going to be able to plough fields with battery powered tractors.

    • Someone should warn Ms Leadbrain that if the politicians do actually manage to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels, the consequences of their actions will be a whole lot worse for the planet as a whole than two degrees of natural warming. Not that they’re likely to, the whole CAGW thing is a tax scam and sop to those who bet the farm on the farcical ‘carbon credits’. Not to mention based on shonky science that has yet to stand up to serious scrutiny.

  4. Kids to run a mile every morning? The totalitarian knuckledraggers proposing this policy obviously don’t have teenage families or they’d know that this is a losing proposition from the get go. I think the phrase “Good luck with that” has some pertinence.

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