Doctors sound alarm — Germany is ill

In fact, the only time most children exert themselves are the five hours a day they spend standing, usually for periods of 15 to 30 minutes at a time. Klaus Boes, a specialist in sport sciences in Karlsruhe, warns of a “social time-bomb”. “Children who do not get enough exercise and cannot move for play and sport will later have health problems. Germany is falling ill.”

Research on 12-year-olds shows that 40 per cent have circulatory problems, a third have bad posture, half weak muscles and one in five are overweight. No wonder that more and more primary school children complain of head and backaches. “At that age there is an enormous increase in factors which can adversely affect well-being,” says professor Aloys Berg of the university clinic at Freiburg.

Furthermore, says the sports doctor, school children nowadays show more characteristics which tend to lead to illness than ten years ago: “We are discovering many more factors contributing to infection.”

The consequence of lack of exercise, fast food and soft drinks is that the last 20 years has seen the number of school children at least 30 per cent overweight rise by half. “Today we are diagnosing risk factors in 40-year-olds which previously only appeared from the age of 55,” says Berg.

Children are becoming increasingly clumsy and awkward. They are losing control of their bodies and the ability to co-ordinate movement. “Many children lack natural living space to fully realise their urge to move about and also a vent for their aggression,” contends Boes.

“I can do the decathlon better on the computer than I can in reality,” says the scientist.

Motor competence, however, is required by every person for their development and well-being, even if sport is not necessarily a prime choice of pastime.But the fact is that 33 per cent of students in job training and 12 per cent of secondary school pupils already complain of permanent backache.

The school is the only institution which has all children under its care, but it seems unable to help reverse this sorry state of children’s health.

Games lessons long ago became a forgotten item on the curriculum.

Taking Baden-Wuerttemberg as an example, the third weekly sports hour has been dropped and rarely finds replacement, unlike other subjects.

Added to which, doctors seem far more willing to excuse a pupil from games than for main subjects. Furthermore, almost half of the state’s sports teachers are around 50, meaning they have a hard time matching the strenuous activities in the gym.

Research at secondary schools shows that only four per cent of girls and 32 per cent of boys take part in the school’s extra sports activities.“The attraction to exercise more must be instilled in nursery school,” is Boes’s call.

But the reality is summed up by Christine Krawietz: “Many children are picked up by car from the nursery and then only `move’ when they’re belted up in the back seat,” says the nursery schoolteacher from Weil Der Stadt.