Ever on the alert for cutting edge health science research, Zusha Elinson’s front page article in the Wall Street Journal about a planned elephant preserve in California for obese elephants strikes this long-time coach and physical educator as an exercise in futility.
"The key to weight loss for elephants is the same as it is for humans: diet and exercise,” we’re told. Of course it is.
But as much as I hate to spoil the $6.4 million dollar plans for the preserve, we tried the same thing when I was teaching physical education in California public schools 50 years ago and it didn’t work. We built thousands of public schools, put up fences to keep the kids in, and erected all kinds of obstacles such as swings, slides, and monkey bars. Turns out kids didn’t move on their own when they were fenced in with a lot of apparatus.
Who knows, maybe elephants are smarter than people and will exercise without any instruction from the people charged with their welfare. If not, maybe administrators will take pity on the poor pachyderms and introduce daily, quality physical education into their routines and make health an essential subject in their upbringing. Then again, that’s asking for more than we do for our own offspring.