EDITORIAL- Don’t kick fat kids off the playground

There were few things during childhood so sweet as watching the clock tick to noon and… There were few things during childhood so sweet as watching the clock tick to noon and running to the blacktop to grab the red kickball, skip double-Dutch or work up a disgusting sweat during a game that you’d only just invented. There were familiar faces at recess: the girls giggling; the soccer players; and, of course, the fat kid.

But, in Singapore, there are no fat kids at recess. As part of a government program to fight the country’s growing obesity problem, schools segregate the fat kids, and, rather than go to recess, they go through mandatory exercise programs until they lose weight.

This government program includes preservative-free school lunches and meetings with parents to discuss nutrition. It is largely a good thing — though segregating fat kids isn’t — and a far more active program than any we have here.

Americans have only started recognizing our obesity problem. Recent studies find that, at minimum, 15 percent of American children are obese. Comparatively, Singapore has a childhood obesity rate of about 10 percent.

But stigmatizing children by putting them in a special “fat class” isn’t the way to battle obesity. It might encourage them to lose weight, but it does so by social stigma, which shatters self-esteem. Overweight children are already less happy than their peers; Singapore shouldn’t compound their problems by alienating them.

And what about the kids who, by genetics, are inalterably fat? People do exploit that excuse, but those on the heavy side of the bell curve shouldn’t be cajoled into changing what nature determines to be their ideal body weights.

Still, big changes are needed. The United States began fighting obesity, albeit tentatively, with the new nutrition pyramid and schools’ banning vending machines. The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine released suggestions on battling obesity Thursday, suggesting many of the guidelines the program in Singapore already follows.

We must ensure that American children are both healthy and happy. Instead of rules, how about elective gym classes, where students pick their sport? Additionally, smaller schools and more educational funding would make such classes possible.

After all, recess and gym class were about having fun, not about exercising. Jump rope, tag, kick-the-can — they’re classics for a reason. Sure, they don’t bring the immediate rush that sugar and video games do, but encouraging kids to work out — and making sure the schools have enough money for space, equipment and supervision — is better than shaming them into thinness.