The 50 Year Workout: Rethinking the exercise of our time
Some of us avoid exercise: why? PhysEd researcher Brian Culp says a more inclusive, less sports-oriented high school education can help. Historian Jürgen Martschukat argues that the pressure to keep fit at all comes less from us, and more from political and economic forces.
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Lisa Godfrey ·
Posted: Jun 23, 2021 5:54 PM ET | Last Updated: June 23
Participants attend a yoga class on the Edge Observation Deck, overlooking the Manhattan skyline, in New York, June 17, 2021. Historian and author Jürgen Martschukat reminds us that widespread exercising did not exist in the West before the 1970s.(Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
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A careful analysis of health data from Sweden suggests keeping schools open with only minimal precautions in the spring roughly doubled teachers’ risk of being diagnosed with the pandemic coronavirus. Their partners faced a 29% higher risk of becoming infected than partners of teachers who shifted to teaching online. Parents of children in school were 17% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those whose children were in remote learning.
Whether the harms of school closures outweigh the risks of virus transmission in classrooms and hallways has been the subject of intense debate around the world. Outbreaks have demonstrated that the virus can spread via schools to the wider community at least occasionally, and some data suggest teachers have higher than average risk of infection. However, it has been difficult to separate school-based transmission from other confounding factors, especiall