NYC School Labels 66-Pound Girl ‘Fat’
According to the New York City Public Schools, this girl is fat.
A New York City mother is quite upset with her daughter’s school after receiving a letter labeling the child as overweight despite the fact that there’s no apparent sign the girl has any weight problem at all:
A New York City mom was fit to be tied Wednesday after her 4-foot-1, 66-pound daughter came home from school with a note calling her fat.
Eight-year-old Gwendolyn Williams is anything but fat, but her mom worries that the school’s note, citing her body mass index, has left her daughter confused about her body.
“My daughter is thin; she knows she doesn’t have a weight problem, but that night, I caught her grabbing the skin near her waist, and she asked me, ‘is this what they were talking about?”‘ Laura Bruiji Williams, the girl’s mom, told FoxNews.com. “It was awful to see.”
Gwendolyn, along with her classmates, were handed a “Fitnessgram” sealed with a sticker at her public school in Brooklyn. The class was told not to open the letters, issued by the New York City Department of Education, but like most of her friends, she couldn’t resist and read it.
“Some of her friends found out they were obese,” her mom said. “They were crying.”
The New York Post first reported that Williams approached the school’s principal to complain about the letter. The principal was sympathetic, but reiterated that students were given the instructions not to read the letter.
The so-called “Fitnessgrams” are issued annually in New York City by the department. They are intended to assess students from grades K-12 to help support lifelong health, according to the department’s website. About 870,000 students each year take home these reports.
“With body image such an issue, it’s amazing to me that these letters weren’t mailed to parents,” she said. “What kid’s not going to open that?”
The BMI report value in assessing health has been criticized. Gwendolyn is 4’1 and weighs 66 pounds.
Oddly, according to this BMI calculator available online someone who is 4’1” and weighs 66 points has a BMI of 19.3, which is on the lower end of what is considered “normal weight.” So, unless there is some different method of calculating BMI for children, there doesn’t even seem to be any basis under the so-called “science” of BMI for calling this girl overweight in any sense of the word. Beyond that, though, this incident strikes me as nuts for two other reasons.
First of all, the idea that kids wouldn’t open a report like this given to them to give to their parents is simply absurd. Kids are naturally curious and, given a note their told not to open on a subject that many of them no doubt consider intensely personal even at that young age, they’re going to open it. Exactly how a school district bureaucrat thinks it would be a good idea for a kid to see an official pronouncement from the government that they’re fat is beyond me. If they wanted this to be private, then they should have emailed or mailed it to the parents directly.
Second, I’m not really sure that it’s appropriate for schools to be making pronouncements like this in the first place. The question about the health of a child, and whether or not they are a healthy weight, is more appropriately a discussion between parents and pediatricians, not parents and school bureaucrats. Yes, it is true that there are childhood obesity problems, especially in low income neighborhoods, and that many of these kids don’t have regular doctor’s visits. However, it seems to me as though this is yet another example of how educators are being forced by government to move beyond their traditional and appropriate role of, well, educating children, and being turned into agents of the Nanny State. At the very least, putting them in that role turns the relationship between parents and schools into one that is potentially far more adversarial than it needs to be, and that can’t be good for the children involved.
In any case, though, I think we can all agree that school districts shouldn’t be telling children directly that they’re fat, even if they are, and that in this particular case the idea that Gwendolyn is fat in any sense of the word is just utterly absurd.
H/T: Jazz Shaw
These so called “bmi” tables are very inaccurate and disregard such factors as bone structure, as some persons have a larger bones. It also can be inaccurate with people who have more muscle: athletes and gym rats will also show up as overweight according to the bmi.
On the other point, you are 100% correct that the schools should not be in this type of activity. It is one thing to involve students in pbysical education, games, and sports. It is something else to put students through any sort of physical examination, even if it is just weight and height screening, without parent’s consent (totally illegal). This is another instance of schools straying into all kinds of areas instead of trying to teach children how to read and writing. I have heard that schools don’t even teach cursive writing anymore. This “weight” thing is, of course, the result of some bureaucrat interfering in the school system.
NYC: isn’t that where they tried to outlaw large soft drinks ?
I read a while back that one school system had banned “dodgeball”. Too rough they said! Weird, ridiculous. I guess they would consider tic tac toe as too intense. Rock, paper, sizzors: too violent !.
They need to get the bureaucats, politicians, and lawyers out of the schools. Turn them back over to the teachers.
We should go back to the days of the Presidential Fitness tests, when determining whether you were fat or not was paradoxically both public and subtle. Nowadays we pamper our kids with individualized letters telling them they’re fat.
They are just doing what the laws say they are supposed to do, which is a lot more than they want to do, but which, for all too many parents is exactly what they want them to do. After all, somebody has to babysit the little brats.
As to
I am quite sure the administrators would agree, but not everybody has e-mail and mailing things… Well this may come as a shock to your low taxes libertatian Ideologies, but that costs money. Something that you and your political bedmates have made sure to be in short supply for many of the schools. In such short supply that many of these grossly overpaid unionized public school teachers are having to skim some money from their million dollar savings accounts to buy supplies for some of their less fortunate students.
Serves them right.
Ugh, I’m always of two minds about obesity in the country. On the one hand, it is a legitimate public-health concern, but on the other, it’s an area of very real, awful, and pointless social stigma.
I have no problem with any adult choosing to do things that lead to gaining weight, unless they are actually threatening their own lives. Eating “unhealthily” is not like smoking cigarettes, since there’s no secondhand smoke, no chemical addictiveness (well, maybe not), and one’s choice of diet and exercise has to intersect in a complicated way with everything else — you can choose to just not smoke, but you can’t choose to just not eat (or, conversely, to spend most of the day making a living through exercise, as our ancestors had).
And the way that anti-fat prejudice intersects with sexism — essentially saying to women, from birth to death, that they are the mere custodians of bodies which really belong to society — is especially pernicious. In a way, millions of girls and boys in this country recieve this letter every day.
I think Katie Couric’s new documentary Fed Up (which I haven’t seen, only heard about from a Daily Show interview with her) might address the issue in a way I would be comfortable with. If I interpreted the trailer correctly, it says this country is getting fatter not because of some kind of moral decay (which is how almost everyone, including those American getting fatter, seems to frame it), but because of a combination of outside factors including changes in the world of agriculture and food production, counter-productive effects of government dietary guidelines, and so on.
The entire concept of BMI is flawed. The formula is weight / height ^ 2. Basic knowledge of the cube law indicates that, all other things being equal, weight is proportional to the cube of height, not the square, so it’s going to become widely inaccurate for anyone with a large deviation from average height, either up or down.
@Lenoxus: You bring up an interesting point concerning todays foods. More and more people having digestion and stomach issues: gluten, wheat modifications? As far as people eating more these days, think about this. Years ago our home meals were larger. On Sundays it was always a big lunch after Sunday School and church: chicken, beef roast, and with sides of potatoes and gravy, then cake or pie. Yet there was less obesity. Fast foods? Overblamed. I don’t see fast food places as popular today as they were in the ’70’s and ’80’s. So I would really take a look at the gm food that have hormones, vitamins, and steroids in them. One thing that needs to be done is cutting out so much sodium in foods. Not needed.
A good fitness site is “Crossfit” : loaded with execise, training, and nutrition information. You may have a Crossfit center near you. That will get you in shape for sure. Remember, start out easy and slow, stretch and warm up, take water breaks. I see people in their 60’s and 70’s into that.
Again, the schools have no business pushing kids through physicals without their parents permission. This seems ironic when you hear of school systems cutting out PE classes so they can get in more testing ! And common, fun playground games that we loved such as dodgeball, touch football, and kickball are being stopped in many a school system: too rough, and some kids might just get upset if they lose!
<clickety clickety to the Post’s article and images>
She is a bit chubby and the trend isn’t good. Just saying.
Chief Wiggum: You know you’re not supposed to go in there. What is your fascination with my Forbidden Closet of Mystery? — “The Simpsons”, episode “This Little Wiggy.”
What do you bet the every kid at the school got the same letter? The story says that every kid got a letter, but the question is how many were like this.
We are talking about government bureaucrats – and without doubt each school is required to report how many letters were sent out and how many “at risk” kids were identified. The more at risk kids identified, the more funding will be made available to help those poor kids!
And whatever bureaucrats are about, the number one priority is always growing their budgets.
I agree that sending home a letter with the results was stupid – how about sending home a notice stating that results are available either by phone or email and have the parents be responsible for getting the results? If they don’t want them, then fine, they don’t have to contact the school for them. Maybe have them sign a note to be returned with the kid that they understand what’s being made available to them.
Obesity in children does affect how they learn. Kids with blood sugar problems, breathing difficulties and aches and pains are never going to be totally focused on learning. Not to mention the troubles they suffer with bullying and the aggravation it causes the school to deal with those issues.
@Tyrell:
Well, that’s true at least. My BMI is 25.1, which puts me just into the “overweight” category. But I’m competitive weekend athlete who comes in the top 10 finishers in 5K races, runs half-marathons, bench-presses more than my body weight, works out for two hours every day six days a week, and over the course of an average month will, depending on the season, play soccer, squash and tennis as well as swim, kayak, kick-box, surf, ski and bike, and whose diet consists largely of salmon, chicken, green vegetables, whole grains, and fresh fruit. BMI does not at all reflect my fitness level.
My doctor maintains that the BMI might be useful for population studies, but is absolutely meaningless for individual assessments. He uses the height/waist ratio, which apparently gives much better predictive results.
For instance, going by BMI, the average NBA and NHL player is overweight bordering on obese, as are many Olympic athletes. Most of us would love to be overweight by that standard.
Its absolutely silly they’re using it to assess individual students. And stupid beyond belief that they put something like that in a report the child is supposed to take to their parents. Seriously, aren’t they supposed to be the people who understand children?
@beth:
All true. What’s that got to do with BMI though?
It’s cute that you think that half of these kids will ever even be taken to a pediatrician by their parents. Sure, they’ll just take the day off and lose the income from one of their two minimum-wage jobs to hang around a doctor’s office.
For a lot of kids, saying “leave it to the parents” is the same as saying “let’s make sure it never gets taken care of.”
@george: @george: Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the standard for testing these days. Hopefully it will change sooner rather than later to a more realistic measurement.
This is nothing new. My youngest son graduated from high school over 25 years ago with decent grades. I still had to teach him how to write after he entered college. I had to teach my older son math, in fact I not only taught him but his friends would come over for tutoring in the evening. To make matters even worse many of those friends had parents who were teachers.
So what’s responsible for this? I place much of the blame on my fellow baby boomers. They just couldn’t find the time to actually be parents. At the same time these parents voted for property tax reductions that cut school funding.
The schools are not guiltless however. Massive bureaucracies that had little to do with actual education were created. In addition it was nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher because of union work rules. It took me six months to get the worst math teacher in the world fired.
An educational death spiral was created. The children of my fellow boomers didn’t know how to be good parents.
When I worked in high-end fitness in Los Angeles (early 2000s), BMI was used to shame clients into “working harder.” But when the clients went home, the personal trainers laughed it off, knowing BMI considered most of them “overweight” as well.
How you look can be related to being fit. But a lot of people “look” fat who are actually fit due to our social conditioning on what “thin” should look like, regardless of what “thin” does to the owner of the body.
For example, when my somewhat ample sister went for chemo therapy, she did well, and has made a full recovery. The nurses told her the women who were sticks all their lives and come in for treatment simply don’t have the reserves to fight back.
Fitness is much more than physical “working out.” To be effective requires balance.
I’m 53, 5-10, 205, with body fat of 13%. I’m in the gym 5 days a week, and have been for over 35 years. I look like i”m in my 30’s, not 50’s.
However…
…based on BMI, I’m obese. Seriously. Look it up. Way obese.
BMI tables are a joke if you’re an athlete or muscular.
@Tyrell:
Wow, you had a sheltered childhood.
In my elementary and middle schools, if we ever had mandatory dodge ball, where everyone was required to participate, the bullies would practically wet themselves with anticipation. Here was a teacher-sanctioned opportunity to break the glasses (or nose) of that spazzy little kid nobody likes, because he’s not coordinated enough to defend himself or dodge. What could be better?
The main issue with dodge ball is that from a teacher perspective it’s a real pain in the posterior. I suspect it has more to do with that than actual injury.
@rudderpedals:
No. Just saying.
My daughter has similar height/weight and got a similar notice. The BMI tables change with age so she would be in the 95th percentile. Thankfully, our pediatrician ignored the BMI and concentrated on the active girl who eats right and said not to worry.
The BMI is a piece of garbage when applied to adults let alone children. It’s is 19th century pseudo-science, dating from an age when phrenology was respectable. It’s useful in huge aggregates, but pointless on an individual. Ignore the BMI. Look at their diet and lifestyle. If that’s good, who cares?
But the BMI is double garbage when applied to children. Children age at different rates and dispose of baby fat at different ages.
@Rafer Janders: Half marathons? Dude, step it up!
Yes, 13.1 is a great run. But you can’t stop at half measures. Go for the whole thing!
While I don’t agree with how the note was sent or using BMI, saying a child is 1 pound overweight is not saying the child is fat. That is at least one ridiculous mischaracterization in the reporting and given the source I’m guessing there are more.
Hmmm. The New York Post and Fox (THE GOVERNMENT HAS RUN AMOK!!) News.
That tells us a lot right there.
That being said, we should be working to minimize, not maximize, messages to girls/young women that they should be ashamed of their bodies.
Does a school sanctioned “game” that involves kids throwing something at each others heads sound like a good idea to you?
When I was little, I was a weak, un-cordinated kid who was scared of getting hurt. Gym classes were a miserable experience.
By high school, I had grown enough so that I was a halfway decent varsity athlete and a star in gym class, so I saw both sides of the coin growing up. Kids face enough challenges without putting them though something like dodgeball, which is fun for a few jerks and sucks for everyone else.
@wr:
Eh, I’ve done full marathons in the past, and will probably do a few more. But (a) wear and tear on the joints and knees and (b) the extra time it takes for training make me prefer the halfs, which I can knock out pretty easily a few times a year without cutting into any of my other sports.
@anjin-san:
On the plus side, it’s a great learning experience for the new America of massive income inequality.
@Tyrell:
Actually, I whole-heartedly support this ban. In my experience as a kid, dodgeball invariably meant that the least athletic kids got targeted by the most athletic and often came away from the game in pain. Oh sure, they weren’t supposed to throw the ball hard, etc. But always, they goal was to throw the ball as hard as you could at the kid least able to avoid it. Not necessarily the obese kids; the nerds were much more often the target.
As to BMI, whenever it is mentioned someone (usually lots of people) will invariably pile on about how athletes can be rated obese when the are actually fit, etc. But the thing is, those people know they are fit. Those of you who have talked about how active you are in spite of “high” or “overweight” BMI know that you can ignore it.
It’s an imperfect tool, at best, but it can be a useful tool for the average, non-athlete, who just wants to get some idea of whether their weight is okay. In particular, it is useful (in my experience) for proving to women and girls that they do NOT need to lose weight. Surprisingly, seeing that their BMI puts them in the normal range has, at least on occasion, convinced women I know that they really are healthy.
Oh, and for this girl the school is wrong. Her BMI is in the normal range for a girl her age.
@anjin-san: At the schools where I have seen dodge ball played, there were clear rules to prevent injuries and teachers supervised: no throwing above the waist, throw from the lines, stop when someone is down, and a soft, sponge ball was used. I even got out there and played, and talk about being winded. Try ten minutes of running side to side dashes as fast as you can go. My PE consisted of a game called ‘crab soccer” where you could get kicked to death if you kept the ball too long, rope climbing, trampoline (no pads, the kids surrounded it to stop you from bouncing out, towel football, and a few other games that would never be played now. I don’t recall any serious injuries and the pe teachers were tough on any bullying. When we got home, we would play real football against some grown ups across the street. Now that was tough. No telling how many ribs I broke.
Part of play period, recess, PE, PT, or whatever you want to call it, is the social skills: learning to get along.
Watch the video “300 Workout”. Also, Crossfit is an excellent site for training ideas and nutrition advice. Their training centers are not fancy, and not cheap. But most of what they do can be done at home.
Also, another great video shows the workout that the Univ. of Florida basketball team goes through – totally extreme.
See also: Army Rangers fitness guidelines (see if you can stack up). The Navy Seals also have an excellent fitness book out – sells for about $11-$15. Any other good fitness ideas or sites?
Any one into mud races?
@Tyrell: Seriously? Where I went to high school we played with volleyballs and these little red rubber balls a that were a bit bigger than baseballs. I have a two inch scar where a hit to the face cut open my forehead with my glasses. Back eyes and the occasional concussion were common. The PE teachers encouraged bullying because it “toughened up” the “sissy” kids. There were a few broken bones every year, though mat ball was banned my freshman year after a kid got his knew twisted around backwards.
Sounds like you went to a soft school, guess I can see why you’d think banning dodgeball is ridiculous.
@Tyrell:
Don’t forget antibiotics. They’ve been fed to livestock since the 1950s to increase the growth rate; what do you think they’re doing to you?
Yes. This is absurd. While I do agree that when I see a ten yr old looking like a little Buddha it is a form of child abuse, this is absurd. U want to see childhood obesity go to an elementary school in San Antonio or Houston. It was alarming.
@ Tyrell
I grew up with this guy, if you really want to get in shape, he is the one to talk to. Also you get to work out surrounded by some of the best scenery in the world.
Sorry here is the link
My dodgeball experience is more on the “soft” side, but I’m okay with the sport being banned in contexts where, if it were played, it wouldn’t be safe and fun for everyone.
In elementary school, when I was small and shy, I actually really enjoyed the game because it meant very little attention was paid to me (though I should add that I wasn’t bullied except verbally, and not until my last year there), so I could simply wander around thinking about dinosaurs (as Dave Barry would say). Dodgeball in that context was always played by individuals running around at random, and was mostly a chance for the athletic/popular kids to throw the ball at each other; the rest of us just had to avoid the crossfire.
In my middle school, dodgeball was effectively the school sport — nearly always between two teams, so targeting unathletic opponents wasn’t a strong strategy. Everyone was familiar with the rules and collectively “on board” with the game. When I read accounts like James’s, of teachers who actually framed athletic violence as a good thing, I’m disgusted.
I entirely approve of the modern “Everyone’s a winner” attitude that so many reactionaries bemoan for its political correctness. I really don’t want us to return to the days of corporal punishment, and nor do I get some people’s bizarre need to assign children to castes (“Oh, don’t tell him he can do science, don’t tell her she can do math, they’re the stupid kids” — not to mention this post’s topic) as if children don’t do that enough themselves.
Some adults seem to value authority over children for its own sake, rather than as a tool to be applied very carefully. Creepy.
@Rafer Janders: Whew! And to think all I do is go to work…. 😉
In my high school we had a game called Hoc-Soc. A combination of hockey, soccer, and basketball. Played in a gym. At 130/35 I once fore checked a guy who weighed 220 plus halfway across the gym floor (leverage). To say that he was embarrassed that a scrawny little fuck like me could do that to big old he man him would put it lightly. I spent the next 2-3 weeks of gym class running for my life.
Eventually, my 3rd and 4th Lumbar vertebrate were broken after I got checked into a door jam.
Dodge ball is for pussies.
@Kari Q:
No, the school is right, as least as far as her BMI goes. You check out the CDC’s calculator here: http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/dnpabmi/calculator.aspx
You can also check out the CDC’s tables and charts here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_11/sr11_246.pdf
She’s well into the 90th percentile. The school is applying the BMI correctly; it’s the BMI that’s the problem. 19th century pseudo-science tends to be.
@Stormy Dragon: THANK YOU. All this time I thought I was the only one who noticed that people are 3-dimensional.
@DrDaveT: At my school, we only used dodgeball-type balls in the gym. Out at recess, we used basketballs and soccer balls.
@Rafer Janders: Fair enough!
@anjin-san: Awesome guy. Unbelievably physically fit. Yet his theme seems to be “anyone can do it”. Great site to go to when I feel lazy. That man could motivate anyone.
@Hal_10000:
Her BMI is 19.3. She’s fine.
so what are the rest of ny’ers, “fatter”? i’m obese, all 6’1″/200 pounds with a 44 inch chest and 34 inch waist.