9-27-12 LETTER

Dear CNN, I am a Senior at Philip Barbour High School in Philippi, West Virginia. In our school, physical fitness is probably the least of our worries when it should be one of our most important subjects. It is needed for a kid to have a "normal" life. If everyone in our school was physically fit, bullying would go down by at least 50%. Most bullies are out to make fun of the weak or less fortunate. If everyone was at least healthier in their everyday life, less bullying would occur. It makes sense. If you take away what everyone has to make fun of, what would they have left? In my opinion, bullying is the worst aspects of public schooling. When being the victim of a bully, you're concentrated about that person seeing you throughout the day. You don't have enough mental ability to focus on what class work you have for that particular day. I've seen multiple kids avoid certain parts of our school just to get away from the harassment. Most kids have no access to any type of gym outside of school. Yeah, there are city parks, but why would you go there if you don't like 90% of the people there? These city parks aren't very up-to-date either. In Belington, the city park has metal plates for basketball backboards. Schools possess some of the nicest gyms, but are only in use during school. Unless you can run for forty-five minutes a day, cut down to around thirty minutes after changing, isn't enough time to be really active. After instruction time, it is cut down to about twenty minutes of actual physical activity including break time. In conclusion, I think it should be a much more available aspect of school. All school consists of is class work in which most of our students do fairly well. Bullying would be reduced. People would feel safer at school. It would be an all around brighter school atmosphere.