Question re: reference to communist-bloc physical education in Practical Programming

[twotubman]

I was looking at the previews for Practical Programming when I saw this sentence:

The U.S. high school student of today does not have the general fitness and movement skills developed by the programs inherent in communist systems, programs in which children learned how to move effectively and began developing base fitness at age 6, long before they entered sport-specific training.

That's very interesting. Could you elaborate on that a little? What were these ?movement skills? that the Soviet kids had that contemporary American kids don't have? Under that system, what sort of fitness would have been normal for 14 year olds with average genetic potential, for the kids who wouldn?t have been channeled into the elite sports system? (If you?ve covered these topics in your book, no need to repeat yourself. I?ll read about them there.) Where did you learn about this? What are some good sources for further reading on the topic of East Bloc physical education?

Thank you for your time.

[Mark Rippetoe]

This is, unfortunately, a question for Dr. Kilgore, who wrote that part of the book. But I suspect that one of the features of a society that directed everyone's private lives to the extent of the Soviet Union was a regimented pedagogical approach to PE at a young age. Unstructured play might, after all, breed dissent, with its selfish emphasis on personal happiness.