Sport, health and lifestyle - the importance of childrens participation in physical and sporting activities / S. Laskienė

In Lithuania physical activity of children and adolescents are widely studied however not in depth. This article is devoted to importance of participation of children in physical and sports activity.Introduction. An overview of the scientific research and statistical data available in Lithuania points to the fact that physical activity of children and adolescents are widely studied however not in depth. The abundance of scientific methods and methodologies used in research makes it difficult to compare the data, consequently, contradicting conclusions and evaluations of the data are made. Contradictions are also present in the assessment of physical activity of children. The majority of researchers tend to acknowledge that children’s physical activity is not satisfactory. However, the international study of health behaviour in school-aged children (HBSC) after nearly ten years of research has confirmed that the change in criteria for assessing physical activity changes the results of research considerably. Accordingly, depending on the chosen criterion for assessing physical activity, the result in Lithuanian studies of school-aged children within the international scale of data comparison ranges from the lowest to the highest. So one of the main research problems in this field is low validity of research methods. Despite their cultural differences children and adolescents have similar demands—appropriate home, care, healthy nutrition, education, and, finally, physical exercise. Therefore, strategic goals to improve children and adolescents’ health across countries are also similar: to implement health care programs by emphasizing regular medical examinations and promoting physical education. The promotion of physical education, physical exercise and fitness is an important and demanding task.

Attitude towards Physical education and sports in educational systems Since the reestablishment of independent Lithuania on 11th of March 1990, a change in the attitude towards physical education has taken place. Physical education is treated as a holistic (unified) trend with a particular emphasis on the physical nature of a young person, his or her health, physical abilities, age, sex, lifestyle, and right to one‘s free choice, but not on the mere recording of results of certain physical capacities (Lietuvos respublikos Švietimo ir mokslo ministerija, 1999). Physical education is seen as a tool to achieve personal physical, mental and spiritual harmony, i.e. to improve young people‘s health. It is essential that physical activity in schools would inspire the joy and pleasure of movement, self-confidence, and respect to the activity of others. Such activity should make young people realise how important exercising is to their health and, thus, instil in them the habit of regular exercising. For this purpose four new educational curricula of physical education have been introduced in Lithuania since 1990 on this purpose. According to the law of Physical education and sport three lessons of P.E. weekly should be introduced in primary, secondary and higher educational institutions and not less than one hour per day in pre-school institutions since the 1995 (Lietuvos Respublikos Kūno kultūros ir sporto įstatymas, 1995). One of the reasons preventing schools from increasing schoolchildren’s physical activity or introducing the third lesson of physical education per week is insufficient availability of facilities and equipment. [...].