P.E. Classes Turn to Video Game That Works Legs
Michael Temchine for The New York Times
Lacy Campbell, 11, center, waits to try the frenetic Dance Dance
Revolution video game at South Middle School in Morgantown, W.Va.
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By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: April 30, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Children don’t often yell in excitement when
they are let into class, but as the doors opened to the upper level
of the gym at South Middle School here one recent Monday, the
assembled students let out a chorus of shrieks.
In they rushed, past the Ping-Pong table, past the balance beams and
the wrestling mats stacked unused. They sprinted past the ghosts of
Gym Class Past toward two TV sets looming over square plastic mats
on the floor. In less than a minute a dozen seventh graders were
dancing in furiously kinetic union to the thumps of a techno song
called “Speed Over Beethoven.”
Bill Hines, a physical education teacher at the school for 27 years,
shook his head a little, smiled and said, “I’ll tell you one thing:
they don’t run in here like that for basketball.”
It is a scene being repeated across the country as schools deploy
the blood-pumping video game Dance Dance Revolution as the latest
weapon in the nation’s battle against the epidemic of childhood
obesity. While traditional video games are often criticized for
contributing to the expanding waistlines of the nation’s children,
at least several hundred schools in at least 10 states are now using
Dance Dance Revolution, or D.D.R., as a regular part of their
physical education curriculum.
Based on current plans, more than 1,500 schools are expected to be
using the game by the end of the decade. Born nine years ago in the
arcades of Japan, D.D.R. has become a small craze among a generation
of young Americans who appear less enamored of traditional team
sports than their parents were and more amenable to the personal
pursuits enabled by modern technology.
Incorporating D.D.R. into gym class is part of a general shift in
physical education, with school districts de-emphasizing traditional
sports in favor of less competitive activities.
“Traditionally, physical education was about team sports and was
very skills oriented,” said Chad Fenwick, who oversees physical
education for the Los Angeles Unified School District, where about
40 schools now use Dance Dance Revolution. “What you’re seeing is a
move toward activities where you don’t need to be so great at
catching and throwing and things like that, so we can appeal to a
wider range of kids.”
A basic D.D.R. system, including a television and game console, can
be had for less than $500, but most schools that use the game choose
to spend from $70 to $800 each for more robust mats, rather than rip
apart the relatively flimsy versions meant for home use.
In a study last year, researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,
Minn., found that children playing Dance Dance Revolution expended
significantly more energy than children watching television and
playing traditional video games. West Virginia, which ranks among
the nation’s leaders in obesity, diabetes and hypertension, has
sponsored its own study and has taken the lead in deploying the
game, which requires players to dance in ever more complicated and
strenuous patterns in time with electronic dance music.
As a song plays, arrows pointing one of four directions — forward,
back, left, right — scroll up the screen in various sequences and
combinations, requiring the player to step on corresponding arrows
on a mat on the floor. Players can dance by themselves, with a
partner or in competition. (Though the game, which is made by Konami
of Japan, began in arcades, it is now most commonly played on Sony’s
PlayStation 2 and Microsoft’s Xbox game consoles.)
As a result of a partnership among West Virginia’s Department of
Education, its Public Employees Insurance Agency and West Virginia
University, the state has committed to installing the game in all
765 of its public schools by next year. Almost all of its 185 middle
schools already use it.
The mastermind behind the project is Linda M. Carson, Ware
distinguished professor at West Virginia University’s School of
Physical Education and director of the state’s Motor Development
Center.
“I was in a mall walking by the arcade and I saw these kids playing
D.D.R., and I was just stunned,” she said. “There were all these
kids dancing and sweating and actually standing in line and paying
money to be physically active. And they were drinking water, not
soda. It was a physical educator’s dream.”
In February, Ms. Carson and her main collaborator, Emily Murphy, a
doctoral candidate at the university’s School of Medicine, announced
results of a multiyear study. They found significant health benefits
for overweight children who played the game regularly, including
improved blood pressure, overall fitness scores and endothelial
function, which reflects the arteries’ ability to deliver oxygen.
None of that would come as a surprise to Maureen Byrne, mother of
two boys in Chesterfield, Mo., who introduced the game to her local
school district after seeing its impact on one of her sons.
“My oldest son, Sean, used to have love handles; he was kind of
pudgy, and I’ll be honest: we were worried about it,” she said. “We
had heard of D.D.R., and I got it for him for his birthday. We put
limits on the other video games he plays, but we told him he could
play D.D.R. as much as he wanted. And now it’s like he’s a different
kid. He’s playing sports and running, and we see D.D.R. as like his
bridge to a more active lifestyle.”
Ms. Byrne and her family demonstrated the game for the local
parent-teacher organization in the hope of convincing it to
underwrite a test at school.
“I remember going to the P.T.O. meeting and getting in front of all
of them without my shoes on and doing the moves, and that was kind
of funny,” said Sean, now a 12-year-old sixth grader.
Today, eight schools in the Parkway School District, based in
Chesterfield, have their own D.D.R. systems, and three other game
systems circulate among various schools in the district, said Ron
Ramspott, the district coordinator of health and physical education.
“Our teachers are really buying into D.D.R. as a way to promote both
physical health and learning,” he said. “When you’re playing the
game you really have to process the information and then also do the
moves physically, so we think it can help with brain development as
well.”
As Leighton Nakamoto, a physical education teacher at Kalama
Intermediate School in Makawao, Hawaii, put it: “The new physical
education is moving away from competitive team sports and is more
about encouraging lifetime fitness, and D.D.R. is a part of that.
They can do it on their own, and they don’t have to compete with
anyone else.”
Mr. Nakamoto said that he had used the game in class for four years
and that his school had also installed the game in its “Active
Lifestyle” room, where students are allowed and encouraged to play
in their free time.
Dave Randall, the educational specialist for coordinated school
health for the Hawaii Department of Education, said Hawaii was
trying to put together a program like West Virginia’s to get the
game into all of the state’s 265 public schools over the next three
years.
Back in West Virginia, Anna Potter, 12, and Mikayla Leombruno, 13,
were not concerned about all of the academic theories as they
shimmied and bounced to the beat in Mr. Hines’s gym class.
“I like that you get to listen to music and you don’t have to be on
a team or go anywhere special to play,” Anna said after their song.
“If you do baseball or basketball, people get really competitive
about it.”
Mikayla chimed in, “And you don’t have to be good at it to get a
good workout.”
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