Lazy kids or bad planning: why won't Australian kids get off their butts?

Little community space for kids to move

More and more kids are growing up in high-rise apartments all over Sydney and Melbourne. Swimming pools have become over-used and crowded, from what I see in Sydney and suburbs. There are not enough of them to keep kids active in the long summer months. For instance, the huge numbers of kids in Western Sydney have very few pools. And Western Sydney has one of the youngest populations in Australia. Parramatta recently lost a very big and heavily used pool. All this might well be paralleled by similar figures for outlying suburbs of Melbourne and other Australian cities.

"Sit down, shut up"

Look at lists of high achievers as they emerge. We are rewarding kids who are quiet, studious and do what tired teachers want. Look at the balance between boys and girls on high-achiever lists. And the high number of recent immigrants' kids who achieve- with extra coaching at large expense - while old Aussie working-class kids lag behind. Boys from working-class families lag most of all. Boys feature large on lists of children who are 'violent' or 'difficult', schools tell me. In brief, we tell kids for the critical years of their lives to "sit down , shut up, write this down". Not much room for movement here.

The future looks grim

What kind of world are we making for our kids? It will be a world beset by high health costs due to inactivity and massive obesity. Feeble people will easily fall down and many will suffer bad injuries. Kids will be buried in ipads and iphones, just as their parents already are. Our cities will be jammed with jerry-built, towering apartments, possibly unsafe because of fire risk. Journeys to school will get ever longer and longer, and more hazardous on crowded roads and footpaths. Already, in our largest cities, hardly any kids walk to school.

Thus for all these reasons, kids won't get out to play very often. You can forget your Don Bradmans and Ian Thorpes and Cathy Freemans. The sporting Aussie will be a thing of the past.