#and i guess academic and creative success and achievements are the only way ill have any sort of life

[rosawayneisawesome]

Riposte: Answers to the questions from Babeworld

We were SO happy with the answers to the questions. They were so insightful and beautiful – exactly what we wanted. What made them even more lovely is that neither knew what the other was writing, so it gave us a sense of intimacy and insight into how they each viewed their friendship as individuals. There were also really beautiful moments where they both describe the same event, such as moving in with each other, yet from their own perspective which creates such an interesting narrative.

Georgina’s Answers

Alright lids

I tried my very very best to hand write my answers but I have acrylic nails and joined up writing. It was hard! And I kept misspelling everything which I guess could be like hehe how authentic and cute but I deno i dont even have dyslexia I just make up spellings cos I know my iPhone will correct me. I can handwrite like a few sentences here and there cos I do like the aesthetic and my handwriting is kinda cute ngl.

Anyway

What about Ashleigh makes you feel joy?

Her tenacity.

How do you think Ashleigh has changed you as a person?

Ashleigh's effect on my personal growth as boring as it may sound has been in like, practical ways. Like teaching me where to apply for mental health help, showing how to access benefits (actually she did the whole form for me) and like taking me to my first AA meeting and holding my hand. With patience and just overall validating my addictions and illnesses she’s given me the tools to make positive changes in my life. Before we met I hadn’t really had many successful friendships having one year expiration date on close relationships before they begin to break down or require distance because I’m so mentally messed up (plot twist-ours became the latter). Relationships are tough, yeno?

What’s one of your favourite memories of Ashleigh?

This is tough because what may be surprising to people is that we’ve only known each other like a couple of years maybe less (I’m terrible with numbers so this could be a lie) but like in the grand scheme of things it’s been brief. And within that time we’ve had so many life altering experiences and relationships and artistic opportunities and traumas and episodes and living situations and laughs. So much happens. I think probably being able to watch her achieve things like a first in her degree, a place at RCA etc where we can cry happy tears at the sight of personal and professional growth.

Has your relationship evolved since you first met?

Definitely. In the beginning I feel like we thrived in codependency spending every waking moment together and sharing a bed. There was comfort in this new found friendship where there was a natural give and take. We wanted to help each other excel emotionally and academically and creatively- seeing each others potential. We were also in between turning points. For Ashleigh it was education and for me it was work. Now our relationship has grown up and matured. I’m content in that our life events won’t always align and it’s okay to explore things as individuals whilst never failing to come back together and return to that sister-like dynamic that is always there.

What were your first impressions of Ashleigh?

First impressions were weird because I was looking for a room in a houseshare where the deposit wasn't crazy and they allowed cats. I was in desperation mode and looking to impress haha. Ashleigh was my point of contact and her facebook pictures presented a mysterious and arty character. I was intimidated by her honestly. I thought she was too cool for me. Cool and well liked, seemingly without trying, and I was shy.

If you could take an attribute from Ashleigh and swap it with one of your own what would it be?

Definitely her admin skills. Anything that requires like problem solving and logic. She’s a pure wiz at adobe, can make a spreadsheet, will keep on top of emails and is productive 12 hours a day. That kind of like natural incentive to work and organise myself and others is something I was not born with. And this extends into her personal life- she has successful interpersonal relationships and life long friends and I truly believe it’s down to her ability of knowing how to compartmentalise everything as well as being a good friend/daughter/girlfriend. Me? I’d lose a friend down the side of a couch or leave my two years late smear test at the back of a bus.

If you could sing a karaoke duet with Ashleigh, what song would you choose?

Break Up Bye Bye by the Frock Destroyers to live out our cock destroyers fantasy

What is your favourite way to spend time with Ashleigh?

As nice as meetings at big institutions, hosting lectures and performing at events are- we can’t wait to get home for a maccies *ashleigh’s apple music recently played playlist plays softly in the background* discussing ideas, stories, aspirations and discourse.

What is Ashleighs hidden talent?

It is her creativity. She credits everyone’s influence but often can’t acknowledge the independent creativity that lies within her.  Within art institutions it’s easy to feel boxed off as a practical person or a conceptual thinker- it’s always logic versus creativity and sometimes we aren’t allowed to believe they can overlap. Her hidden talent is her artistic talent. Hidden from her by herself and hidden from her by the people that are supposed to shine a light on it.

Describe Ashleigh in three words

Tall, Traumatized, Gay

Ashleigh’s Answers

What’s the best thing about being friends with Georgina?

It’s rare to find a friend who you can admit your wrong-doings to and not be judged. It’s also rare to find a friend who helps you use these wrong-doings to become a better person: G is that friend.

Describe Georgina in three words

Trauma, poor and under rated.

What were your first impressions of Georgina?

This girl needs help. Nah I’m joking to be honest the first time we met it was in a weird situation - she was coming around to try and find a house for her and her son (cat) and i wanted to help a fellow poor girlTM in need so she moved straight in. She seemed standoffish and cold, but later i realised she was just overworked and underpaid. She grew on me like a weird rash, I'm pretty sure I did the same to her.

Has your relationship with Georgina evolved since you first met?

Meeting G went from us both being like “who is this bitch.” to “she’s my bitch”. From then on she’s become my art wife, best friend, carer and collaborator, and I would probably have to throw myself off a cliff if she were to cut ties. I think i see so much of myself in her, she’s become of the people i do look up to the most- in a healthy way i promise!!

what’s one of your favourite memories of Georgina?

I think when we landed our first commission and i told her and we both sat and were like ‘we got this. we can do this” emphasis on the we. Being estranged from your family and feeling no one understands you is so isolating, so to feel part of a community, even if it’s just two of you, was such a big moment for me.

how do you think Georgina has change you as a person?

Before i met Georgina I was ashamed to admit i grew up on a council block, ate pasta and sauce and wore primark trackies. She’s basically helped me embrace my authentic self (ew cringe) - but for real! Since meeting G i’ve become more politically engaged, able to express my blackness and owned my disability. She’s taught me to be unapologetically me, and for that I am forever grateful. Babeworld wouldn’t exist without her, she showed me that being an artist doesn’t have to be this firm set of middle class ideals- but rather a safe space for me to express and vocalise my feelings. She constantly uses her privilege (particularly of being white and non disabled) to stand up for me, educate others and give me the support i need to do it for myself also. I’ll come in all guns blazing if you try and be ableist to me now, and I have G to thank for that.

what about Georgina makes you feel joy?

It’s so important to have that one friend who you can just fully vent to. She is a born listener, and a born learner. She takes it upon herself to continue to educate herself about marginalised groups and find ways to support them. the world would be a better place if we had more Georginas.

what’s your favourite way to spend time with Georgina?

I would say a codeine-binge but I don’t want to glamourise prescription drugs taking so: A three course maccies with the footy on sitting nowhere near each other because we have bodily contact. The occasional awkward eye contact as we reach for the last crisp.

what is Georgina‘s hidden talent?

I’d tell you but it’s a trade secret.

if you could take an attribute from Georgina and swap it with one of your own what would it be?

Confidence. I have a weird overconfidence which i wish i could slice in half and give to her because tbh, mines excessive and hers is massively lacking. Someone who actually has as much talent as her deserves to snap her fingers like a princess.

if you could sing at karaoke duet with Georgina what song would you choose?

You don’t want me to sing trust me. Think dying cat meets teenagers during the voice breaking phase of pubity. But if you really want to hurt yourself like that it would HAVE to be The Best- Giggs. It features a scouse rapper and that accent sends me sideways.

[zipgrowth]

‘Prohibition Will Get You Nowhere’: Writer and Activist Cory Doctorow’s Message to Schools and Educators

It’s not unheard of for an instructor to tee up a YouTube video for a lesson, only to have the content blocked by the school or district’s censorware. And while administrators might have good intentions when they decide to use censorware, censorship is often only effective for those who play by the rules.

It’s one reason why writer and activist Cory Doctorow thinks schools and educators should rethink their approach to surveillance and censorship. In science fiction novels like “Little Brother,” he has explored the implications of mass surveillance, and on the popular blog Boing Boing, he has written on topics such as net neutrality, open access and user privacy.

EdSurge recently sat down with Doctorow in San Jose, Calif. at Worldcon, a science fiction convention, to get his take on everything from surveillance in K-12 schools to open access publishing in higher education.

To listen, you can subscribe to the EdSurge On Air podcast on your favorite podcast app (like iTunes or Stitcher). Or, you can read highlights from the conversation below, which have been edited and condensed for clarity.

EdSurge: Schools today expose students to technology in a variety of ways, be it through Minecraft or an iPad. Do you think that the way schools are exposing kids to tech is helping them be creative, or are those ways too stifling?

Doctorow: The promise of technology is its ability to provide individualized interactions for the people who use it, and education is clearly not a one-size-fits-all activity. One of the crises of education, especially tech education, is that we try to walk this line between the things that we are afraid of kids doing, and the things that we hope they’ll do. And it requires, or it results, at least, in a high degree of control.

So, I don't know that I have any great answers about creativity. When I think about electronic media and pedagogy, though, the thing that I worry about is how our systems of protecting kids from the real dangers of the internet revolve around surveillance. And [schools] normalize surveillance, so [students] are necessarily incompatible with any kind of self-help measures to understand surveillance and to eliminate or moderate the amount of surveillance [they’re] under.

So, if you are a student whose school is completely reliant on surveillance tools to stop you from seeing genitals or whatever it is they're worried about, then anything you do to learn about how that system works and how to stop it ends running against the school's own core defense mechanism.

We really do need kids to understand and be literate about surveillance. We're in this great global conversation about social media and what Shoshana Zuboff calls "surveillance capitalism," and kids are perfectly capable of understanding that stuff. If there's anyone who understands what it means to be manipulated by people who think they have your best interest at heart, it's kids. And I think we need to re-think the whole program because it can't be grounded in surveillance if we are also going to produce good citizens who understand and resist surveillance.

There's an argument being made these days that there's a need for more surveillance in schools. Where do you stand on that issue? How much surveillance do you think is appropriate?

The reason the debate is hard is because we are talking about short-term instrumental goals and long-term strategic goals. So, obviously, a school's purpose is to produce well-rounded, self-actualizing, self-starting, full-fledged citizens who are capable of participating in a democracy, and being in the workplace, and having good interpersonal relations.

If you took another domain like interpersonal relations, you could say, "Well, bullying is a problem." Bullying is a problem. The problem of bullying could be prevented by just not letting kids talk to each other. That would be a short-term instrumental goal that would absolutely take a real bite out of bullying, but we can understand immediately why it's not a good one.

And so, normalizing surveillance for kids on the one hand ill-equips them to be literate about surveillance in the world. But on the other hand, it means that a lot of the things that we hope that they'll learn to moderate on their own instead gets moderated by extrinsic motivations. Instead of having good interrelations with other people because good interrelations are fulfilling and produce good outcomes, your good interrelations exist as a formal exercise that you engage in for fear of reprisals.

Whenever we talk about education, we struggle with intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. We want intrinsically motivated students, but extrinsic motivation is powerful. It's quick, and it achieves instrumental goals.

So, at a certain point, we say, "Well, we don't care if the reason you're not bullying the kid next to you is because you've realized that bullying is wrong, or you're afraid of being punished for bullying; what we care about is that the kid next to you isn't bullied.” And that is a totally legitimate argument, but it also produces someone who, as soon as the fear of reprisal goes away, may return to bullying.

If we are going to use surveillance of kids to achieve some instrumental goal, it has to be as a wedge to open a space in which we can teach kids to achieve the same goal without that extrinsic threat of retaliation.

You’ve written a lot on the issue of net neutrality, which was recently reversed. How do you think that reversal is going to affect higher education institutions?

It affects higher education institutions as a subset of the way it affects all of our lives because, of course, the internet is like the nervous system that binds together everything we do in the 21st century. Everything we do now involves it and everything we'll do shortly from now will require it.

Allowing cable operators and phone companies to act as gatekeepers means that all the things that we rely on pluralism or competition to promote, are endangered. It's not like they'll be killed, but they'll be harmed, and there's a kind of spiral where the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer. The people with a lot of eyeballs will get more eyeballs, and the people with fewer eyeballs will have a harder time getting a foothold on an eyeball. I guess that's kind of a weird metaphor.

I think [reversing net neutrality] is catastrophic for all human endeavor. But I also think it's a mistake to think of net neutrality as being won or lost.

Do you think that higher-ed institutions will be at the forefront of that struggle?

Well, they have been. You have things like WiscNet in Wisconsin, where there are statewide fiber networks—really, really good next generation networking—being done through a combination of an academic project and a kind of self-help measure because Wisconsin is very rural. You have these state institutions that are really spread out. I think that there are lots of educational institutions that are de facto [internet service providers].

I wanted to ask you about OERs. It seems like open educational resources are something that people always think are about to take off, but they never really do take off. Why do you think that is? Why do you think they haven't had their lasting moment?

Well, I think that they have [taken off] in the sense that the fight is over about Wikipedia. Any educator who says, "Don't use Wikipedia," instead of teaching their students how to use Wikipedia is an idiot. You're just doing it wrong at that point because even if you hate Wikipedia, your attitude should be harm reduction—because prohibition will get you nowhere.

In terms of open access [journals] like [Public Library of Science]… they're leading edge. Nobody anymore says, "Oh, a PLOS isn't a real journal." They may say, "Well, in my discipline, I am much more likely to get tenure if I'm publishing in a, you know, Springer Journal." But nobody is like, "I'm going to look down at you because you're in PLOS ONE." Being in PLOS ONE is a big deal.

I think the short-run of open access has been less successful than its most enthusiastic boosters would have hoped. But its long-term trajectory is really obvious because we have such a broadly-indexed set of [articles at the pre-publication stages].

What else should our audience know about the work you’re doing?

I always meet students. When I go and do young adult tours, and I go to secondary schools, I meet students who've read Little Brother, and they're like, "How do I hack my school's censorware?"

I always say, ‘Don't do that,’ because if you do that, you could get expelled. Or you could even be charged criminally under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It's really risky…. What you need to do is do ethnography. Go and ask your fellow students and teachers about over-blocking and under-blocking. And then, ask them about their circumvention methods because the other thing we know is that these tools don't work. They only block people who are playing by the rules, but it's not hard to defect from playing by the rules. So, document the ways in which these are inadequate to the purpose that they're set for.

Then, learn how to use the Freedom of Information Act to find out how much your school board has paid for this censorware. Then, learn how to use stock market filings to figure out who is behind your censorware because they're the dirtiest companies in the world—their primary customers are not corporate America, and they're not schools; their primary customers are repressive regimes in the Middle East, and Asia and sometimes in autocratic African states. And they repackage stuff that's used by dictators to spy on their population to help corporate America and educational institutions spy on their stakeholders, their users. So, find out who the war criminals are who get to see all of your data, who get to offshore every click you make.

And then present it. Present it at the PTA. Present it at the board meeting. Call up local journalists and say, 'Do you know how much my school district paid out of your tax dollars to buy inadequate software from war criminals that everyone knows how to get around, and interferes actively with our education, while letting us see eye-watering pornography that none of us want to see?’

And that, I think, is an exercise that teaches real media literacy and also has a chance of affecting change. Even if it never affects any change, those kids will leave the school understanding how to think in the round, holistically about the economic, technical, social and market forces that surround the technologies they use.

‘Prohibition Will Get You Nowhere’: Writer and Activist Cory Doctorow’s Message to Schools and Educators published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

[sherristockman]

The Motivation Factor Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola Research1 has convincingly demonstrated that the more physically active children and teenagers are, the better they do academically. As noted by the authors of a 2012 scientific review: "Physical activity and sports are generally promoted for their positive effect on children's physical health … There is also a growing body of literature suggesting that physical activity has beneficial effects on several mental health outcomes … In addition ... there is a strong belief that regular participation in physical activity is linked to enhancement of brain function and cognition, thereby positively influencing academic performance." Several mechanisms that help explain why physical activity benefits cognition have been proposed. For starters, exercise increases blood and oxygen flow to your brain, which in and of itself increases learning speed.2 Exercise also increases levels of norepinephrine and endorphins, which lowers stress and improves mood. Importantly, exercise triggers growth factors that create new nerve cells and enable brain plasticity, thereby facilitating memory and learning. According to the authors of this 2012 review: "The increasing pressures to improve academic scores often lead to additional instructional time for subjects such as mathematics and language at the cost of time for being physically active … [T]he literature provides inconclusive evidence on the positive longitudinal relationship between physical activity and academic performance. However, there is a strong general belief that this relationship is present, and research in this area is ongoing." The Motivation Factor The featured documentary, "The Motivation Factor,"3 investigates these claims, showing how exercise — and particularly physical education (PE) in school — helps motivate kids and young adults to excel in other areas of life, including academically. "The knowledge that the physical well-being of the citizen is an important foundation for the vigor and vitality of all the activities of the nation, is as old as the Western civilization itself. But it is a knowledge which today, in America, we are in danger of forgetting." This quote is attributed to president-elect John F. Kennedy, given during an interview in December 1960. Unfortunately, his warning went largely unheeded, and today, children and young adults are more sedentary than ever. Not only is this having consequences for physical health, but it's also taking a psychological toll. As noted in the film, exercise has the ability to unite people, to bring them together and form interpersonal bonds. This too plays an important role in a person's ability to succeed in life. In the 1800s, one-third of the time spent in school was dedicated to physical exercise. The ancient Greeks spent a full half of their education working on physical fitness. Kennedy, too, was a firm believer in the idea that exercise produced academic excellence and built integrity. As noted in the film, the historical view has been that physical wellness leads to a healthy mind, body and spirit. "Our current state of physical illiteracy leaves us guessing how to become smart, productive and mentally stable," the narrator notes. Physical Education Is Imperative for Life Success A consequence of striking PE from the curriculum in American schools has led to the worst education and productivity rankings since the '70s. In addition, despite spending more money on health care than any other country on Earth, the U.S. has the highest rate of mental illness, and both obesity and chronic illness has dramatically risen with each passing decade. Throughout the film, you see 50-year-old video clips from PE classes at La Sierra High School in Riverside, California. La Sierra High followed Kennedy's lead, developing one of the most rigorous and progressive daily fitness curricula in the U.S. Long rows of young men looking like they belong in a fitness magazine stream by. It's a far cry from the high school students of today. Tony Asaro, part of La Sierra High's class of 1967, describes how his high school training has served him throughout his life. To this day, he runs 3 miles and does his stretches every morning. It keeps him feeling good, both physically and mentally, and keeps him motivated to pursue life with vigor and optimism. Ed Carisoza, class of '61, agrees, saying he's been exercising ever since his high school days. The fitness habits he developed back then stuck with him for life. The Importance of Discipline and Physical Achievement Research by Harvard Medical School shows that as soon as PE is reinstalled in schools, there's a greater than 80 percent drop in discipline problems within a single semester. This in turn means teachers can focus on teaching rather than policing behavior, and by improving participation and focus, the children learn more and score better on tests. Indeed, studies have repeatedly demonstrated that performance in math and science correlates to physical fitness. Eight years ago, ABC News4 reported on a special program being implemented at Naperville Central High School, west of Chicago, where students could take part in a dynamic gym class at the beginning of the day and had access to exercise bikes and balls throughout the day in their classrooms. The results were astounding. Those who participated nearly doubled their reading scores, and math scores increased twentyfold. Research has also shown that after 30 minutes on the treadmill, students solve problems up to 10 percent more effectively. The film also points out that lack of PE has had a dramatic impact on crime and incarceration rates. Despite having only 4 percent of the global population, U.S. prisons house 25 percent of the global prisoner population. According to experts interviewed in the film, this state of affairs has a lot to do with the fact that youngsters lack direction, discipline and motivation to excel, which they attribute to a lack of physical education and fitness. "It helps your ego, your pride and sense of self," Trent Saxton, a chiropractor from the La Sierra High class of '67, says. In short, physical fitness — not just looking good but actually feeling good — has a tremendous impact on your self-esteem and your capacity to view yourself as strong and capable of overcoming challenges and working toward a goal. A good PE program teaches not just physical endurance but mental endurance. This is the core message of this film: Physical fitness is the missing piece that can unite us as a society, and allow each person to optimize their intelligence, productivity and mental stability. The Mind-Body Connection In researching his book "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain," psychiatrist Dr. John J. Ratey reviewed 1,000 scientific papers on physical fitness and mental performance. "I was amazed at how much we already knew," he says. For example, we know that exercise: Is the best preventive remedy for psychiatric disorders, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.5 Even your risk for age-related hearing loss is reduced through exercise.6 Helps build a brain that resists shrinkage7 and increases cognitive abilities8 and creativity. Researchers at Stanford University found that taking regular walks can increase creativity up to 60 percent.9,10 Promotes neurogenesis, meaning your brain's ability to adapt and grow new brain cells, regardless of your age. Promotes mental health by normalizing insulin resistance and boosting natural "feel good" hormones and neurotransmitters associated with mood control, including endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, glutamate and GABA. Boosts memory by improving hippocampal function11,12 and volume13,14 — a finding that may be an important prevention strategy against Alzheimer's disease, the most serious and deadly form of dementia. Increases peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator (PGC-1α), an important metabolic signal that increases mitochondrial biogenesis. The PGC-1α pathway regulates both mitochondrial activity and mitochondrial replication. This is important, as your brain is the most mitochondrially-dense organ in your body. How Modern Schools Are Crippling Children Over 10,000 published studies now show that sitting is an independent risk factor for chronic disease and premature death. In fact, chronic sitting has a mortality rate similar to that of smoking. Yet U.S. schools now force children to remain seated for most of the day. Making matters worse, changes in school furniture are forcing children into extremely harmful postures. Early school desks were slanted, and extensive research showed a 20-degree slant was ideal for reading and writing. Such desks have since been replaced with horizontal, flat desks, which forces you to hunch over and twist your body into a series of unnatural positions while reading and writing. The end result is postural deformities, leading to pain and further inhibitions to movement. And, without PE providing restorative movements to counteract the poor posture of sitting hunched over a flat desk all day, the ill effects are likely to become chronic. The widespread use of cellphones and tablets among young children — which also put you into a forward-hunching posture — further exacerbate these problems. Physical Movement Forces New Brain Connections You probably know that the way to keep your brain young and agile is to train it, but brain training programs can only take you so far. One of the most effective ways to train your brain is actually to perform complex physical movements and coordination exercises. The more complex and challenging the movement, the greater the benefits to your brain, forcing new neural connections to be formed. Practicing with Indian clubs or maces, for example, where you have to move your body in all directions and really focus on performing complicated coordination patterns are excellent examples of this. Martial arts such as karate, muay Thai (Thai boxing) and taekwondo also tax the brain in a beneficial way. The film also stresses the importance of restorative movement practices, noting that if a single sport is your sole form of exercise, that sport, no matter what it is, will eventually create physical imbalances. What's needed are movements that simply restore your body's natural movement patterns. If you can move well, then you can perform any sport better. You will also be less prone to aches and pains in general. Another great brain challenger is simply spending time in nature. Walking outdoors challenges your brain to a greater degree than walking on a treadmill indoors because you have to pay greater attention to your surroundings. You have to pay attention to where you place your feet so you don't stumble over a rock or a tree root, for example. Being surrounded by nature also increases your sense of being present in the moment, which has neurological and psychological benefits. Fitness Is a Right and a Responsibility As noted in the film, physical fitness used to be both a right and a responsibility as a citizen. We have indeed veered far off course as a nation when it comes to physical education. It goes beyond just learning a sport. PE is about building a strong, fully functioning body, and with it a well-functioning mind and a stable spirit that isn't crushed by every adversity. PE is the one thing that simultaneously addresses all three aspects of being human — body, mind and spirit. When those three aspects are all strong and fit, people are well-equipped to face the world with self-confidence and achieve their dreams. Today, kids don't know what to eat, they don't know how to move, stand or even sit. And, as noted in the film, it's not their fault. They've simply never been taught any of these things, and school is really the best, most logical place for this education to take place. How to Get Your Kids Moving In 1960, JFK issued a challenge to the nation to take fitness seriously, for its individual benefits and for the benefit it can bring to the country as a whole. As JFK said, "A nation is only as strong as its citizens." We're well overdue in answering this call to action, but it's not too late. Wherever you are today, and wherever your children are, you can set a new course for yourself and your family — a course where fitness is a part of your daily life. Chances are, your child's school may not have a robust PE program, if it offers it at all. I'd encourage you to communicate with school administrators, and try to get the school to give PE the attention it deserves. After all, it's one of the most cost-effective ways to improve test scores. Aside from that, start taking fitness seriously as a family. Below are some suggestions to help you get started: First, it's imperative to limit the amount of time your child spends watching TV or playing computer and video games, and to replace some of these sedentary activities with exercise. Children need at least 30 to 60 minutes of exercise each day. Encourage your child to take part in physically engaging activities after school and on the weekends. There are plenty to choose from, from sports and dance classes to gymnastics, bike riding and playing tag with friends. Remember, the trick to getting kids interested in exercise at a young age is to keep it fun. Also keep in mind that spontaneous bouts of exercise throughout the day is actually the ideal way of doing it. Like adults, kids also need variety in their exercise routines to reap the greatest rewards, so be sure your child is getting high-intensity interval-type training, strength building exercises, stretching and core-building activities. Also consider less conventional exercises. Battle ropes, Indian clubs, jumping exercises, agility ladder training, BOSU ball training, bodyweight exercises and slacklining are just a few examples. Being a role model by staying active yourself is one of the best ways to motivate and inspire your kids. If your child sees you embracing exercise as a positive and important part of your lifestyle, they will naturally follow suit. Plan physical activities that involve the whole family. Hiking, bike riding, canoeing, swimming and sports are all great options. Think of it this way: By taking the time to get your kids interested in exercise now, you're giving them a gift that will keep them healthy and happy for the rest of their lives. About the Director I believe in bringing quality to my readers, which is why I wanted to share some information about the creator, Doug Orchard, from "The Motivation Factor." We sat down with Orchard to learn a little more about what goes in to making these films. Thank you, Doug, for sharing with us. What was your inspiration for making this film? Before I started this film, my chiropractor told me he could no longer provide me with relief and referred me to see a spine surgeon. In addition to my back pain, I had a debilitating case of carpel tunnel that prevented me from filming and editing, and I had a frozen shoulder that kept me out of the gym. I learned about “restorative arts” as profiled in the film, which was part of classical PE 100 years ago. I learned how to repair myself using those classic (now forgotten) methods without a physician, surgery or drugs. I repaired (for free) my frozen shoulder and carpel tunnel, and avoided spine surgery (and eliminated all back pain), all by what you’ll see in this film. That saved my insurance company a fortune, but it also eliminated my depression! It transformed my life. I saw my productivity double, and my relationship and interest in others improved dramatically. I wondered, “What if everyone did this? What would our society be like?” We are in a state of physical illiteracy as a society. The root cause to many of our problems including a lack of unity, out-of-control health care costs, mental health problems and ballooning national debt stem from the lack of classical physical education. Physical education wasn’t about sports back then. it was lifetime fitness and it included education on restorative arts. They simply did it better 100 years ago than we do today. It’s shocking to see how far we have fallen. I’ve watched with horror how so many of the youth in inner city schools are destined to become another statistic. I see that this film’s message could solve that particular problem, and so many others, all without legislation. All it takes is the right education, and this documentary could set it in motion. I believe we can transform our society with the message of this movie. What was your favorite part of making this film? Filming the kids at Prescott Middle School in Modesto, California. They are the only school still following this program. I interviewed a young girl there who was homeless (living in a car with her mom and two sisters). She had been bullied in elementary school but not in this middle school. I asked her why, and she said, “PE.” At this school, they followed a classical physical education model where they structured the entire class as a team, and in a real team, labels like “race” or “homeless” take a back seat. The kids who lived in the country club accepted her as an equal. There was no bullying in the school. The boys and girls all worked together. These kids represented the entire social-economic gamut of our society and yet were completely unified. They learned it in PE. I’m not sure I would have believed it if I wasn’t there filming it. As I drove away that night I thought, “These kids think differently than the rest of our society. Their current situation doesn’t determine what they are going to become. They don’t accept labels, and they are learning it all in PE.” Where do the proceeds to your film go? We can’t change our society without a return to what used to be taught in classical physical education. One hundred percent of the film’s proceeds thus far have gone to help make that happen again. The film raised $40,000 in crowdfunding and all of those proceeds and all film sales thus far have gone toward hard costs associated with the film creation, as well as promoting the film’s message to politicians, schools and communities. The film had a combined production cost of time and expense of over $500,000 and it was primarily funded by the filmmaker. Proceeds go toward paying for those costs and promoting the message moving forward, as well as creating additional material on this topic. I have turned down two offers to sell the film since it won the festivals. I turned down $500,000 from a corporation that wanted to fund the film because they wanted to use it to sell services instead of initiate the change our society needs. This is about getting it to happen again, and I hope people use the film to initiate meaningful change in their life, their school, their company or their retirement community. I’m reaching out to Dr. Mercola’s community to help >>>>> Click Here <<<<