Heart Monitors In Middle School Gym Class?

An anonymous reader writes "My son brought home an order form from his middle school. Apparently the 7th (his grade) and 8th graders are being asked (required?) to purchase their own straps for the heart monitors they're to wear during gym class. I know nothing yet of the device in question, but have left a voice-mail with the assistant principal asking him to call me so I may ask some questions about the program and the device. My tinfoil-hat concern is that the heart rate data will be tied to each child, then archived and eventually used for/against them down the road when applying for insurance, high-stress jobs, etc. 'I see you had arrhythmia during 7th grade pickle ball? No insurance for you' Has anyone heard of such a program, or had their child(ren) take part in it? Does the device transmit to the laptop the overweight gym teacher will be watching instead of running laps with the kids? Perhaps data is downloaded from the device after the class? Or am I just being paranoid? Thanks for any insight."

Holy shit?

[Karganeth (1017580)]

Are people really this paranoid?

Re:Holy shit?

[Hatta (162192)]

Whatever happened to permission slips? Kids run and play. There are inherent risks in allowing them to run and play, but the damage done by not letting them run and play is even greater.

Re:Holy shit?

[ReverendLoki (663861)]

Just to point out, it's the libertarians (little l, meaning the political ideology, not the political party) that are most likely to question what these are being used for, and if they are to become some sort of permanent record, to take umbrage with that. Although you are a tad more likely to find libertarians in the Republican party as opposed to the Democratic party, libertarian != conservative.

Myself, I am a slightly left-leaning centrist libertarian, and a new dad (5 days ago! Woot!), I can understand the concern. This is the sort of odd request that I just have to ask "What is this being used for anyways?" I'm not saying I automatically disapprove of it, whatever it is.

yeah, I know, you're just a troll trying for a few bites. I don't care. This really isn't a response to you anyways. I've just seen too many knee-jerk "let's paint everyone who doesn't agree with us with one broad stroke and thus be able to disregard them all" reactions lately.

Re:Holy shit?

[Lemmy Caution (8378)]

OK, stories like this reveal a fascinating contradiction.

The original question expressed concern that a child's heart rate and other health info would be used to either deny them health insurance or force them into a higher risk pool.

But the libertarian presumption is that free markets with full information work better for everyone involved. The insurers want information that will enable them to remove expensive-to-insure people from coverage where possible, or at least to put them in a much more expensive pool. While they want perfect information (to make insuring people as low-risk and profitable as possible,) clearly the parents of kids who may have pre-existing conditions do not want that information available. Wouldn't the libertarian approach be to allow insurers to take every possible measure to get that information out into the open, so that they can tier insurance appropriately? Doesn't that mean that people who are loath to share their information are probably "free-riding" on lower-risk populations? Wouldn't that make the refusal of information (such as heart rates, etc.) a reasonable basis for refusing insurance, or at least charging a higher premium for it?

Re:Holy shit?

[Phanatic1a (413374)]

They'll be allowed to run and play, but if they do it during school, they'll wear a heart monitor.

Yes. First, there's the financial cost; it's hard enough for schools to afford, you know, *gym equipment* in the first place, and now you want them to buy heart monitors for every kid as well? Kids can learn about heart rates and pulses quite adequately without that expenditure, and as far as target heart rate and exercise goes, two fingers on the wrist and a frigging watch with a second hand work fine.

Second, there's the social cost. You're either teaching them that "This routine physical activity we're requiring you to engage in is so dangerous it could *kill you* and you need to wear one of these to be safe," or "Our society is so ridiculously litigious and cowardly that this is what it's come to." That generation's going to be even more fucked up than the one that thought the TSA sounded like a good idea.

Oh, how fitting. The captcha I've been given to post this is 'bogeymen.'

Re:Holy shit?

[Vancorps (746090)]

While I understand your point of view I also understand the point of view of parents who's kids have actually died from congenital heart defects which show themselves during physical activity. These heart monitors would alert someone before the kid actually collapsed.

So yes, what they are doing could kill them if it isn't monitored appropriately but that doesn't stop the activity from being important. This is just a way to ease the paranoia of parents while allowing PE classes to stay as opposed to what strategy a lot of schools take which is to get rid of PE entirely. I think this option is better than that option as PE should be considered core education since exercise is something that kids are going to have to do their entire lives.

Yes, it's probably going too far and we as a society should stop being scared of every little things. Playgrounds worked well when our parents were kids and when we were kids, yes, a kid will occasionally break his arm or leg but that's a part of growing up.

Re:Holy shit?

[Smidge204 (605297)]

Maybe the parents should take their precious little snowflake to a fucking doctor to check for hear problems if they're that concerned.

Seriously, I'm all for providing a safe environment for kids to play in (those stainless steel slides I had in elementary school put more kids in the nurse's office than anything on hot spring day) but there IS a limit to this.

The devices cost money that is sorely needed for actual education and the PE teachers almost certainly do not have the equipment or training to do anything more significant that call 911. God forbid they DO try to do something and the kid dies anyway. Hello lawsuit!

Have the parents sign a fucking waiver and let the kids run 'till they drop. Seriously.
=Smidge=

Re:Holy shit?

[Mr. Freeman (933986)]

What the hell was wrong with stainless steel slides? Those things were AWESOME. Never had one at my school but there was one at my local park and I loved it.

And fuck the waivers. What the hell has this country come to when we need people to sign waivers to RUN?

Re:Holy shit?

[slimjim8094 (941042)]

I'm an EMT. I've seen that exact thing happen, to a 9 year old kid in a YMCA. It should have been found beforehand, but wasn't. Once his heart stopped, it couldn't be restarted (and this kid had just about the best shot possible).

Heart monitors aren't the right answer. It's fucking complicated to interpret an EKG, computers can do a rudimentary piece of that - but the point of physical activity is that muscles are firing, so heart monitoring is absolutely useless.

That's a complete non-sequiter.

WTF?

[Das Auge (597142)]

What the fuck are you babbling about?

When did the user that submitted the article ever mention anything about politics? Or race? The submitter is concerned with ramifications regarding personal rights.

You're the sort of person who just sits around waiting for anything even similar to a discussion so you can spew out your political beliefs and try to act holier-than-thou.

There's the running joke about slashdotters living in their parents basements and not having a life, but you really don't seem to a have a life. So put down the moral superiority and go get one.

Re:Holy shit?

[Jaqenn (996058)]

I don't understand why this was marked insightful. Because when I read it, I see:

The kids will learn about pulses and heart rates and fitness...

<abuse>
<abuse>
<abuse>
<abuse>
<abuse>
<abuse>
<abuse>

...I hope you die.

Must be my conservative brainwashing.

Re:Holy shit?

[gbarules2999 (1440265)]

Last I checked, they're all batshit insane, the guy in the summary included.

Re:Holy shit?

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

(Conservatives do it to adults, not children.)

You must not have heard the most recent fooferall about how the Barack Osama gummint is trying to vaccinate our kids for H1N1 and shoot Gardisil into our daughter's untouched vaginas.

And what about "President" Hussein bin Obama trying to brainwash our kids with commie-nazi notions about staying in school and working hard?

He can have my daughter's vagina when he wrests it from my cold, dead hands.

Re:Holy shit?

[Xtravar (725372)]

I'm about as conservative/libertarian as they come. But this post is the funniest thing I've read all day!

I'm a vegetarian, but this is the best hamburger I've ever had.

Re:Holy shit?

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

And in the end, both groups are equally bad.

Actually, that's a corporate-media spread conventional wisdom that's badly mistaken. \

They are not "equally as bad". Not when one side wants to stop vaccinations and science education.

Re:Holy shit?

[Kell Bengal (711123)]

You'll find many of the truths we hold to be self-evident depend largely upon one's point of view.

Re:Holy shit?

[Foobar of Borg (690622)]

I don't know about that... I'm sure there was SOME reason someone was filming all those guys at Abu Ghraib getting sticks shoved up their asses and electrodes strapped to their balls.

You see, it works like this. Much like the late Strom Thurmond, they do get boners over brown and black people. But, because of their ideology, they are not supposed to. So, they pretend they don't and enact (or at least try to enact) strict laws against that sort of thing. And then they get caught knocking up brown and black women. Kind of like with some of the virulently anti-homosexual Republicans. They tend to be closeted, or at least covered, homosexuals. There's nothing wrong with a white person liking black and brown people, or with homosexuals, but the Republicans really should stop trying to outlaw all this considering the people in their own party.

Re:Holy shit?

[Steve Franklin (142698)]

Clearly the school is afraid of being sued when some kid keels over from too much exertion.

Re:Holy shit?

[MozeeToby (1163751)]

I'm betting it's not even that and it's just a heart rate monitor to improve the quality of aerobic exercise. Sounds like a pretty good program to me; if kids are going to not do physical activities willingly and do the bare minimum in gym class, monitoring heart rate might be a necessary evil to ensure they get enough exercise.

Re:Holy shit?

[guyfawkes-11-5 (1583613)]

I'm betting it's not even that and it's just a heart rate monitor to improve the quality of aerobic exercise. Sounds like a pretty good program to me; if kids are going to not do physical activities willingly and do the bare minimum in gym class, monitoring heart rate might be a necessary evil to ensure they get enough exercise.

I use a HRM all the time while running or biking. Its a good way to give you feedback on your exertion level, and will allow the kids to learn more about max heart rate, threshold level etc. I would want my own band also, rather than some sopping wet band from the previous gym class. Unless they spring for the higher end moniors, the data is not downloadable and is not in any fashion similar to an EKG that would be able to determine an arrythmia.

Re:Holy shit?

[jeffporcaro (1010187)]

I'm a cardiologist; we use heart rate as a threshold when doing stress testing, but otherwise it has limited utility in measuring "exertion level." The Maximal Predicted Heart Rate [MPHR] was established in the late '60s as an observation, not a true prediction; a small sample of people was observed exercising to their subjective "maximum," and those rates were plotted. There was enormous variability; the slope of MPHR was simply the line of best fit from the scatterplot, and was estimated by the authors of the original article to likely be accurate within 30 points in either direction. A particular person's maximal heart rate is impossible to predict within any meaningful accuracy; obviously, the derived slope is even sloppy for large populations. There are many many "experts" with theories regarding what percentage of MPHR you should achieve and for how long in order to get aerobic benefit - there is almost no science on the subject. Currently in vogue (and to my eye, at least as reasonable as anything based on heart rate) is the Borg Scale of Perceived Exertion. Basically, work to a level where you consistently feel like you're exerting yourself - that's how you get feedback on your exertion level. For an excellent discussion of this, see Gina Kolata's book Ultimate Fitness (almost 10 years old, still well-researched and interesting). There's an enormous amount of misinformation and pseudoscience out there.

Re:Holy shit?

[GMFTatsujin (239569)]

I'm betting it's not even that and it's just a heart rate monitor to improve the quality of aerobic exercise. I concur.

I worked as a technical writer for a place that made HRMs. We sold to pro athletes, gyms, personal trainers, Navy seals, fitness enthusiasts of every stripe... we even had a version of the product made especially for training race horses. It was pretty cool.

I was surprised at what a difference using one of those things made in my *own* ability to exercise. I'm an overweight writing nerd, but man: there's nothing like beeping, booping technology to get my interest. Using an HRM is like keeping score on a video game. Or playing the tomagotchi game with your body as the avatar. Or something.

Something fun and trackable, anyway.

The HRM went a long way toward getting me off my butt and dropping pounds because it provided metrics and feedback that I could understand and affect. That's more than my "hustle! hustle! hustle!" school coach ever managed to do.

All this being said: I doubt that the information on your kid is going to be recorded for more than 9 weeks, honestly. There are, like, serious LAWS about that information getting off campus, too. Anybody who is into selling kids' info to Nefarious Businesses Incorporated is going to have access to a lot more dirt than just a weird blip on your child's HRM.

That HRM, by the way, is certainly *not* medically diagnostic in quality. I'd be surprised if it did more than note the heart rate at 1 second intervals and track the changes over time. It *might* try to estimate a general sense of fitness on the heart, but it will, at best, give you a meaningless number on a scale from "is this thing on?" to "cybernetically enhanced athlete trained atop the Himalayas from birth."

No need to worry. The poster's school's coach is probably just trying to do a great job at keeping the kids in his care interested in physical fitness. I applaud him/her for it.

Re:Holy shit?

[MozeeToby (1163751)]

It isn't monitoring their health status, it is monitoring their excertion level. The purpose of gym class is and always has been to keep kids active by forcing all students into activity and by teaching them about those activities (in the hope that they continue them later in life). That has been and should be the purpose. Teaching kids about maintaining heartrate and the proper level of excertion is 100% in line with those goals.

Re:Holy shit?

[jcr (53032)]

Don't be afraid to tell your little shits when they're being little shits.

Ok then: you're being an obnoxious little shit.

Glad I could help.

-jcr

Re:Holy shit?

[Darkness404 (1287218)]

Those pedometers were always fun to just put on a massage chair and watch it rack up all the steps :)

Re:Holy shit?

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

Clearly the school is afraid of being sued when some kid keels over from too much exertion.

Or just maybe their afraid that the morbidly obese 4th graders that come wheezing into gym class with secret sauce stains on their chins might have to be watched a little more closely during exercise.

But of course, these are school boards making these decisions, and educators, and everyone knows that educators are all a bunch of commie-fascist-libruls who want to deny our god-given right to raise our kids like veals and stuff them so fat that they won't have the energy to bother us while we're watching Glenn Beck who by-gawd has the number of that Barack bin Obama who wants to force us all to have access to health care just like Hitler.

Re:Holy shit?

[antifoidulus (807088)]

Private health insurance does that to a person. The system in the US is screwed up beyond all repair. For instance, if a company finds out that you or anyone in your immediate family has any medical problems that ends up being a HUGE strike against you. Legally they cannot ask such questions, but they have ways of finding out(from illegal but common searches to just seeing if you have any obvious health issues when you show up to the interview).

US health insurance is KILLING US competitiveness abroad(not to mention the insanely top-heavy structure of US businesses, but thats another conversation). The sheer amount of cost(both for the insurance and the staff to administer it) about nullifies the cost advantages US workers have over European workers(who have higher taxes associated with them, but no health insurance), and makes Canadian workers look extremely attractive(health insurance is covered, but unlike Europeans they can actually be fired without spending massive amounts of time and money filling out pointless paperwork to get rid of a paperweight).

You've just not experienced it

[Bruce Perens (3872)]

Have you ever been rejected for family medical coverage because your child had a urinary infection once, and a test to make sure it wasn't serious? I have.

Re:You've just not experienced it

[Bruce Perens (3872)]

Well, I think we'd be doing a lot better on health care reform right now if we hadn't first had to inject cash into financial companies that then paid it to underperforming staff as bonuses, and if we hadn't had to support auto manufacturers that kept making big inefficient and unreliable cars despite nearly thirty years of perception of their lagging foreign concerns, and if we hadn't entered some stupid wars.

That said, I'm for the public option. I am having a lot of trouble reconciling the responsibility of a private medical coverage firm to its stockholders vs. its responsibility to the public. We don't have very many for-profit fire departments in the United States any longer, although that was once the norm. Wonder why?

Re:Insurance is for risks, not certainties

[Bruce Perens (3872)]

Well, he didn't have an existing illness. But you have just explained, pretty well, why insurance companies should not be allowed to be involved in individual medical coverage. Because it's not in their interest to cover sick people! I hope all of the folks who are against the public option get for-profit fire departments in their towns.

Re:Insurance is for risks, not certainties

[Speare (84249)]

Scenario:

* Kid has tiny routine temporary infection. It's resolved.

* Parent wants to insure kid, wife, self, against costs of broken arms, car accidents, heart attacks, etc.

* Insurance company goes on data mining expedition, sees tiny temporary infection in past, denies whole family coverage for all health issues.

Now do you see the fallacy in your argument?

Re:Holy shit?

[Gerzel (240421)]

About Health Insurance in the US it isn't paranoid. They ARE out to get you.

Paranoid

[Misanthrope (49269)]

They're probably just going to monitor heart rate to optimize aerobic exercise. At a certain point if your heart is beating too fast you'll end up in anaerobic mode.
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4736 [americanheart.org]

Re:Paranoid

[0racle (667029)]

I would be surprised to find its to optimize the heart rate. I'll lean more towards making sure these 12 year old tubs of lard don't keel over from a heart attack during gym class and the parents sue the school.

Re:Paranoid

[Renraku (518261)]

Paranoia, yes, but on who's part?

Surely the school didn't purchase a bunch of new heart monitors because it might improve the calorie-burning of their students. Most likely what happened was that some kid presented with a previously-undetected heart defect and the school got sued. Now they're instating this to make sure that if someone else comes in with a funky rhythm, they can be taken to the hospital or allowed to rest as needed.

On an even more paranoid note, wouldn't the presence of these heart monitors open them up for these lawsuits to begin with? "Well, Johnny was WEARING a heart monitor when his heart stopped! The doctors said that there was probably some kind of variation in the heart's rhythm, and the school didn't detect OR treat it until it was too late! They LET our child die!"

Re:Paranoid

[dreamt (14798)]

If only this is what a capability of the heart rate, it could make sense. You are thinking something like an EKG/EEG. A heart rate monitor that they are most likely referring to would be something like one sold by http://www.polarusa.com/us-en/ [polarusa.com] where the basic model just tells you your current heart rate. Nothing about detecting rhythm, etc. Its just how many beats/minute your heart is pumping.

Re:Paranoid

[Otter (3800)]

Back in the olden days, we used to monitor our pulses in gym class using a finger and a clock. No, there's nothing suspicious about this, and anyone who used common equipment in gym should understand the benefit of buying your own strap instead of digging through a box to find the least sweaty one from the period before.

Troll?

[Nimey (114278)]

This would be a pretty good troll posting. Nicely done, if so.

You're just being paranoid

[Locke2005 (849178)]

Supplying that information to anyone else would be a violation of FERPA and HIPAA statutes. In fact, you should hope that they DO leak this information, because then you could sue their asses off.

Re:You're just being paranoid

[evanbd (210358)]

Because they're not a healthcare provider, if they acquire HIPAA protected information, they're not actually required to do anything in particular. They could leak it without consequences. They could use it maliciously. They could sell it.

Topper

[by Anonymous Coward]

That's nothing!!!111
My kid was drugged and kidnapped, then had an explosive collar put around their neck, and dumped on an Island for a battle to the death.

Also, I think you're over reacting

There is a serious concern here

[Bruce Perens (3872)]

Although this could be dismissed as paranoia, there are some serious concerns here. Do you have a legal right to privacy concerning your child's medical record, captured in a non-medical context, in a public school? Does HIPAA or any other law currently on the books presently address this? Do you have a right to be informed regarding the disposition of such data before it's collected?

You had a good reason to consult the principal, if you don't get assurances in writing I wouldn't suggest that you allow the device to be used on your child.

Paranoid

[Ben Newman (53813)]

I vote paranoid. In all the places I've heard of this used its only used as a way for the students to collect their own information and to monitor themselves and their own heart rate. These devices are generally only heart rate monitors, in no way are they designed to notice an arrhythmia, and I've never heard of the data being collected in any way. Besides since they've asked you to purchase the equipment, you would be better able to know exactly what the capabilities of the model you were asked to buy then a bunch of random Slashdotters. Stop reading the site and do some research.

Heart Rate testing in middle school...

[jerzee55 (1274446)]

I saw something similar in a school where I teach. A research project involving a group of children was asked to participate after parental permission and notification and consent were given, detailing the purpose of the project, asking for permission for blood samples and a complete physical given to the child free of charge. The students were awarded gift certificates and other free items such as calculators, CD carriers, and water bottles. The heart monitors were worn during gym class only, and the heart rates were compared prior to and after exercised to measure heart rate resting times. The data was tied to numbers, not names, and was stored that way, so there were no long term consequences of the test, and all information was shared with parents. If you have not given your permission for this testing, I would certainly be upset as a parent that you have not been given any information as to the use of the data, or the confidentiality of the data.

holy stupid, batman

[Lord Ender (156273)]

My tinfoil-hat concern is that the heart rate data will be tied to each child, then archived and eventually used for/against them down the road when applying for insurance, high-stress jobs, etc. '

This is beyond tinfoil. This is the among the stupidest things I've ever read as an ask slashdot. It just goes to show that parental instincts can turn intelligent humans into frightened, protective, stupid animals.

Submitter: A heart rate monitor is just a more accurate way of measuring someone's pulse. Have you ever exercised in your life? Did you put your fingers to your neck to check your pulse? This is the same thing, but with more accurate reading. And it beeps if your heart rate gets too high so you know to slow down.

Do some damn research and try to collect your brains back into your skull. The big scary world isn't trying to ruin your little darling by checking his pulse.

Paranoid

[spitzak (4019)]

There is a secret device in there that is using WiFi (with it's own cancer-causing radio waves, too) to communicate directly to Obama's death panels in the (former) white house. They are still perfecting the reverse control that can kill your kid right on the spot the moment they figure out his health care will be too expensive, so I would really watch out if they insist on updating the device! Fortunately a tin foil hat pressed firmly around the kids head will stop the transmissions, and for extra security you can also get a surgeon to implant tin foil wrapped right around the kid's heart, too.

Seriously, this is obviously a heart-rate monitor like those in treadmills to measure the quality of aerobic exercise.

Not spending much time in gyms, are you?

[Animats (122034)]

From the comments, I suspect that most Slashdot readers don't spend much time in gyms.

Heart rate monitors are very useful. They tell you what resistance level you should be using on the cardio machines. Some of the fancier cardio machines read your heart rate and automatically adjust the resistance level to keep your heart rate in the training zone.

Great for obese kids. And adults. It fine-tunes their workout to a level they can handle while preventing goofing off.

If the school is really doing that, good for them. They're doing it right.

Re:Well

[broken_chaos (1188549)]

Likely it's identical to the device that comes with/works with some treadmills. It detects BPM (beats per minute) and that's pretty much it. That's about all the data that's useful for pure exercise monitoring anyway. If this is a public middle school and they're just asking you to buy the strap and not the device, then that's likely the most sophisticated they could afford, even if there was 'evil' motivations behind it. Seen physical education budgets lately?

So yeah, just a little paranoid...

Re:Well

[dkf (304284)]

And if your child DOES have heart problems, sooner or later he or she will need to see a physician, who will be sure to inform the insurance company of the condition.

Seeing a doctor may also have the side effect of saving their life if they do have an arrhythmia. Having the opportunity to get health insurance later does them no good if they drop dead due to a treatable heart condition first.

Re:Invest in a tinfoil hat for yourself

[Duradin (1261418)]

And homeschool. Unless you know about the government mind control devices implanted in all books. No-schooling is the safest. What the kids don't know can't hurt them. Plus with all their free time they can start digging and pouring cement to prepare for the invasion of the mole-men.