Did you know they could be flash dancing in your school?

A boy came home from school and complained to his mother that he hated the ridiculous dance they were making him do in PE. Like most of us who have suffered through a course of square or line dancing in school gym class, she brushed off his complaint and told him to just put up with it and it would be over soon. But then he said something that caught her attention. He said they would be broadcasting him on the news doing the dance and that was making him really uncomfortable. So she investigated further and found that the dance he was practicing was part of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move program and was going to be simultaneously performed in middle schools across the country at 1:42 EST on May 3^rd. Middle Schoolers will be hip hopping to Beyonce’s song Move Your Body demonstrating how fun physical activity can be.

The goal of Let’s Move is to curb childhood obesity in one generation through simple steps: 1. Creating a healthy start for children 2. Empowering parents and caregivers 3. Providing healthy food in schools 4. Improving access to healthy, affordable foods and 5. Increasing physical activity. It is also part of the Health and Human Services multimedia campaign designed to promote the Affordable Health Care Act. This highly coordinated marketing campaign, it was discovered through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, will cost a total of as much as $200 million over the next five years. When that much money is invested in something, there is tremendous pressure for that something to succeed.

Back to mother and son. The student was told by the teacher, when he said he didn’t want to be part of the dance, that he would be given a zero for the day. It was only when the mother asked the school if he could opt out of the Let’s Move dance that she was given the option of him doing a separate square dance. The administrator expressed his surprise that she would have an issue with this. It had not occurred to them at school that, parents might not want their children used as propaganda tools for an administration’s agenda or, that parents might never have envisioned their child’s face plastered on a national website as a gratis endorsement of something they had not specifically agreed to when they signed the waiver allowing the school to use photos of their child at the beginning of the year. The school viewed it, as another mother did when alerted to the situation, as just a fun exercise promoting healthier lifestyles and no big deal.

Schools had to be selected to be filmed participating in the flash dance (think flash mob). In order to be selected they had to apply. In order to apply they had to agree to use very specific language and marketing materials developed for this event. And in all of this, no one ever mentioned that they should probably also get parental approval for the kids to participate and be filmed. This particular school had a history of being concerned about parental approval. They required parental permission for students to see the movie “Blind Side.” But broadcasting students being forced to dance (as this one child surely would be) seemed to raise no red flags.

Perhaps I and the other mothers are being overly sensitive. But when you hear about a school in Chicago that has banned lunches from home, Arkansas schools putting BMI on the report cards and legislation introduced in Missouri (HB 59) that would establish a Coordinated Health Board Program whose simple goal is to “to prevent obesity, cardiovascular disease, and type II diabetes in elementary and secondary students” through coordination with PE departments, food services, district administrators and parents, you can’t help but be sensitized to these things. The messages are good, the goals are good, but the people responsible for implementation, and as was noted above, success, are the wrong people. Children’s health issues should be addressed between the parent and a qualified pediatrician, but the latter is only minimally mentioned in the Let’s Move program and not at all in the MO legislation.

And when I read statements from HHS describing their goal in this broader health campaign as, “Health and program-related messages are processed by the target audience according to a particular reality, which he or she experiences. Attitudes, feelings, values, needs, desires, behaviors and beliefs all play a part in the individual’s decision to accept information and make a behavioral change. It is by understanding the importance of these characteristics that health and program-related messages can be targeted to the beneficiary in effective ways.” I can’t help but feel manipulated. If a program was really good, why would I need to be manipulated into seeing its benefit?

So am I being overly sensitive about the flash dance? Would you want to be notified in advance?