Brain Gym continued

To continue my thoughts on moving and thinking I went to something that I have known about for years, but haven't really thought about for a while; Brain Gym.  We tend to be so sluggish, especially our young people, and the need to get them moving before we ask them to learn is great.  Couldn't every classroom teacher, at every level spend two to three minutes engaging students in the simple exercises seen in the video in the previous posting?  We are constantly being compared to the Japanese when it comes to education, well I think daily exercise is incorporated into their school day, and I don't mean just PE class as an elective, but real exercise every morning for every student.  Our students spend a great deal of their school day doing nothing.  I bet they would get into class before the last bell if they knew something was going to be going on.  Oh, you would have your dissenters for a while, the ones who would say "This is dumb."  but you know what?  I think it would catch on, anyone willing to try it?  I don't think we have lost our kids, I think we can change their course of failure and non-interest, but not by preaching and punishing.  We need to change our way of thinking, of teaching and reacting to kids.  We know young people need structure, order and discipline, it is how they learn.  We owe it to our students to give them structure, to have order in our schools, to have fair and consistent discipline (not punishment), and to enable their learning.  We can't demand that they learn, we can't beseech them to learn, we can, however, empower them to learn.  A "rigorous" curriculum taught to a sleeping brain is not the answer, but wake up the brain and then give them a real reason why they need to know something, and they will learn it.  Just a thought.
Rosemary