Schools: The return of a dreaded fitness test

A child participates in the Fitness Test

Trump "wants to return America to imagined glory days" when "bullying was encouraged."

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 18 August 2025

President Trump wants to make American schoolchildren traumatized again, said Rex Huppke in USA Today. Seeking to whip the nation's youth into shape, he recently signed an executive order to reinstate the Presidential Fitness Test — an exercise in humiliation dreamed up "when emotionally torturing children was legal." A version of the test was first launched in the late 1950s by President Dwight Eisenhower, who was alarmed that our youngsters lagged Europeans in basic fitness. In the following decades, public school students ages 10 to 17 were, once or twice a year, required to run a mile and complete a sit-and-reach, a pull-up, and other exercises. For millions of us non-jocks, it was sheer torture. I recall weeping while staggering a mile in the Florida heat, and being made to "feel like week-old meatloaf." President Barack Obama sensibly scrapped the program in 2012, replacing it with a focus on encouraging lifelong healthy behavior. But Trump, of course, "wants to return America to imagined glory days" when "bullying was encouraged."

The test "changed my life"—for the better, said Steve Magness in Slate. I was too skinny for football and not coordinated enough for baseball, but while taking the test in second grade I discovered I was the fastest runner in my year. It "ignited a passion" that led me to become a high school running champ and later a coach. Sure, sit-ups and shuttle runs gave some kids' anxiety, but so does going to the whiteboard to solve a math problem, and "we don't get rid of math tests." The criticism just shows how liberals will malign anything Trump does, said Ingrid Jacques in USA Today. About 20% of American children are obese—up from 5% in the 1970s—and only 2 in 5 young adults are fit enough to serve in the military. That's a national security issue, and fighting America's flab "should be something we can all agree on."

I don't know if the test is a good or bad idea for kids, said Jill Twiss in The Daily Beast. But I can only laugh that it's being resurrected by a president who mainlines Big Macs and would struggle to do a single sit-up. Then there's the guy Trump has put in charge of the test, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He chugs raw milk, swims in sewage, and looks like a steroid-jacked Ken doll "left in the sun for approximately 938 years." What will their fitness benchmarks be? "Roadkill lifting? Social climbing?" Trump gave no details. But in the spirit of his administration, the challenge will surely permit cheating and require PE teachers "to accept bribes for higher scores."