A park near my home I haven’t visited since my kid was a small child, had swings, monkey bars, balance beams and other such common playground equipment. It’s all gone now, due to insurance fears in case some kid got hurt. They have replaced them with boring climb-on stuff that kids can’t get hurt on.....................or have fun on.................
When I was a kid, we played football, baseball, basketball, rode our bikes, skateboarded, roller skated and ran around the neighborhood. We couldn’t have been overweight if we wanted to. And PE was pretty intense back in the 60s - President Kennedy’s Council on Youth Fitness.
New Frontiers for Fitness
John F. Kennedy showed his commitment to improving the nation’s fitness even before he took the oath of office. After the election, he published “The Soft American” in Sports Illustrated. The article established four points as the basis of his proposed program, including a White House Committee on Health and Fitness; direct oversight by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; an annual Youth Fitness Congress to be attended by state governors; and the assertion that physical fitness was very much the business of the federal government.
Only a month after the inauguration, the new administration convened a conference on physical fitness, reorganized the President’s Council on Youth Fitness, and chose a new director, Charles “Bud” Wilkinson, a highly successful University of Oklahoma football coach. True to Kennedy’s style, the new executive for the council was named a special consultant to the president. The president’s council unquestionably became President Kennedy’s council.
http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Physical-Fitness.aspx?p=2