As with many cool companies in the Boston area, Banker & Tradesman provides a gym for its newsroom staff.

There are finger-flexing exercise classes, so that we type faster. There are sprint classes, so we have an easier time catching the insects we need to eat, given our salaries.

Yes, as you might expect from an ancient publication devoted to the God of Mammon, our gym is not an unaccountable fringe benefit that provides esoteric value. The bottom line is, while gym participation is voluntary, the objective is to make us more slavishly efficient and loyal to the publishing colossus.

To Cohen the Columnist, who prefers exercising his brain to actually doing pushups, the gym is appreciated, if not utilized. It is one of life’s many choices to make, balancing time and benefit and liberty to reach perfection.

Except for some female news anchors on television, the news game doesn’t require much in the way of tall and lanky. The late A.J. Liebling, the brilliant essayist for The New Yorker, weighed about 800 pounds, due in no small part to his proclivity for writing about foods and wine – and sampling them along the way. No one ever suggested he take time off to explore a low-salt diet or jog around the block.

The freedom to choose one’s physical activity, be it occupational or recreational, is an important part of life. The modern economic world provides less imperative to be muscle-bound; on the other hand, the sermons against obesity and diabetes implore us to run around a bit, chewing on celery stalks.

There is also academic research suggesting that tall, handsome, lanky Cohen-types do better in their professional lives and make more money (that part hasn’t worked for me at Banker & Tradesman) – a credit to good genes, yes, but also to the nobility of exercise.

Mental Gymnastics

So, what do we tell our children about running amok, burning up calories, toning muscles, and preparing one’s body for something other than processing mortgages or selling three-bedroom ranch houses?

“Sorry Johnny, I know you’re on the verge of curing cancer and winning the local science fair, but it’s time for you to go shoot a few hoops and give me 15 pushups.”

That’s the dilemma the nation’s public schools finds themselves in, mired in a long tradition of mandatory “physical education” classes, but facing a new world where the students must excel at their reading, writing and arithmetic, too – gym classes be damned.

In theory, Massachusetts has a wimpy requirement that schools offer physical education, which many schools ignore altogether and others offer up unenthusiastically and in abbreviated fashion. Massachusetts is not much different than many other states in that regard. Better to produce higher scores on the mandatory academic testing than to make the budding scholars perspire.

In Florida, the legislature is considering a bill that would eliminate the physical education requirement altogether. And that state is not alone in curbing its gym-class enthusiasm.

Massachusetts legislators, on the other hand, are mulling various schemes to beef up physical education requirements, which some districts greet with enthusiasm and others with a shrug and a wink.

This is one of those issues where, in a perfect world, the kids would be unleashed on the gymnasium floor with great enthusiasm – but in this imperfect world, perhaps they should sit hunched over their geometry assignment.

A new study released in the Archive of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found a “significant positive relationship between physical activity and academic performance,” but the folks whose jobs and bonuses and reputations depend on improving academic performance aren’t necessarily buying it.

The puzzled educators might ponder the proposal from cranky Florida State Rep. Larry Metz, who wants market forces to decide the issue.

“Some physically fit and active middle school students might rather use that time in their school day to take another elective,” he wrote his colleagues. “Those who want or need to take physical education in middle school should do so electively.”

Of course, no one ever asks the kids what they want. It’s the adults who flex their tyrannical muscles. That’s called “exercise.”