The contribution physical education makes to education is high, wide and handsome.
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Cultivation of health, fitness and wellbeing There is an epidemic of body system dysfunction in our community and increasingly this epidemic if affecting children.
In adults, these dysfunctions are recognised by their symptoms
Low levels of aerobic fitness and excess adipose tissue are the main indicators of children at risk.
Increasingly children are being cooped up in classrooms for too much of the day. And on top of not spending time during the day racing around, they're not spending time running round after school. Most no longer walk or ride their bikes to school and spend time sitting down in front of television sets and video game screens.
If you think it's bad now, it's going to get worse - unless we revitalize physical education programs in schools and get children into the gym and out on the oval for at least an hour a day. This is all children - K - 12.
Forget the nonsense about children needing to spend more time in the class room the older they get. More time in the class room never made anyone more intelligent. On the contrary, it's a tough assignment studying when you're putting up with the symptoms of body system dysfunction; when you've got as headache, you're tired, depressed and your trousers are ringing-barking you.
Just taking the head to school is not an option. |
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The human ecosystem The body is an ecosystem. All parts are inter-related. The epidemic of body system dysfunction is affecting all the various systems.
The connection we're most familiar with is the relationship between the mind and the rest of the body - the psycho-somatic relationship. (In Western medical culture we're less well acquainted with liver-somatic, cardio-somatic, bowel-somatic etc.., but the same principles apply.) When the mind is not working well, there are a range of symptoms that will show up in other body parts - Those symptoms are listed above.
What's less well known is the somato-psychic relationship. When the other body systems are not working well you can feel tired, depressed ...
On the other hand, when the other body systems are working well, there's a better chance the mind will be ticking over nicely. People have more energy and vitality when all body systems are in good shape.
For instance when people first attend a fitness centre, a month later the first thing they report is that they feel better. That's the head talking.
So, for children to develop normally they need to be keeping all systems of their body functioning well.
Ignoring that part of a school curriculum that teaches children how to keep themselves fit and healthy, and during which they actually keep themselves fit and healthy is counterproductive.
Cooping children up inside force feeding them numbers and letters builds neither normal, healthy children, nor normal, healthy adults. |
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The stuff of life A lot of the stuff children learn in schools goes in one eye and out the other - particularly maths.
When it comes to numeracy, let's be frank about it, unless you're going to be a rocket scientist or a maths teacher all you need is arithmetic. Once you can add, subtract, multiply and divide; once you can work you way round a calculator and a spreadsheet you're pretty well set up to cope with whatever comes your way. You'd make a fine accountant even!
Once you take away ₤sd, rods poles and perches, and throw in a calculator and a spread-sheet you should be able to cut maths lessons by about 80%, thereby making more room for the stuff that kids love doing, especially physical activity.
f=ma d=vt w=mg s=½at&t² V=IR a=-w²rsin(wt) e=mc³ And science! They fire children up with science tricks; kerosene tins crumpling, hair standing on end, plastic rods rubbed with cat's fur picking up pieces of paper, microbes wriggling under microscopes ... then send them back to their desks to stare at equations.
We don't need more of this stuff in schools we need less. Then children can get on with the interesting stuff, the stuff of life.
No-one ever became less prepared for a life in university doing equations by spending more time doing them at school! |
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Intellectual challenge Physical activity involves intellectual challenge. If you think that intellectual challenge is restricted to the class room, think again. Try a minute's worth of double unders, a nip up, a forward one and a half or a checkside punt kick.
I heard from a reliable source that the school that Lleyton Hewitt attended wanted him to put tennis on the back burner while he completed his Year 12. They couldn't see that the intellectual challenges he was coping with day after day on the tennis court were preparing him for in infinitely more interesting life than serving out a lifetime in one of Henry Lawson's 'dingey little office(s)' with the sunlight struggling feebly down between the tall offices.
The act of performing a physical skill is no less intellectually challenging that doing a sum or memorizing a slab of poetry - and in this day and age, if you're good at it, the financial rewards from sporting skill leaves the financial rewards from mathematical skill in the shade.
If you want an exercise in logical thinking, learn how to set a field, learn where to kick, throw or hit the ball. Learn how to pot the black without it going in off.
The persistence and determination to complete a physical task is no less intellectually rigorous than spending time nutting out an equation - or for that matter, a chess move, a crossword, sudoko ...
What goes on inside a head when one hits a tennis ball is no less thoughtful than what goes on when one nuts out a theorem.
Education systems have short memories.
In the 1980's the Daily Physical Education movement swept over Australia supported by evidence-based information showing that children spending up to a third of their school day involved in physical pursuits performed better overall than children who spent all day inside sitting down.
Now the Daily Physical Education Program is gathering dust on bookshelves.
It's time to restore the balance and give physical activity along with music, singing, art, drama, workshop out door education ... their rightful and necessary places in the curriculum.
If the universities complain - let them complain. Lecturers will have to spend more contact time with the students when they get there. But turning schools into little universities defeats the purposed of primary and secondary education.
Let's not deprive children of a childhood while they are children just so the uni's can score a few easy goals later on.
This is not a Brueghel painting of children drawn as adults. Schools are not the place to do universities' work for them - at the expense of childhood. |
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Physical intelligence A PhysEd program gives children with physical intelligence the opportunity to let their light and their self esteem shine.
Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences proposes eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. These intelligences are:
Probably you can split the linguistic intelligence into two - literary (reading and writing) and speaking.
Gardner says that our schools and culture focus most of their attention on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. We esteem the highly articulate or logical people of our culture. However, he says that we should also place equal attention on individuals who show gifts in the other intelligences: the artists, architects, musicians, naturalists, designers, dancers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and others who enrich the world in which we live.
Unfortunately, many children who have these gifts don’t receive much reinforcement for them in school. Many of these kids, in fact, end up being labeled "dumb," "attention deficit " or simply underachievers, when their unique ways of thinking and learning aren’t addressed by a heavily linguistic or logical-mathematical classroom.
Have you ever gone to a school reunion and found out that someone who you thought was a dunce is now a millionaire property developer, or someone who' been a plumber, retired at 50 and has a string of race horses; or someone who owns a gallery in New York or somewhere; or someone of modest academic potential who became a rock star or captivated the attention of tens of thousands of people on the sports field.
The marvel of their achievement is that they did it despite of the indifference of an education system that ignored and downplayed their talent
The theory of multiple intelligences proposes a major transformation in the way our schools are run. It suggests that teachers be trained to present their lessons in a wide variety of ways using physical activity, music, cooperative learning, art activities, role play, multimedia, field trips, inner reflection, and much more. |
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The joy of effort Some of the experiences of physical activity have been aptly portrayed by Canadian physical educator and sculptor, R. Tait McKenzie, in his four famous faces.
And to these masks you could add dozens more - achievement, anticipation, amazement, exhilaration, excitement, happiness, disappointment, frustration, defeat, joy, pleasure ..., the whole gamut of normal healthy human emotions.
But focusing on the positive emotions for a moment; some children do indeed experience them during maths, science and poetry lessons. Many don't. They're the ones being denied a normal, healthy, emotional up-bringing.
Give children the opportunity to experience the full range of healthy emotions within the safe environment of physical education, games and sports and outdoor recreation programs; where individual and group life skills (including those stimulated by cooperation and competition) can be safely practiced and developed.
If you're interested in giving children skills for life, you'll be very interested in promoting what goes on outside the classroom. The playground, the gym, the pool, the court, the sports field and the great outdoors are essential training grounds for life.
Give children a decent PhysEd program. |
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Social awareness Physical activity, including team and individual sports, creative and social dance, outdoor education and various forms of physical recreation produce social benefits by developing cooperation, trust, leadership, loyalty, tolerance and adherence to accepted codes and rules.
It's the sporting microcosm that's important; the cathartic experiences that you don't get in the classroom.
Children need to experience and deal with the joy of success and the agony of defeat. The PhysEd lesson and the sports period can be a unique aspect of the curriculum where children can learn these lessons early. It's the metaphor of sport and physical activity that's important for children to experience.
As in sport, as in life. It's a valuable training ground for personal development that you don't get in maths lessons. |
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Burn off steam! Children can only stand so much time cooped up in a classroom. Sooner or later they need to get outside and let off some stream.
Regrettably, in this day and age, at recess and lunch time a lot of children will just want to sit down.
The structured PhysEd lesson gives teachers the opportunity to direct this energy. |
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The release How many people these days don't have activities and hobbies outside their work. The go to work, come home, have a drink, eat their tea and then doze down in front of the TV for four hours. They get up and go to bed: can't sleep, and after tossing and turning half the night wake up tired and drag themselves through another day.
Developing physical activity habits from an early age provide children and adults with lasting recreational pastimes, active recreation that relaxes them, gets them away from their own busyness and misery. |
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The mind working on the mind is a disaster
'He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous' Shakespeare/Julius Caesar
If all you do is sit around and think, sooner or later you start thinking how bad things are. You either end up in a hotel, a pharmacy or a court house.
You need activity to break up the thinking. So do children. |
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The crossroads We've reached a crossroads.
The pendulum has swung too far. Schools have become beholden to the interests of the scientific and literary power elite who want schools to do their dirty work for them.
You know this is true when almost daily you see calls for children to spend more time in classrooms reading books and doing sums.
The results of phony international challenges of intellectual superiority are being trotted out to justify even more time doing reading, maths and science. Alarm bells are being rung and the results of these challenges are being used to pull swifties on governments around Australia.
In the meantime the incidence of ADHD and bullying are going up, symptoms of a dysfunctional educational system. Children are being pumped full of Ritalin, apprehended violence orders are being filed, committees deliberating. Any good sports coach knows how to deal with these problems but none of them are on the committees.
Youths doing year 11 and 12 are stressed out of their brain, almost putting life itself on hold in order to cram for exams, the results of which will chart the direction of the rest of their life. The pressure at this level is being transmuted downwards.
Teachers are under the pump, being expected to wring results out of children who lack the capacity to deliver those results.
There's no room for PhysEd, swimming, sport, art, debating, music, drama, chess, band, excursions, outdoor education, camps, let alone teachers who are trained, interested or committed to being involved in these activities. If they are offered, it's out of hours or you've got to pay more for them. You'll know schools are on the right track when excursions are free and you have to bring along an extra 5 bucks a week for maths lessons. |
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The under - graduates There are children graduating from schools who have never done a handstand against a wall, who can't do a sit up, can't swing by their legs on a bar, who can't hit a ball over a net; have never had a golf club in their hand; have never sung their club song with their arms around a group of exhausted team mates; who can only juggle one ball. (These are children who when you ask them to draw can only produce stick figures of Christmas trees, yachts and cats. They're the children who can't sing, dance or play a musical instrument.)
These are children who've never spent a couple of nights away from home, singing round a camp fire, walking up hill and down dale with tongues hanging out and legs feeling like they're about to drop off.
It's time to liberate children from their desks and give them the taste of the joy of physical education. |
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