Physical Education and Bodily Intelligence
The Athlete’s View - Fall 1994
Joel Kirsch, Ph.D.
American Sports Institute
At a recent beginning-of-the-year staff meeting for a Bay Area school district, the superintendent gave instructions for departmental colleagues to meet together to discuss specific issues related to math, social studies, science, and so on. As he read off the names of the departments and their meeting room numbers, he got to the end of the list and finally announced the meeting of the physical education department.
Once they got to their department meeting rooms, all the district's teachers were given the same list of 14 district-wide student objectives. The objectives had to do with proposed graduation outcomes and were organized by departmental subjects. The 14th objective dealt with physical education.
Upon returning to their respective campuses early the next morning, the principal at one high school directed his teachers to meet in designated rooms with members of their department. Again, the physical education department was the last to receive its room assignment.
While this event happened in one district, it was probably repeated in schools across the country. It's as if physical education has become an afterthought. This perspective shows up in other significant ways:
- Education Goals 2000, lauded as a landmark national education initiative, calls for a world-class education for every child, but fails to mention physical education.
- When school districts face the difficult task of cutting budgets, oftentimes the first things considered are athletics and physical education.
- When class size is determined for so-called academic subjects such as math, science, language arts, etc., these classes usually have a maximum of 30-35 students while 50 or 60 students are assigned to PE classes.
- While high school graduation requirements in California and other states have increased over the past 20 years in the academic subjects, physical education in a number of states has gone from being required every year to being required for onlytwo years, usually in the ninth and tenth grades.
- In many school districts, physical education grades are not factored into a student's academic grade point average. And, it's common to think of athletics as being extracurricular as opposed to being an integral part of a total, academic curriculum.
How did all this happen? Why is it that physical education seems to be a second-rate discipline in educational circles?
Research shows that the answers to these questions date back not two, three, or four decades as some might think, but 2,500 years ago to the time of the ancient Greeks.
During the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. in Athens, the concept of arete reigned supreme. Arete is the continuous striving for excellence in a balanced and integrated physical, mental, and spiritual manner. At that time, the athlete was the most revered person in Greece because being an athlete meant being well versed and skillful not just during athletic competition but in this full and integrated manner. In fact, athletics were a part of the arts and humanities and physical education was held in high esteem, comparable to philosophy, literature, medicine, and other disciplines of unquestionable academic integrity.
This had changed, however, by the 4th century B.C. During the intervening centuries, two important trends developed. First was the overemphasis on professionalism. Prize money became more valued than effort and the striving for excellence. And second was the overemphasis on winning. Cheating was rampant.
Because of these two trends, disciplines related to athletics, in particular, and being physical, in general, fell into disfavor and were relegated to second-rate status. And, to this day, this perspective prevails in education and, for the most part, the culture at large.
Despite all this, the value of the physical domain has not been lost on insightful individuals. Great writers, artists, scientists, and others have recognized the value of the physical domain—and its integration with the mind and spirit—in living a rich and full life:
"Never trust a thought you came upon sitting down. The muscles must be in celebration with the mind." —Friedrich Nietzsche
"My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect." —D. H. Lawrence
"Is not all body and soul an instrument through which the artist expresses his inner message of beauty." —Isadora Duncan
"My primary process of perceiving is muscular and visual." —Albert Einstein
While the perspective of these sages seems to be lost on many in education today, current research is starting to show a direct correlation between physical activity and mental capacity. Studies show that those who participate in appropriate forms of physical activity have a greater sense of mental alertness, make better and faster decisions, are more creative, and have better memory retention than those who are not physically active.
And research done by Howard Gardner, Ph.D., at Harvard University indicates that there isn't just one basic form of human intelligence but seven intelligences, including body-kinesthetic; verbal/ linguistic; logical/mathematical; musical; spatial; interpersonal; and intrapersonal.
Gardner's research implies that we may be off track with millions of kinesthetically intelligent students who are underachieving in the current educational system simply because our schools do not recognize nor honor this form of intelligence and, thus, fail to provide greater and more appropriate forms of physically-oriented education for these students. The problem here may not be unmotivated, underachieving students, but the inappropriate approaches being used to try and reach them.
If we take to heart the wisdom of James, Nietzsche, Lawrence, Duncan, Einstein, and many others like them instead of only using their insights for study purposes, and if we use this wisdom as a building block and link it with the enlightening results of current research, there may come a day in the not-too-distant future when the curriculum objectives of the physical education department will be first on the school district’s list and the PE department will get its meeting room assignment before anyone else. |
