The Importance Of Movement In Education

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Rationale: “Sit down”, “Don’t move”, “Keep Quiet”, “Listen to me”, “Fold your hands, finger on lips” are some of the oft heard ‘orders’ given to children by teachers in classrooms across the world. It is the lament of educationists, that the above are seen as necessary conditions for successful teaching and learning. This kind of teaching typically involves the teacher (the ‘knower’) filling children (passive receivers) with knowledge that the children repeat or learn by rote. While this is largely how teaching learning happens inside of schools, there is extensive literature comprising of writings from ancient Greece such as Plato’s notions of play, to writings of modern thinkers such as the poetry and writings on education by Rabindranath…show more content…
The overriding emphasis in today’s schools is on mental / intellectual learning, with pedagogical practices requiring children to be still, not move, listen, and receive knowledge. All living beings, plants, animals and humans are characterized by movement. Movement is a sign of life, manner of learning and mode of expression and communication. Yet, in schools, it is discouraged and even punished. This disembodied pedagogy provides very little scope for body-mind interaction, for the mind to understand through bodily experiences or for learning to take place by doing; things that children are naturally inclined towards. Tagore, while expressing the idea of a pedagogy well suited to children’s needs, emphasizes on allowing children to learn as per there inherent biological potential. He says, “Why then, doesn’t he start up from his chair and dance his ideas out in the sunshine? Because he has been to school! It is in school that he has learned the habit of stifling so thoroughly the natural companionship of body and mind. This power and freedom we have deliberately mutilated and of both we have deprived our children”. (De…show more content…
Physical activity such as Yoga, martial arts, farming, gardening, sports and games etc. provide abundant scope for individuals to demonstrate personal agency, collaborate, enjoy and employ numerous other faculties, in a manner that bridges the body-mind dichotomy. Through aesthetic explorations and physical practice children can understand themselves and the world around them in aesthetic and playful ways. This understanding is complementary to the scientific or social scientific understandings. Where teaching-learning and schools have largely become about information / knowledge, it is through aesthetic explorations and physical practice that students can develop certain sensibilities that could contribute to individual and collective well-being of societies by enabling them to critically examine the state of education as well as that of society. To quote Tagore again, “(…), the school should provide opportunity for children to watch clouds float by as well as create plays, paintings, publications, craftwork, garden songs, pageants to master languages, sciences and mathematics through creative understanding, to strengthen one’s personal weaknesses and develop one’s personal strengths.” (De
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