It was a day when two teams were playing in a Football National Tournament in a school in Kerala. All of a sudden it started raining elephants and dinosaurs as is wont of Kerala rains. I am not ashamed to admit that I was witnessing a full-fledged football match for the first time in my life, being not too much of a sports person and not having extended my horizon of interest beyond watching a cricket match up to that point of time! So I thought the students will pack up and run to shelters. But to my surprise they continued playing still with the same fervor working the ball towards the goal post. It could as well have been a clear sky, the way they were playing undeterred. Suddenly I had a flash of enlightenment! I thought I could appreciate what Swami Vivekananda meant when he said that one could reach heaven rather by playing Football than by reading Bhagavat Gita. The discipline, the determination, concentration, sense of purpose, with which the students worked towards the goal, was nothing short of the austerity that the great sages practice in the evolution of their souls!
If children who excel in sports are poor performers in academics it is not because of any deficiency in their mental caliber. It is only that their talents in sports are not tapped enough to evolve alternative learning strategies. Human beings construct knowledge as they perceive and comprehend and the learning processes are not devoid of their individual interests when it comes to storing information in their memory. Hence it is vital for teachers as facilitators to show the way to the students to learn the seemingly uninteresting things through processes that can successfully hold their interests.
A mathematics teacher can integrate mathematical concepts through sports activities. A primary teacher may teach counting, mental additions, special sums and so on by taking the children to the games field and allowing them to play potato gathering or watch/play a cricket match. When the child adds sixes and fours or calculates how much more runs have to be scored for a victory he does not follow the routine dull methods the stern and taciturn math teachers advocate in the confines of a class room. What starts as a playful activity becomes a way of life that the child gradually strengthens the thinking prowess. True they sweat it out but only literally so! A wizard in arithmetical computation is one to whom numbers are as close as one’s bosom friend that he/she feels no fear in working with them, is able to see and appreciate the beautiful patterns they hold. As this would indeed lay the foundation for inductive reasoning, introducing the child to numbers the play way, through puzzling, allowing him the pleasure of finding his own solution, will motivate him to go in search of newer problems headlong as a challenge rather than shrinking from them in what is termed as phobia.
Be it numbers or Geometry or mensuration take the child out in the field. I recall that instance in a school where, for one of the sports events children had to perform mass drills standing in an elliptical boundary. XI class children were escorted by the Mathematics teacher who unfolded the concept of the locus of an ellipse to create it on the ground.
Recall the adage “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” I would go a step further and say, “Not some play amidst work, but make your work as joyous as play.”
Such integration is possible for all subjects. Physical education and Yoga activities are so much related to science and social science that it is for a teacher to attempt an integrated teaching, by co opting a physical education or a yoga teacher if need be. When Surya Namaskar is performed in the early morning sun it is only to facilitate formation of vitamin D by our skin. That it is related to the time of the day, year, and latitude of the place and so on, that it plays a vital role in one’s health, from bone health to cancer prevention, are enough motivation for anyone not to shun the sun and remain in the confines of four walls. Such experiential learning sustains knowledge. Physical gains combined with equal mental gains will definitely ensure a sound mind in a sound body. It is not that one happens before the other. It is simultaneous. It is said that the new flame “SUDOKU” is a good brain teaser for keeping away even ALZHEIMER ‘S disease.
All these require intensive planning by the teacher to suitably juxtapose a game with a concept, suitably design the physical activity to correlate with the mental comprehension. Constant interaction with physical education teachers, perusal of their syllabi for various classes and relating with one’s own syllabus, co partnering the activities would perhaps give a new dimension to holistic development as a pedagogic perception.
Goal of Education
"I would try to develop courage, strength, virtue, the ability to forget oneself in working towards great aims. This is more important than literacy; academic learning is only a means to this greater end." - M. K. Gandhi
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