gold for group awareness

why to change sports education in schools 

One day in school my teacher discovered that I am quite good at running. And I loved to run. So it was obvious to send me to a junior sports club for athletics and train my skills.  I only must have been 11 years old, when I entered the training hall and met the trainer of that club. And still – I will never forget our first interaction we had: he asked me about my name – and about my results in running. My results? I had no idea what to answer on that question. My results in running so far were: running after somebody on the playground and trying to catch him. My results in jumping were: getting over the fence or not. My results in climbing a tree were: being on the top of the tree or falling down. My result in dancing was: enjoying the music or finding another one. I had no idea, that there might be other results I should care about. 

My trainer asked me to run around the gym in one circle. When I came back he said: 2:34 minutes. I had no idea how to process this information. It was irrelevant for me. But from there on I learned, that sports in our world is supposed to be about numbers: meters you can jump, distances you can run, minutes you spend swimming, points you receive for dancing. 

And the problem is: if you do not achieve a certain result, you are judged as “not sporty”, “bad” and “not enough”. It’s not the same as when you do not succeed in calculating math. Math is just a concept, it doesn’t belong to you and it’s not a part of your identity. 

The problem about judging people’s physicality is: when being judged in movement, your body is judged, and when your body is judged, then you are judged. And nobody wants to receive the stamp “not enough” for his own identity.

We define ourselves through our body. And the definition other people find for our body impacts our psychological status. Have you realized that people being good at sports very seldom get bullied at school? It makes sense: being sporty symbolizes health, power and courage. We do not confront those who show confidence and act strong. In terms of sports it means: being fast, coordinated and physically great.

Another point is: movement is mostly taught by those, who are selected as high achievers in our system: those who participated at contests, who passed the entry test for sports university and who have always been valued and encouraged in sports. What they miss is empathy for those, who sit on the other side of the river. People who have problems catching a ball or swimming in three different styles. 

Movement in our world is quantitative. Not qualitative. Qualitative would be: how do you like it? Why do you do it? How do you behave, when moving?

Imagine we would exchange our definitions on sports and use other words for it: cooperative, imaginative, passionate. 

The moment I realized that our concepts of movement can’t be useful happened during a long and cold winter day. Out of boredom I decided to have a run outside in the forest. I took my running shoes and left the house. There was no time, no limit, no estimated arrival and no judgment. It was the first time I realized how my breathing changed through the stages of running. I observed every tree passing by while my feet where floating on the ground. I let my thoughts travel and come back and started to understand what people mean, if they associate running with freedom. 

In this particular moment I learned a lesson, which I believe is crucial for the understanding of teaching movement: Nobody is allowed to tell my body how to move. My body knows it already. Once we implement this aspect in our system of sports education we draw a completely new picture of what we do.

School is the ideal environment to start developing a society wide culture of change. We should not play games which divide children into winners and losers. Instead, we should motivate children to create their own exercises and teach them to their classmates. We should build playgrounds out of wood and ask every child to find at least five different ways of crossing a parkour made of blankets. Children’s results in sports should not correlate with their achievements in running, but with their behavior and creativity during sports class: how much do they help children, who are not that fit? How well do they integrate in the group?

Some might say, children need a goal to reach or something to conquer about. That might be true. But – who said, that time and range is at the top of all triumphs? It’s about us, teachers, to set up values and concepts. 

Our world needs more patience, acceptance and valuation in movement. No pressure and no goals. Our world is already packed with stress, achievements, hate and disgust. The relation to our body and the way we communicate physicality between each other could be a microwave towards a bigger movement which impacts society, politics and ideals we have. So we should start it, while running around a gym hall.