CHAPTER VI
THE PARADIGM
High Ground
Smiling, sincere, incorruptible--
His body disciplined and limber.
A man who had become what he could,|
And was what he was--
Ready at any moment to gather everything
Into one simple sacrifice.
Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961)
Paradigm 21 represents an ideal relationship between culture and leisure requiring harmony in the content/function mapping of the physical education curriculum. Equal emphasis must be given to restorative, martial, and pedagogical training, and this content must be aimed toward the interpersonal and transpersonal dimensions. This balance and buoyancy allows physical education to play a key role in situating physical culture upon leisure. Skole is the foundation, and it must be solid and symmetrical in order to allow physical education and physical culture to maintain a relatively effortless balance.
The human body is a temporary vehicle through which mystical Unity and its subordinate stages are experienced, and all that is taught about the body's role in this hierarchical process of mind-body evolution might be called physical education. As children grow and develop, they tend to mirror the actions of those around them. They are molded and shaped by natural and cultural forces such as furniture, clothing, gravity, and the movement of those after which they fashion their own motor patterns. Physical education is the systematic training that provides the cultural guidelines for adult motor habits, and schools are the center of that education.
Physical education is education of and through the physical. Of the physical refers to the beauty and efficiency of the body. The classical Greeks called the ideal education of the physical euexi.
Education through the physical is an equally complex matter. In a highly evolved and noble system of physical education, qualities such as loyalty, patriotism, patience, courage, poise, respect, self-discipline, productivity, and leadership can be expected as outcomes. In a poorly conceived and imbalanced program, one can expect to find qualities such as confusion, fear, anger, hatred, lethargy, carnality, intemperance, obduracy, and ignorance. The Greeks called the ideal education through the physical eutaxi.
Physical education has both natural and artificial dimensions. The natural aspect refers to "functional physical education by life itself," as stated by Guts Muths in his Generic Classification of Exercises (Burke, 1970). Artificial physical education is primarily the responsibility of the schools. It includes structured activities designed to enhance the natural movements which take place outside the classroom and throughout life.
Physical education can be divided into three basic content areas:
1. Restorative--Techniques, obvious or subtle, that bring the body toward
its optimal state of harmony and compensate for the stress of daily life.
2. Martial--Techniques, obvious or subtle, that teach appropriate
offensive and defensive responses to external aggression.
3. Pedagogical--Sports, games, theoretical bodies of knowledge, and dance.
The function of physical education can also be divided into three areas:
1. Personal--The focus of this aspect is on individual health, comfort,
and physical gratification. Here the self is felt to exist at the borders of the
skin and the limits of personal desire. It can easily be reduced to
self-indulgence but can also serve to stimulate healthy life habits.
2. Interpersonal--At this level, one's attention turns to the needs of
others. At lower levels it may be confined to family, neighborhood, gender,
race, and so forth. Higher development brings awareness that it is the duty of
all able citizens to be physically and mentally prepared to defend the highest
ideals of their nation and to contribute productively to its future. Further
growth will lead to the realization that national borders are superficial
boundaries within an interdependent family of living organisms who share the
earth.
3. Transpersonal--Cultures vary greatly in the development and
understanding of obvious and subtle physical techniques that contribute to the
spiritual quest. Transcendence brings the uninterrupted, moment-to-moment
realization that all things are divinely One.
Physical education content and function influence physical culture's precarious balance upon leisure. Disharmony will destroy this delicate balance, and culture will inevitably collapse. Balance is maintained by (a) equal emphasis on restorative, martial, and pedagogical content and (b) emphasis on the highest functional regions, with gradually diminishing emphasis on the lower levels.
Our current national model operates primarily from the bottom right corner of the physical education curriculum content/function formula, with an imbalanced emphasis on the personal/pedagogical. According to this paradigm, cultural decay, selfishness, confusion, and eventual collapse can be expected unless, as everyone seems to agree at the moment, we improve our movement and change our direction before we crash.
Chapter
1.
Introduction
2.
Chaos in the Field
3.
Roots
4.
Modern Fabric
5. Function
6. The
Paradigm
References