The Sunday Mail
The psychomotor revolution with Thomas Gatsi and Ityai Frank Kurebwa
THE next series of articles will try to analyse the different areas of the curriculum and how they should holistically fulfil a seamless process.Gone are the days when Physical Education was taken as just some other subject and Sport was taken as an extra-curricula activity.
Judging by the number of people who are getting their livelihoods through sport directly and indirectly it is essential that whatever curriculum that is put in place, takes cognisance of these two areas and grant them the recognition they deserve.
What is Physical Education? The reader may want to ask. Historically this phenomenon started with the armed forces wanting to get fit and you would find the Bantu soldiers engaged in wrestling, boxing, stick fighting and even racing whilst the westerners were forced by their many wars to craft specific strength and speed training. From the Swiss doctor P J Ling’s therapeutic free standing exercises came the desire to prepare the youths while in schools and hence the introduction of Physical Training (P T) as a part of the curriculum. It was not until the late 50’s that it was realised that because it was teacher centred, P T was of little benefit to the learner in terms of the educational objectives and in came Physical Education (P E) which is learner centred giving the learner room for self expression.
According to Peter J Arnold (1979), “Physical Education is that aspect of the education process which develops the whole personality of the individual, physically, intellectually, socially and emotionally mainly through directed physical activities.” I must hasten to state that in the above definition the other important area that is left out is the aesthetics development which is also developed by this subject. Any educationist will agree with the fact that here is a subject area that covers everything on development of the learner’s personality and yet the majority of our children were denied it due to the boggled mindsets of our nation’s policy makers and education administrators. The nation has now come to realise that good sportsmen and women are developed and groomed through a well planned Physical Education curriculum.
Physical Education should be a must in the schools from Grade Zero to Upper Sixth form, the programmes should spread from the simple to the complex in
Educational Gymnastics
Expressive Arts and Dance
Athletics Skills
Games Skills
Aquatic Skills
Early Childhood Education (ECE)
This is the most basic education that is offered from grade zero A to grade 2. When constructing a good education there is the need for a strong and sound foundation to be put in place and in Zimbabwe this is done in the Early Childhood Department (ECD), a term that most will use when referring to ECE. One has to look at the grade zero to grade 2 end of year reports to see how this department is so centred on psychomotor education. The pupils are assessed in crucial areas such as hand eye coordination, body coordination, social skills, language skills and even listening skills and these are the building blocks for all learning to come later. One would imagine that if the curriculum were to be seamless, this type of learning and assessment done at the lowest level would be extended throughout the primary school as this would give an ideal base for psychomotor based education.
Early childhood education in Zimbabwe tries to link up all subject areas through using the thematic approach to teaching and learning. For that reason physical education and sport are found linked to music and the arts to form a discipline called Expressive Arts. Perhaps for the benefit of the reader who is not an ECE specialist we should look at a simple theme that a teacher could use and find out how every subject and our expressive arts can be linked up.
The Wedding Day is a theme that could be taken in any grade at ECE with the following areas being focussed on; language/vocabulary development, drama, miming, music and dance, clay moulding and drawing and others.
Most of these young learners have been to weddings and some may have even participated as flower girls and boys.
The question is do they know the terms, bride, groom, maid of honour, bridesmaids, best man, grooms man, wedding decor and other related terms. The wedding day is the time to introduce these terms so that by grade two the learners can know the difference between the wedding ceremony and reception after have all the other vocabulary involved ha been acquired.
Dramatising the wedding day will need practice over a period of time to come up with the sketch of the wedding. All the learners can be involved in this event with each child assigned to a part the would involve the families of the groom and bride as well as the MC, marriage officer and the ululating aunties. Not only will the pupils imitate what they have seen before but they will also have room to be creative as they sing and dance and to the occasion. Expressive dance is thus involved indirectly and that is learning by doing which reflects psychomotor learning. Expressive dance is defined as a rhythmic gymnastic response to a stimulus which could be music, drums or even clapping. This aspect works hand in hand with educational gymnastics and uses the same themes. It will also be tackled when we discuss the creative arts in later articles.
Visual arts is something that the young learners want to be involved in. Before and after the wedding day event, learners can be given the opportunity to depict it in colourful pictures, moulded forms and even drawn pictures. Visual arts are never given marks as each child expresses what he/she sees and feels. Believe you me I am convinced that mass display which ideally should be a group movement sequence should never be enforced at ECE level because the relevant gymnastic skills have not yet been developed.
In the next articles we look at physical education in the rest of the primary school, the secondary and high school.
