City Living and Physical Education

This morning was a great morning.  First of all, I felt pretty good, not as good as yesterday but a far cry from the several bad fibro days I had earlier in the week.  Second of all, we did several errands this morning to buy supplies for a project we were working on.  One of them involved taking the bus to a big regular grocery store, something we don't do all that frequently. 

During our journey there, I couldn't help but think about the superior physical education that my kids are receiving.  Getting to the store involved quite a bit of walking.  First, we grabbed the bus down two blocks so we could hit the better mail box.  (For some reason, the one at our block has one pick up while the one two blocks down has several pick ups at good times.)  Then when we got off the bus we had to walk about five times as far as someone who would drive to the store and park in the lot.  We also brought our grocery cart which had to be pushed, not just to and from a car, but to and from the bus.  On the way home, knowing that getting the bus there has been unlucky for me without waiting a long time, we decided to walk and turn around each stop to see if it was coming (since the stops are pretty close together).  By the time we saw it, we were less than a mile from home so we just kept walking for a total of about 2 miles.  It was beautiful outside and and invigorating for the soul to be out in the sunshine with all the activity around.

A habit of regular exercise woven into life is what I prescribe as physical education.  This will benefit them far into adulthood.  It doesn't seem strange to them to walk distances to go places or to think about how to get things from one place to another without a car.  Unfortunately, physical education traditionally focuses on sports, specifically team sports.  I am all for sports that can be used regularly into adult life like running or swimming, but how many adults are on teams of the sports they used to play in school?  Relatively few.  Further, I have a serious problem with the message of team sports with the emphasis on competition.  Even when competition is downplayed, there is always a winner and a loser.  Many think competition is fundamental to our society particularly with the vast materialism in the name of the free market.  However, I don't believe it has to be.  It isn't inherent in our human nature.  Real and widespread collaboration would be a better way.  Of course, team sports reinforce competition in an enticing manner along side the conventional education and employment system.  It isn't enough to talk about collaboration while continuing to subscribe to the institutions whose fundamental nature is competition.  Our society would need to function quite a bit differently including rejecting conventional education with its testing, ranking, and sorting.  It would have to be a revolution of sorts since competition is so woven into society.  Almost every news broadcast where politics is discussed has it and walk into any business with a tv on and the vast majority have sports on for their customers (including the cafe at the grocery store this morning).

If T or C asked to join a sport would I let them?  Of course.  After all, we are trying to do our best at child centered learning.  Will they ask?  Probably not.  We have limited the exposure to sports on tv and discussion of team or professional sports as much as we can.  We wouldn't stop them from watching, but we never set an example of watching them ourselves at home.  More importantly, however, our simple urban living, sets the best example of all by using our bodies to carry out daily activities in a physical and more sustainable way.  We are probably in a very small minority.  Many homeschoolers, while rejecting conventional school, have their kids participate in sports as their physical education, never mind the vast majority of the population whose kids are in school with many participating in sports as well.  That is is fine though.  We aren't raising our kids to be like everyone else, but to make thoughtful choices about their activities and, therefore, views and priorities.

But keep checking in with us to see if the kids surprise us and ask to go on a team!