To start with, we wish to share a couple of stark observations about sports education in schools:
- Sports has always been considered an ‘extra-curricular’ subject – sports is treated as an optional subject beyond the compulsory educational domain of schools (‘overall development’ was considered extra-curricular,) and parents could not care less. This neglect of the need to seriously focus on development of body as an integral part of education was by design, schools were conceived with academics as the focus of their role in education.
- However, in the past few years ‘overall development’ (of which sports is made to be a big part) has ‘inched up’ to become the default curricular domain, or the central focus of school education – academics is almost outsourced to tuition and coaching system outside of schools, and parent could not care less.
Simply put, in just a matter of few years, sports (and overall development) have come to occupy the central ‘curricular focus’ in schools and for all practical purposes, academics is also-ran curricular target. The evidence of such a shift is all over – the number of schools with ‘20+’ sports facilities or ‘best of class outsourced sports education’ is increasing by the day.
Obviously, nothing earth shaking has happened in our lives due to such a dramatic switch over of positions between sports (and overall education) and academics in school education. We have changed too much too soon. To be fair, this is not to deny that sports education needs to be widely discussed and secured better recognition through a complete overhaul of teaching and learning processes and resources in sports.
Here is a listing of ten perspectives which could help anchor the redesign of sports education:
- The purpose of sports education is to nurture the ‘bodily intelligence’ in all students – it is the primary reason for the inclusion of sports education in school curriculum.
- A secondary reason of sports education is to identify and encourage students who may seek a sport as a career, but it will have to be significantly supported beyond the routine of schools.
Interestingly, this secondary reason has largely galvanised only within the past decade, led by IPL in cricket. Now, many other sports are becoming fairly lucrative career options. - Another secondary reason, of a very recent origin, is the fact that sports do help inculcate certain attitudes and values, which are touted as 21st century skills, such as team play, competitive spirit, living with loss, leadership, reflex actions.
- On the other end, a 21st century affliction – sedentary lifestyle – is pushing sports education towards cultivating physical education in a way that it prods students to change lifestyle outside of schools too. However, this spirit of sports education seems to be getting lost in the massive expansion of sports facilities and sports mentoring in schools.
- We need to ask ourselves if schools should promote too many team sports for proper physical development of every student because such sports are not readily an option outside of schools. For instance, even a popular sport like badminton is not easy to follow outside schools for want of ‘an opponent’, available court to play, or favourable weather conditions at the time when one wants to play.
- We also need to evaluate if team sports are necessarily equally productive for all children put through those sports; for instance, taking a section out to play cricket as well as a basketball game in a given period will still completely leave out some students and quite a few of those playing would also be involved only at a peripheral level.
- For most outdoor and many indoor sports, the ‘period timings’ are just not the critical time needed to play the sport in a meaningful way; for instance, playing football, tennis, chess or volleyball in a 40-minute period will not do justice to the spirit of these games; the spirit of a game must not be lost out whenever the game is played in school.
- Expectedly, it is time we seriously evaluate the role of sports education and set its minimum common core.
We propose the following three-element common core for sports education in schools – a. 100% productive sports time for 100% students out in the sports period (no student should wait for action/turn for any longer than a few minutes over the sports period). Sports and activities should be so chosen that all students are fully engaged and involved in the period. b. Whatever sports or physical activities are promoted among students, priority must be accorded to those which help deepen life skills or are easily sustainable outside schools. For instance, running, throwing, long jump, high jump, yoga are just some examples of activities which are very useful life skills and do not necessarily require team members or opponents to indulge in. Incidentally, all these are very objectively assessable for every student and also open to self-evaluation, monitoring and self-improvement by students – the ideal context for education. c. Ideally, every student must be associated with one team sports that must be played in a way that over a few days or weeks full cycle of the sport is completed. More importantly, all the team sports must be played in cross-class teams to simulate realistic situations of competitive sports and continuously challenge the talented students towards improvement. - The revolution in sports education should not come at the cost of academic revolution. Academics cannot be compromised at all – academics need to be transacted very differently in schools to ensure that NO child is left behind in academics. A great sports education must follow world-class academics in schools! Fortunately, academic excellence for all is not too tall an order.
- And let us also not forget that in most countries, it is far more difficult to get a ‘good sports teacher’ compared to a good maths or science teacher. It might sound odd to an uninitiated but that is closer to reality. Thus, the recent expansion in sports education in India may have pushed the demand for sports teachers beyond the levels of comfort for quality.
To summarise, sports education needs re-design and re-balancing with academic education.
‘Game players regularly exhibit persistence, risk taking, attention to detail, and problem solving, all behaviours that ideally would be regularly demonstrated in schools’
— The education Arcade at MIT
