Balance needed in school programs

Baguio City – A weekend trip to this northern city is the most natural thing one can think in April and May to escape the oppressive heat in the lowlands. It is the most natural thing one does without having to worry about huge expenses associated with overseas travel.

It is therefore in the confines of Baguio Country Club where we continue our column of underscoring the value of school sports, which we started last week.

We ended our column last Wednesday with a statement from “Sports in America” written by best selling author, James Michener: “….(in the US), school administrators, athletic departments and even PE teachers are so indoctrinated with the concept of fielding semi-professional teams as the goal of education that attention to the health of the student body is impossible. The educators are not to blame; it is our society that demands a team first, health second.”

The more enlightened view, which we of course espouse, is that social investments must be made for the total development of children through sports. The investment should be made while the children are still in grade school and high school where values formation is emphasized for assimilation and inculcation. The current concern of most “enrollment-oriented” schools is success in collegiate sports which has become some kind of a marketing tool.

While meritorious and noteworthy by itself, making investments in sports just at the collegiate level, to the detriment of the primary and secondary sports, may however be a bit late if we want our students to appreciate sports ethics.

While solid and rigorous research still has to be done in the Philippines, there are indications that good athletes come not from strong competitive programs in a limited number of high profile sports but from institutions of learning with good, solid and varied activities of physical education and sports. Thus, children at an early age should be provided with experience and given the opportunity to engage in track and field, gymnastics, swimming, sailing, football, basketball, volleyball, martial arts, tennis, wall climbing, roller skating and even dance. Some add hiking and camp craft to introduce the young to the outdoor environment.

Experts say that a varied experience in motor activity will enhance the development of the muscular, skeletal, neural and physiological systems of the child while exciting his cognitive functions. At the same time, the child will play according to the rules of the game. The idea of providing the child with varied sports activities goes against the conventional practice of channeling them to one particular sport or specializing in one specific sport at an early age.

To justify this specialization, some misinformed sports enthusiasts in various sectors of society and representing different professions often invoke the saying, “There’s nothing like starting them young”. The statement is both correct and wrong. Start them young in sports, yes – no one can and should disagree with that. But starting them young by having them specialize in one sport before they reach high school age is putting more meaning into that phrase than was really intended.

Once again, Michener ask tough questions like: Has our preoccupation with competitive games rather than with health produced American young people who are deficient in physical conditioning when compared with students in other nations?

 Research involving a battery of six simple tests of muscular fitness showed the Americans fared poorly compared with children from age six to 16 in Austria, Italy and Switzerland.

Dr Hans Krauss of New York University who produced the paper “Minimum Muscular Fitness Tests in School Children” stated the major difference between these two groups (American and European) is the fact that European children do not have the “benefit” of a highly mechanized society; they do not use cars, school buses, elevators or other labor saving devices. They must walk everywhere – even to school, frequently a long distance. Their recreation is largely based on the active use of their bodies. In this country, the children are generally conveyed in private cars or by bus, and they engage in recreation as spectators rather than as participants.”

Although speaking many decades ago, Krauss confirms our point that extra care should be taken in the planning and implementation of children’s sports for, as Krauss states, “The years 10 through 13 are critical so far as the loss of general fitness is concerned…we are unable to alleviate the situation (of deficiency in physical conditioning)_ during the time the children are in elementary schools. They leave elementary school in very much the same condition as when they entered it – if anything, a little worse.”

Further research validated the initial findings. Michener stated that the explanation “our (American) educational system was stressing so heavily the public games played by a few semi-professional athletes posing as scholars that the general health of the student body was going unattended.”