The Stay-at-Homeschooling Mom Podcast
Education
Mary Ellen and Ginny tackle the important topic of physical exercise in your homeschool. This kicks off the first of our two episodes focused on athletics.
Master teacher John Taylor Gatto, after winning several teaching awards in New York City and State, quit the field saying he could no longer hurt children to make a living. Gatto wrote on the importance of sports to develop future leaders.
Show Notes:
There are six excellent reasons to focus on energetic physical activity in your homeschool.
1. Build Focus and Attention
Experience has proven that kids who exercise vigorously, especially in the fresh air perform better. Very important in our homeschools. Students need to get outside and move.
2. Practice Makes Perfect
People at the top of their fields say that thousands of hours of deliberate practice and training are necessary to reach the highest levels of performance. Sports are how our children learn to practice.
3. Learn to Win and Lose Graciously and Keep it in Perspective
Good sportsmanship discourages being a sore loser, a particularly unattractive trait in sports, business, and life.
4. Learn to Play by the Rules
No matter what, three strikes and the batter is out. No amount of whining gets him a fourth strike. Organized sports come with some pretty rigid regulations. Every member of the team plays by the same rules; Children learn that rules apply to all, and success follows those who follow rules.
Something we should remember in our homeschools.
5. Avoid the Devil’s Workshop
21st century children spend too much time playing mindless video games and watching TV shows which clinically proven to destroy the attention span and lead to depression and anxiety. Fill these empty hours with wholesome activity.
6. Play to the Crowd
Team sports teach kids to give their best in front of an audience that may or may not be friendly. In a similar way, leaders in government, the professions and business need to be able to pitch their ideas to a crowd, all the while keeping their cool. This is an important life skill.
John Taylor Gatto suggests the following three reasons for engaging in physical exercise.
1. Learn to Handle Pain
Learning to calmly deal with pain, and continue towards a goal despite it, is a trait that is useful in every walk of life. John Taylor Gatto considers it essential in a leader.
2. Learn to Deal with Emergencies
The unexpected crops up all the time in sports and players must simply deal with it. The ability to think on one’s feet and adjust quickly to changing circumstances is crucial in a potential leader.
3. Learn to be a Calm & Confident Leader Who Inspires Confidence in Others
“Energetic physical sports are not a luxury, or a way to blow off steam, but they are absolutely the only way to confer grace on the human presence, and that grace translates into power and money later on.”
We want well formed Catholic leaders in positions that can change the world and your children are poised to do that. Physical activity can help.
Weapons of Mass Instruction, A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling By John Taylor Gatto:
https://amzn.to/404Jvpa
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