I have always believed that dance education and dance as an interdiscplinary subject is undervalued and neglected in our society. Recent readings not only support this belief further, but lay a case for the importance of movement and dance in education.
My first reading comes from 'Dance in the City' a collection of essays edited by Helen Thomas (1997):
"we are rapidly coming to realise that by our excessive dependence upon verbal-arbitrary language, oral and written, we have allowed...our resourcees of bodily communication (to atrophy)" (Polhemus cited in Ward, p8).
Even though Polhemus wrote this in 1975, before the explosion of technology on our lives, it has move relevance than ever today. Our children have access to technology on a daily basis and end up spending their time in front of electronics. Not only do they use electronics for education and entertainment, but they also use them for communication by texting, skyping and calling their friends.
The second reading comes from Jeff Hurt's blog about '10 Brain-Based Learning Laws'. Here is the link, but I also copied the relevant excerpts:
http://jeffhurtblog.com/2012/01/31/10-brainbased-learning-laws-that-trump-traditional-education/
Movement trumps sitting
The longer an audience sits, the less they learn.
From the beginning of time, our bodies and brains were made to move. It’s in our genes. We think better when we move. For education, this means getting up and moving across the room to a new table. Finding someone you don’t know, introducing yourself and then sharing some new learning.
I suppose it depends - like with every other thing humankind has ever invented - on how we use technology.
ReplyDeleteIn general, I lean towards welcoming computers and other technology as they can open a whole new world of information and can greatly enhance speed and depth of studying. The challenge is to limit the time spent with computers and use other educational techniques that incorporate movement into the learning process. That could be games played in class or PE periods inbetween academic periods. After school kids should have a play break before sitting down for their homeworks, and extensive assignments like essays could be broken up into smaller portions of work interspersed with outside play or sports. It is doable.
In any case, I believe that banning technology from education is not just plain impossible, it would also be counterproductive. After all, making computers and the like part of their education will allow children to learn to use the available technological support in a guided and goal-oriented manner.
I totally agree with you. Technology, I think, enhances learning. It makes learning more exciting and accessible to all types of learners. But what does it mean when learning depends on movement? Does it mean learners have to move during learning episodes? Do those movements have to emulate the learning in some way, for example kinesthetic learning (and exactly what happens in my classes), or does 'movement' here imply 'fidgeting'? So I guess my question concerns the degree of movement required for successful learning.
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