Moving and Being Moved: Implications for Practice

Most everyone agrees that activity must be meaningful if students are to adopt an active lifestyle. However, physical educators typically have not attended to meaning and, because of this, have often missed imponant differences in levels of significance or depths of meaning. Michael Polanyi provides a framework that would improve our education in this area. His analysis, along with insights provided by Robert Coover (Universal Baseball Association, inc. J. Henry Waugh, prop.) and Craig Lambert (Mind Over Water: Lessons on Life From the Art of Rowing), show how meaning varies from the casually interesting to the poignantly moving. Unfortunately, three traditional approaches used by physical educators to enhance significance (the prudential, intellectual, and affective techniques) provide most students with only weaker varieties of meaning. Alternate strategies that focus on surrendering to one's activity, dwelling in movement subcultures for an extended period of time, and elevating sport and dance to the level of metaphor or ritual appear far more promising.