Mens Sana in Corpore Sano

This is a typical Greek originated jargon used in a discipline called Health and Physical Education (HPE). It means, “Sound Mind in Sound Body”

By design, I am a teacher trained to be teaching this subject. But, many of the times, I remained crippled to teach the subject in the school, because I suffered a deficiency of adequate enabling conditions.

Frankly speaking, this is the subject that garners a huge rainbow of interest in me to learn and teach. And interestingly, it happens to be the formal discipline in other countries for numerous reasons. In Bhutan, while the proponent places a huge recognition, the middle-rank bureaucracy fails to be cognizant. Sometimes, I feel this subject has been a mere waste.

The depth of the subject is fathomlessly rooted with a higher level of science. We cannot teach in schools whatever we have learned in college because almost 70% is theory-oriented. It is just otherwise in the schools that the course guidelines demand us be none better than a sports coach. Activities designed to seem to be simple but attending a refresher course on it would have been a blessing. I do not blame the Ministry failed to provide induction courses, but I blame them for the negligence.

Sometimes, I believe deploying a full trust sincerely to the dzongkhag is also a wrong idea. Human creativity can easily manufacture a lie and say one thing to the above and does another to the below. Like Bernard Baruch asserts, every deaf, blind and dumb knows “running upstairs and running down people”. They have a greater worry of the dangers of the ceiling above crushing them than the floor below their feet sinking.

I queried my friends and they all responded to me of having Trainer of Trainees (ToT) workshops on the current syllabus. My name was made to the nomination list but like the sweet words replacing the dull in the composition writing, it got replaced with my principal’s.

I do not envy him getting such a privilege. That’s good. Why? It was a professional development course. But, many reasons kept lingering in my heart when I was asked to take the subject in the school for all the classes besides others.

Nepotism is still prevalent. Where’s water, there’s rain. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is sheer waste here. Classes were not taken. SBIP [School based In-service Program] was not followed. Who exactly will understand the quality of education in Bhutan? The answer is nobody.

I will not talk bullshit about it now.

Globally, a huge number of people dies due to sedentary diseases, unhealthy lifestyles and dieting. Physical education is all that deals with this stuff. So, it cannot be taken for granted. It is an education with “Physical” in it. There’s an activity in such education to achieve better human development. 

Volleyball Winner of  2011 Cluster Schools Meet held at Yadi MSS, Mongar... Hurray!!! My dear girls...

Plato warns that “lack of activity destroys the good conditions of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it. Thomas Wood further clarified the importance when he said, “The great thought in physical education is not the education of the physical nature, but the relation of physical training to complete education”.

It is classified as a branch of science that caters a holistic development in learners. It umbrellas the three domains of learning: the cognitive (knowledge), affective (Attitudes and values) and the psychomotor (Motor Skills). 

The three domains are explained further below:

The holistic view of Physical Education 

It is also noteworthy to leave a quote of an Indian Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, Rudyard Kipling,

Nations have passed away and left no traces.

And history gives the naked cause of it –

One single, simple reason in all cases,

They fell because their people were not fit.

Nothing on earth-no arts, no gift, nor graces –

No fame, no wealth –outweighs the want of it.

This is the law which every law embraces –

Be fit-be fit- be fit! In mind and body be fit.

This is the lesson at all times and places –

One changeless Truth on all things changing writ

For boys and girls, men, women, nation and races

Be fit-be fit! And once again-be fit!

                                                        Rudyard Kipling