Martial Arts in Primary Schools

kravist

I was going to post this on the thread about what age to start teaching kids at, but i reckon it deserves a thread of its own.

In the Irish Primary Schools Curriculum, there is no direct provision for Martial Arts.
Each subject consists or various strands and strand units. In terms of PE, the strands would be things like Games, Aquatics, Dance (modern and traditional) Gymnastics etc.
Strand units would be the meat on the bones as it were, eg. Rolls, in Gymnastics, Ball skills in the Games strand etc etc.

IMO the great omission in the curriculum, taking into account all subject areas are the Martial Arts!!

Without getting too technical, i believe it/they deserve a Strand unit of it's/their own!
We all know the benefits of MA training..whatever your chosen system..isn't it time the Dept. of Education and Science were made aware of them too??

Nothingcompares

Do you think there are enough competent martial arts instructors to teach in every primary school in Ireland? Do you suggest all primary school teachers should also learn martial arts during their teacher training so they can teach martial arts to kids in the PE class?

My sister did a martial arts module over the course of a few weeks in secondary school. Some of the "common sense" advice they were given sounded useful. Some of it seemed like complete bollocks. For example, the only thing they were told to do, if on the ground, was to triangle choke their attacker. The instructor (tkd black belt) demonstrated this on a willing reciepient for 10 minutes or so, getting many thing fundamental things completely wrong. They then moved onto the next thing.

Nothingcompares

The moniker "more harm than good" pops into my head too. kids should be out running around, jumping up and down, chasing, hiding. If you want to call this martial arts or you want to call it gymastics/PE/Dancing I don't mind.

cletus

I'm actually in my final year of study (as a mature student) to be a P.E. teacher. I am doing a Final Year Project on the ethnographics of brazilian jiu jitsu. Depending on the results I get, although they seem to be appearing as I expected, this paper will most likely make recomendations for the inclusion of some type of martial arts (probably b.j.j.) on the curruculum, similar to wrestling in America, and the recent inclusion in (I think) Sweden, of Martial Arts training to their curriculum.

kravist

Nothingcompares wrote: »

Do you think there are enough competent martial arts instructors to teach in every primary school in Ireland? Do you suggest all primary school teachers should also learn martial arts during their teacher training so they can teach martial arts to kids in the PE class?

How many primary school teachers are competent at gymnastics, yet it is included?

Roper

The very, very basics of gymnastics such as tumbling are things we all learned as kids, and are low risk activities in the right safe environment, and easily passed on.

I can think of about 4 places I'd want my son to train in, and about 400 I wouldn't have him near, so if "martial arts" was a subject in school the way it is taught in many clubs around Ireland, my boy would be staying at home and learning his ABCs from him Ma and Da thanks very much!

The current PE programmes in primary schools are a disgrace though. Mostly due to lack of facilities and the old money problem.

t-ha

Roper wrote: »

The current PE programmes in primary schools are a disgrace though.

..and secondary schools. How many people coming through the irish system are properly educated on how to get physically fit if they wanted to? Dunno about everyone else but PE in my school was basically a doss-off class, maybe some games of basketball & the honours maths class clashed with the PE class anyway in 5th & 6th year (maybe they thought that being good at maths and wanting to do sports are mutually exclusive?)! I think there's alot needing to be changed to PE classes before we start adding iffy MA stuff to it.

What kind of stuff did your course cover cletus?