The school looks a lot at the content and the mind, less at the body. Are we aware that in the classroom there are bodies besides heads?

Eider Salegi: In general, little space occupies the body in school. It is present in the first cycle of Early Childhood Education, among other things because motor development is one of the pillars, but already in the second cycle of Early Childhood Education, especially in recent years, we started to give more importance to the cognitive aspect, and due to the pressure that comes from Primary, with this need to work the cognitive aspect, we directed the children sitting and at the tables to perform activities or written records. It's worrying because we think we have to get boys and girls used to sitting and we put our bodies aside. But people are global and we can't separate the mind and the body; the moment we start to understand that globality, surely we'll also see changes in our ways of doing.

Also among teachers the awareness of the body itself is very scarce in general, I do not know to what extent we bring to consciousness that we are also body and that we use the body to establish relationships: after all, our body is a work tool, and that means that we should work the body. Do we know how to identify the signals that the body sends me? What is the body relationship with the students and the rest?

Luis Larrañaga: From the point of view of the Physical Education subject, we do not educate the bodies or we only train in movement, we are not mere coaches, but we integrate and educate the student as a whole. Because the student does not come only with a body, but comes with some previous experiences, with some motivations and emotions… and all that we take into account: the cognitive, the emotional, the relational… and, of course, also the physical. Outside of Physical Education, should more time be devoted to the body in school? Yes, of course, no doubt.

Amaia Navascues: At school, the body is under the head, not only literally, but in a second or third plane, and verticality predominates: at home or in other spaces they may be on the ground, but in formal education they have no place, if it is in Early Childhood Education. The current presence of the body in education is not a coincidence, but a consequence of the well-thought in an era, of the effort to paralyze and instrumentalize the bodies, as their training is slower and silent. The teachers have received all this culture, it is necessary to make a profound critical reading, and although we consciously do not share it many, we transmit it. It is true that among professors there is a change of paradigm or look, we see that emotions and the presence of the body are important, but we still have to work a lot to change the inertia.

Okay, the school has to work the body. What does it mean to work the body?

Maider Urrutia: The body has little space, but it has its place because there are bodies. The question is how we're activating or deactivating these bodies. Are we aware of what we're working on or don't focus on bodies? In my opinion, the road is to work holistically, taking into account, as has been said, the cognitive aspect, emotions, etc.

R. Salegi: Precisely, if we lived this idea of globality naturally, we would not even have to cultivate the body expressly. If we say that everything is one, the approaches we make at school should be based on that premise. In the case of Early Childhood Education, children express their totality through movement, through movement and experimentation with the body, they are aware of their own body and build their own identity. And to help in this path, I insist, it is essential that the professor also be present with his body. Are we aware that maybe our body is also nervous and we don't give it peace of mind?

L. Larrañaga: From the point of view of Physical Education, the key is to help students get to know their bodies. Students acquire the personality and consciousness of their own body and, as they acquire, they also know others, they know an environment and learn to live in it. We classify this knowledge: some activities are carried out individually, others individually, others in collaboration with others… We also form in spaces of uncertainty and organize activities to work creativity through the body, promote body expression and develop the aesthetic sense (the aesthetic sense we give to movement).

How does the body influence the assimilation of intellectual contents to the head and body, to the extent that we are one?

A. Navascues: The body's posture is critical: how it is emotionally, where the attention is, and internal and external factors (if you have abdominal pain or bad weather). When collecting and constructing intellectual content, many factors must be taken into account, but if we understand the mind itself as a multiple mind (spatial understanding, body mind, musical mind…), besides having interdependent intelligences related to each other, the body is not only an instrument to collect or reflect the intellectual content, but also through the body other forms of intelligence are developed and built. It's important how we incarnate content, but also how we take it out of the body.

R. Salegi: The “global self” is being completed in the interaction of the different variables and all of them interact. Everything that builds our identity goes through the experience of the body; what leaves us mark is what we receive from the experience of the body or skin. The same happens with the contents, and hence the importance of the elaboration itself: the assimilation of the contents in an isolated and conceptual way will not be so significant, but this fact leads us to the action, to the implementation of the body, which allows us a better and easier assimilation of the cognitive contents. Jean Piaget said that thought is born of action and develops in the compass of that action, in a permanent dialectic. To internalize the contents you have to start from what is self, because the situation of oneself and personal history influence, and if you are not calm and quiet from within, it is difficult to assimilate what is outside.

L. Larrañaga: The latest research in the field of neuroscience also increasingly underlines the importance of dedicating time to mobility in order to better internalise intellectual content.

M. Urrutia: In contemporary dance, for example, it is highlighted that the brain is a muscle and that thought is something that moves in the body. This approach outweighs the binomial between thought and body, and instead of seeing the intellectual side out of the body, it sees it as part of the movement.

As we speak of movement, do students with mobility or with a lack of movement get to the Physical Education subject, Luis?

L. Larrañaga: Not only in school, but in society in general, children have fewer and fewer opportunities to play freely and spontaneously, because they are given everything organized and therefore lose basic experience and knowledge. Students are not satisfied with this need for movement. Some will do extracurricular activities, but spending many hours every day in the center and most of them sitting are inadequate, especially at these ages. Nor does it help to spend hours at home, on TV, on the console or in similar sedentary games. The body is prepared for the movement itself, not to sit for hours and hours, which entails consequences.

R. Salegi: It is related to the educational approach we have: if we think that the young man has to learn to be quiet, standing and formal, we will train from the very young to have a very quiet movement and we will try to prevent what they are. This means that the integrity of oneself will not develop and that if desired, the student will have to achieve it on his own, outside the scope of formal education.

A. Navascues: Yes, the body is prepared for the movement and is built from the movement, but look at what kind of organization there is in the chairs and tables classrooms, and also in what kind of movement the patio is prepared, although the play spaces in different centers are being reviewed.

M. Urrutia: And what differentiated spaces are the classroom and the patio.

In fact, the organization and structure of the spaces of the educational centers have a lot to do with it. What bodies/people are we educating?

R. Salegi: I would say that we are educating the “dissociated I”, perhaps because we are also dissociated and deny the whole we are, that is why we have the classrooms and spaces we have and we do the methodological approaches we make. The system itself prefers an amputated person rather than the whole person, as the whole person can be dangerous to the system. So far education has trained people to adapt to our society, as if our society were an example, and that's pretty perverse. We are attending the outside to respond to what the adult says. This homogenizing system makes us experts in meeting the demands of others and leads us to feed the toxic addictions and power relations.

L. Larrañaga: I usually say that changes in education are like pushing an elephant; something is progressing, but little by little. Within the so-called Pedagogy of Trust, for example, they have started to throw the walls in the centers, understanding that the child needs a free movement, so some have come to these reflections. I hope that the approach will also be transferred from Child to Primary, and among the older ones we will surely find the usual clashes. In the second part of Bachillerato, for example, the Physical Education subject has been deleted directly, without there being any justification for it. We know what the interests of governments are in education, the goal is that they display themselves higher in the rankings of the prestigious evaluations, and those who work in the centers are not focused on those rankings, but focused on the development of the students.

Beyond individual bodies, anthropologist Mari Luz Esteban speaks of interaction, of “interiority”. The importance of the group and the network of relationships that I and others have with me in the learning process.

A. Navascues: In the learning process everyone has their rhythms in education is a common concept, but it is true that we must also take into account that other dimension: the body as a team. Professors also need to develop this view to know how to relate not only to the student, but also to that group body.

L. Larrañaga: The activities carried out in Physical Education have a lot to do with each other, and we are increasingly taking care that they are properly developed. If we want to be an inclusive school, beyond speech we have to apply it on a day-to-day basis, although sometimes it's not easy. We have students with motor difficulties and in these cases we give them advantages in the use of objects or space; or vice versa, we add difficulties to those who have great skills for each one to develop at their level, but if there is competition, some students do not understand that. They want the same conditions, as if they were playing in a club, and our job is to convey that we are not a club, that we all have the right to develop and learn, and when we get to that, the sessions go much better.

R. Salegi: I agree with Mari Luz. After all, one is built in relation to the other. On the one hand we have the instrumental physical body, in a way linked to biological laws, but our body also has a history of relationships, we are social beings and with the other, we are building. The other is a mirror.

Not only the students, but also the teachers, Eider. In addition, ways they're going to be teachers. Are the teachers who come to class aware that they are also the body and that they will speak to the students from a body?

R. Salegi: That's the hardest thing to do, to become aware. Ours is a profession based on relationships, and what often happens to our teachers is that they have difficulty managing relationships. We see blockages, and that's why it's so important to leave the body. To be a teacher, it is essential to be aware of oneself (including the body) and take responsibility for it, in order to accept it and, consequently, accept it. In addition to theoretical knowledge, we must also work these knowledge processes, work on the sensitivity and perception of future teachers, to improve communication, empathize and develop the listening capacity we have. In body communication, 75% is non-verbal and what the unconscious of the other receives is what we express with the body, although we try to manipulate it with words. We have seen that working with the professor's body expressions is effective for the faculty to make a real change of view. These attitudes are gradually internalized through the experiential practices. For the future teacher, it is very important to know how to listen in depth, to listen in depth, to have patience and to offer the necessary context to meet his/her needs, and for this, it seems essential to start from the body to develop socio-personal competences such as self-knowledge, self-regulation and empathy.

L. Larrañaga: Currently, professors who are not yet in possession of the title of Professor of Physical Education teach the subject in several centers, although legally it must be taught by a specialist professor. In relation to that and to what Eider said, what I want to stress is that in order to transmit something you have to love that. You're not going to transmit something that you're not going to transmit, you can't ask if you don't. And if it seems to that tutor or tutor that physical education is the prolongation of the time of play to get rid of other “more important” areas, we are wrong. Instead of having a specialist teacher, physical education happens what doesn't happen to other areas, and that's true because we value physical education less in part. But it is detrimental to the student's development.

M. Urrutia: Offer resources to teachers through experiences. We do so in the Gorputza project: we work with the teachers from the experiences, proposing dynamics instead of giving explanations, because then they will offer this look passing through their bodies and will do it with the students.

He says that physical education is undervalued, Luis. Are you given enough time?

L. Larrañaga: As for the timetable, it is clear that it is not enough, and we have also made proposals, in favour of a balanced timetable, but who designs the curriculum? We have managed this year in Heziberri [in the Basque Government’s Education Plan] to recognise motor competence as a basic competence, but if that is not properly fed in schools and if the tutors and tutors continue to do so, we have made a short journey. In addition, over and above the Department of Education, the OECD itself (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) makes recommendations on what we should train students and what is important; it is not an educational institution that gives guidelines on education. The World Health Organization says that a student should exercise in school 60 minutes a day, but in primary school for example, they spend an hour and a half or two hours a week and with two sessions of 55 minutes it goes nowhere, for example, displacement, material preparation, hygiene... The accounts come out on paper, but who is in daily life knows that it is not real and that the time is insufficient to properly assimilate the motor competence.

The development of motor competence is an essential tool for the integral development of students, not to be an elite athlete in the future, since the majority of students do not choose this path, but to have a better quality of life, and it is important to recognize it, just as the subject of mathematics is recognized as its objective is to contribute to the development of the person, not to turn it into a mathematician, or to learn languages.

Is Physical Education still linked to sport or the other dimensions of the body have occupied a greater space within this subject?

L. Larrañaga: We have also had to work outside the Department of Education, through the Sohat (Group for Physical Education) and the course seminars. We are bringing together several professors and reworking the entire Primary program, designing all the didactic units based on the objectives and actions I mentioned earlier. The teachers have didactic units hanging on the web. We have also made a great methodological change: before I was the omniscient teacher, all the knowledge that he transmitted, and today we work from another perspective, because the student also has his own knowledge and must help him take it out, for example, offering a space to stand and reflect on the game or exercise we are doing. And the result is automatic: they challenge and maybe they're not achieving the goal, because they stop the exercise, they ask a couple of questions and they start making proposals; then they put it into practice and they get the goal.

And yes, we want a physical education that goes beyond sport. For example, I always start the sessions in the same way: we all sit in a circle and the students have at their disposal tokens with about twenty emotions written. Before starting the session each one puts one in front (or more of an emotion, sometimes) and with a look you already know what the group environment is. If a student has received “anxiety”, you can reject it and talk to it. On the other hand, we attach great importance to body expression. Before it was offered according to the will of each teacher, but today we work in most centers and then the result is brought to people. I, with the six-year-olds (11-12 years old), do a theater project, and in addition to doing it in school, they repeat it in another center. Or those who do dance create a group choreography…

Many students appreciate that the programming is so varied, as people with less ability in team sports can feel uncomfortable, but they know that another project will come next. Moreover, it is our job: to offer a varied range so that in the future they can choose in adulthood two or three activities and incorporate them into their life habits to achieve a better quality of life.

At school we have said that body work should be transversal, but is there any relationship between Physical Education and other subjects?

L. Larrañaga: One of the greatest treasures of Physical Education is that we directly apply theory and put it into practice: if we work the orientation or the physical state, we measure the angles, time, distance, etc., and it would be nice to make a project in collaboration with the subject of mathematics, take the times and developments of each student and make graphs, etc., but people are very closely linked to the textbook and are willing to take it out very little.

In times such as adolescence, the body undergoes great changes and more frequent are embarrassment, fears, uncertainties… Are we working on all this?

R. Salegi: I do not dedicate myself directly to adolescents, but I do not think there is a global or integrative approach, and if we leave the body aside, how are we going to talk about many bodies? The characteristics of this evolutionary period should be taken into account in the educational proposal that we offer them, not only in the cognitive sphere, but also in the visibility, listening and negotiation of experiences. That's why we need a new way of understanding education and relationships within school. And it is true that teachers have to do a mirror job with children and adolescents, but in society a hegemonic body model is imposed and the market has a lot of weight in it. We are aware, but little can be done if that market does not change: consumerism, exaltation of the “I”, what gives us success… Anyway, it is in the hands of adults to show other types of models and act responsibly, because in adolescence we live out: at those ages the body acquires an enormous weight, it seems that we are in its entirety what indicates our body, and when we get into stereotypes and comparisons, we can do a lot.

A. Navascues: Because the ideal image can bring the denial and non-acceptance of our body, and that is why it is so important to work the awareness of our body from a young age, to explore our body and our physicity, opening and experiencing different possibilities: the limits of my body, movements, attitudes, positioning me in the center of the space in which I feel more comfortable or in a corner…

L. Larrañaga: Faced with the complexes, some try to hide, others allow to deal with the issue and with some it is more difficult. It is true that it is usually a time of change and even if we intervene, some, for example, do quite badly in cases of obesity, because often those around us also say ugly words to them. A student who is outside of the stereotypes that bombard us finds it hard to feel good in his body.

These stereotypes are different for boys and girls, it is different what some bodies are asked for and others.

L. Larrañaga: We, for example, make a special play with the sixth in Physical Education, which collects the comments and situations that are given in the lesson itself (games, exercises…), and the girls represent the role of the boys and vice versa. The goal is, through empathy, to place ourselves in the other's place and see what each other is living. The work brings together cases of stereotypes, discrimination, obesity... But what we said before, we got to the place where we arrived, and maybe that young man goes to Anoeta to see a game and everything that has been done is suspended.

R. Salegi: Even though gender issues are becoming increasingly important, the feeling is that we have not yet figured out very well how to do it. To start with, we'd have to think deeply about our practice, to see if our actions are in line with what we think, and that's the starting point. It is an issue that must be addressed from childhood, not spontaneously in adolescence or at a certain age, to see what models we offer, so that children receive them naturally.

M. Urrutia: It’s interesting to open up to different options, if we don’t do it repeatedly: today instead of sitting in the chairs, we will give the standing class… And the material we use in the center should also have emerged from that look.

R. Salegi: Yes, but there's also a hidden resume. Because one thing is what we work on material and content, and another thing is what we unconsciously transmit (and in that transmission is important again the body), because they have educated us in a certain way and because we can involuntarily reproduce the gender distinction. The first step is to realize that.

L. Larrañaga: In the script of the play, one of the phrases cited by the students themselves is that parents require boys to be good at sports and that girls get good grades. They have these kinds of beliefs...

R. Salegi: And if you think about it, it's because we pass that on to you.

A. Navascues: Not forgetting that implicit gender-related orders are much more violent in women, and that's very much related to self-esteem and the image you have of your body. What kind of movements you do, if what you do seeks the recognition of the other, who takes the floor in the group… We, for example, use dance in the Gorputza initiative, and a people gets overwhelmed because they have a certain stereotype in their heads about dance, but for us dance can be anything, each one puts limits. For many years he has been dancing the objectification of the body: we want to be seen from the outside and beautiful, an idea very present in the history of women, but in dance that paradigm is changing, ambiguity, new opportunities… have come into play.

HOW TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE BODY IN A LESSON FOR EXAMPLE IN MUSIC

Dalcroze's rhythmic is a reflection of the interesting possibilities that exist to teach music. Beñat Ralla studied this methodology in Geneva, and it is one of the few taught in the schools of Euskal Herria, although they have been applying it in many other countries for decades. It is about merging music and movement, the body becomes a central element and depending on the influence of music the body has to perform actions, managing the space, managing complementary elements (balls, rings, fulares, pans…) and collaborating with others. The goal is to leave tables and chairs behind, occupy a large space and animate music through the body, internalize and materialize in some way our bodies in a dynamic and playful way.

And how do you do that? The teacher will create live music, playing the piano, and will improvise it depending on the musical element he wants to work (rhythmic cells, tones, tempos, pianos and fortes…) and the participation of the students. The boy or girl will start walking and adapt the step to the music played by the teacher, giving a smooth rhythm, clenching, stopping in the silences… or acquiring three values (black, white, cork) to work the rhythm and assign each one a function: walking forward, backwards, sideways; or making different combinations, with the hands and feet, with the left and right. To work the proportions, while making the black with your hands, they are drawn at once white or strollers with your legs. Music influences not only the rhythm, but also the posture of the body and, depending on what you hear, the body will contract or open, imitate one or the other animal, ask “questions” and respond freely through the body, or play with space: along with musical changes, you will have to react in a group, going to one end of the class, or opening and dispersing in space, or spontaneously.

After all, the Ralla explains, the traditional solfège decodes music (this is a cheek, this is a fusa…), from the beginning it is conceptual and cognitive; and in the rhythmic Dalcroze, the process is the reverse: that children and young people feel and live music before doing abstraction, then they give it meaning, but before the body has understood, it has internalized it. “In addition, it is a way to know one’s own body, limitations and possibilities, to work laterality, to harmonize our body; to manage displacement and space, and to practice global, partial (arms) and thin (fingers) psychomotor, as well as coordination, memory, creativity, improvisation capacity…”.

He explained that young children tend to walk one after the other or circle, and that the last course, after three months of work, each 4-5 year old child managed to assume his/her own trajectory, “and that is a great thing for the autonomy of the students. Since the first day everyone was half ashamed of being in a circle, seeing the students themselves and not following the leader is a musical achievement for integral development.” The way to walk well is to put the body in harmony and remove many fears from above. “You have to accept your way of being and walking, and you realize that at the age of 10 there are people who, out of shame or lack of autonomy, can’t walk. You set a basic rhythm and you're not able to keep the music going, how am I going to start explaining to you, I don't know what special rhythm, because you don't have the most basic rhythm either? At the age of 4 and 12, sometimes I have to work the same things with the two, because it has not become strong before. That’s why Dalcroz has such a rich vision.” (Taken from the article published in Argia)

VOCALS:

Eider Salegi, professor at HUHEZI

Born in Orio in 1981. Degree in Psychology and Diploma in Early Childhood Education, Master in Development and Management of Teaching and Methodological Innovation Projects in Educational Institutions. She is a psychotherapist in Education and Therapy and, after several years working in Early Childhood Education, she is currently a professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Educational Sciences of Mondragon Unibertsitatea and coordinator of the Degree in Early Childhood Education. He is conducting a PhD dissertation on the professor's sensitive view and is a member of the Hazitegi research group.

Luis Larrañaga “Pizti”, Professor of Physical Education

He was born in Azkoitia in 1965. Diploma in Teaching in the specialty of Physical Education and Master in Emotional Ecology. She's been in education for 20 years. Ten years ago he worked as a professor at the ikastola Argia de Tudela and for six years he has worked as a professor at the ikastola Jakintza de Donostia-San Sebastián. He participates in the Group for Physical Education (SOHAT) and is a member of the first joint programming project in Basque in Physical Education.

Maider Urrutia and Amaia Navascues, members of the Gorputza project

They are part of the Gizaldiak initiative. The pedagogical project that brings together education and dance is Gorputza, with the objective of offering new tools to the teachers of formal education. Navascues was born in San Sebastian (1983). Study Contemporary Dance at Universidad Miguel Hernández (Alicante) and Dance Movement Therapy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The Directorate operates in Collective. Urrutia, born in Bilbao (1980), is a partner of Artaziak, Initiatives of Artistic Education. Within the line of work Transverse Bodies, the body works as a learning tool.