Physical Education as ‘Means without Ends’: Towards a new concept of physical education

Abstract

This article is concerned with the educational value of raising the human body at school. Drawing inspiration from the work of Giorgio Agamben, I develop a new perspective that explores the possibility of taking the concept of physical education in a literal sense. This is to say that the specific educational content of physical education (in contradistinction to organized sporting life outside school) resides in its concentration on the physical ‘as such’. This is not an obvious path to explore, because defenders of physical education as a rule have to compete against the (dualist) prejudice that this discipline is merely an instrument to train the body or to keep it fit, and that it therefore should not be considered as a serious endeavour. Therefore, more often than not, apologists try to justify the relevance of physical education on the very ground that it is a practice that is concerned with something ‘beyond’ the merely physical that is at stake in movement activity. I argue, however, that this line of thought excludes the possibility of conceiving an alternative approach that relates the concentration on ‘entirely physical’ activities (as opposed to ‘merely physical’ activities) to an experience of potentiality. I develop this idea on the basis of an analysis of repetitive, rhythmical and collective body-exercise (e.g. running in a group or basic callisthenics).     

Love Means Giving

M y brother,M ingm ing,is in the third grade.Every m onth he saves 20yuan of his pocket m oney to buy holiday presents for those he loves in the Project H ope School. O ne day,M ingm ing and I w ent to a nearby superm arket.H e picked up a hand basket and went off on his ow n while I was waiting patiently reading in a bench. H alf an hour later when he cam e up to the check- out counter,there was a sm ile on his face. M ingm ing reached into his pocket for m oney,but there was only ten yua…     

Can Technology Offer a Means of Mentoring Pre-service Teachers about Diversity?

This article discusses a project which has the goal of raising the awareness of pre-service teachers about the needs and potentials of low-income minority students through using technology to develop a comentoring community composed of teacher educators, teachers, pre-service students and elementary students. Using the interactive capabilities of video conferencing over the Internet, pre-service teachers engage in a 'virtual' field experience with a bilingual grade three classroom in a distant inner-city school. Pre-service teachers involved in the programme have the opportunity to be involved with students they would not experience in the local area, to be mentored by a teacher with knowledge of diversity, and to use technology in meaningful, productive ways. Benefits for participants—faculty, pre-service teachers, teachers in the school, and students in host classrooms—implications for pre-service teachers' understanding of diversity and limitations of the technology are discussed. 1     

Student Participation in Shared Governance: A Means of Advancing Democratic Values?

Student participation in shared governance of higher education institutions is considered in the context of a civic role for higher education in a democracy. Statutory provisions for the governance of Irish higher education institutions are reviewed by reference to models of shared governance. Findings from a survey of actual levels of student participation within higher institutions in the Republic of Ireland are discussed and compared with patterns in Europe. The rationale for student participation in governance is critically examined with particular attention to the consequences of the client/customer paradigm. The case is made that participation in shared governance is a necessary but insufficient condition for the realisation of the democratic ideal. The relationship between academic democracy and political democracy is explored, highlighting the key role which academics have to play in creating the conditions for the nurturing of democratic values.     

An Analysis of the Means of Cohesion in “of Studies” by Francis Bacon

This thesis aims to analyze the means of cohesion in"of Studies"by Francis Bacon.According to the systemic-functional linguistics,the paper is intended to explore cohesion means applied in Of Studies by Francis Bacon.It gives an account of the functions in grammatical cohesion in the several fields,they are reference,substitution,ellipsis,and conjunction respectively.Finally,it is expected that these analyses can help readers gain a better and deeper comprehension of the structure and content of the text.     

Affirmative Consent: What Do College Student Leaders Think About “Yes Means Yes” as the Standard for Sexual Behavior?

Affirmative consent (AC) is becoming the standard for sexual behavior between students. However, little is known about how college students interpret and practice AC. We conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews with a purposeful sample of 31 undergraduate students to understand students' perceptions of AC and how it was practiced in their sexual relationships.

Despite knowledge about AC, many student leaders thought that it was an unrealistic expectation for students. This suggests that college sexual health education needs to clearly articulate actions that are consistent with AC and indicate how these can be incorporated into students' sexual behavior.     

Nostalgic for What? The Epidemic of Images of the mid 20th Century Classroom in American Media Culture and What it Means

Within this paper the author examines the current nostalgia for a never-present past through critical analysis of images of the mid 20th century American classroom in media culture. The author uses theories of nostalgia and the history of the photographic image to trouble the numerous equity issues surrounding the unchallenged canonization of the 1950s classroom by asking: "Who is reproducing this time in media culture and why?"; "Is the American public being asked to be nostalgic for these images, or is society somehow creating a desire for this narrow and inequitable educational past?" The author examines such nostalgia by looking at the primary role and power of vision in Western popular culture, the theoretical nature of historic preservation, the assumed innocence of the child and the similar innocence of the immediate post-World War II decade, and the role which modern technology plays in the reproduction of that decade. As an affect, nostalgia is fueled by those things that are wholly in the past-or that never were. The author looks to images of television programs and advertisements, reading them as cultural texts, and concludes that it is vitally important to the landscape of educational theory and reform to reconcile such nostalgia for another epoch in education with the pedagogical theory and practice of the present.     

What''''s the Difference?

beat/hit/strike1.He was once__black and blue.2.On 16th October, a hurricane__the southeast of England.3.He__his knee with his hand. 简析:beat着重“接连地击打”,如殴打或体罚,也指在游戏、竞赛或战争中“打败,战胜”对方。strike通常表示“打一下,打若干下”等意     

What''''s the Difference?

1.used to,be used to 两个短语外形很相近,至于哪个后面接动词原形,哪个后面接动名词,有些同学经常用错,对此,可这样来记忆:我们把“be”称为“头”,有“头”就有“尾(-ing)”,因此,be used to后接动词的-ing形式,意思是习惯于作某事,可用于各种时态;而used to前面没有“头(be)”,所以,后面     

The Structure of Movement Tasks—A Means for Gaining Insight into the Nature of Problem-Solving Techniques

Catalysts within, and external to, physical education have stimulated the development of career streams other than teacher preparation. Both teacher preparation and these new career streams adhere to an ad hoc model of professional preparation. This ad hoc model is dissected to uncover its limitations. Then the contours of an alternative model of professional preparation are presented along with mechanisms for quality control.     

Imaging Analysis by Means of Fractional Fourier Transform

Starting from the diffraction imaging process,we have discussed the relationship between optical imaging system and tional Fourier transform,and proposed a specific system which can form an inverse amplified image of input function.     

What Was the Riddle of the Spbinx?

The Sphinx was a make-belive animal of long age.It had the head of a person,     

Writing for the discipline in the discipline?

This article explores the issue of students' writing skills in the discipline of Engineering and beyond. It is the result of a discussion between three academics from different discipline backgrounds: Teaching and Learning, the Humanities and Engineering. We start with a review of the strategies commonly used to address problems in students' academic writing skills, with an emphasis on the notions of ‘writing across the curriculum’ (WAC) or ‘writing in the disciplines’ (WID). Taking into consideration the issue of students' perception of their ‘real curriculum’ and the need to embed writing’ in the disciplines, we propose a strategy aimed at implementing an efficient teaching of writing skills targeted for a specific discipline. In so doing, we argue that the increasing recourse to independent Learning Development services decontextualises students' understanding of writing.