In this article we will discuss about the educational implication of physical growth and motor development in children.
Good schools and teachers should see that children have proper physical growth and motor development. They should provide for their continued growth in the school through useful activities and adapting its programmes to individual variations and gaps. To ensure this, regular medical and health examinations should be conducted in a thorough manner.
Teachers should realise that physical growth and motor development have an important effect on the behaviour of children. They should know there are individual differences in this area. These individual difference should be understood, respected and provided for in terms of suitable programmes.
Classroom and co-curricular activities as involve physical strength for motor, speed and accuracy and coordination of bodily parts should be adopted to variations in physical and motor development. Varied sports and games, suitable for all types of, children, should be provided in daily school functioning.
The plan activities and crafts-work or manual in school are very valuable activities for the optimum physical growth and motor development. They should form an integral part of the curriculum and should be so introduced. The growth of motor behaviour and the various researches made point out to the specific development tasks at various, age-levels.
This knowledge can help the teacher in setting his expectations for the child and in framing his programme in accordance with the tasks as to minimise efforts of unhealthy competition and run by. Some of the useful manual activities are woodwork, spinning and weaving, useful work, book-binding, gardening, tailoring and the like.
If these activities are introduced as group projects, they should help not only motor development but would make the acquisition of knowledge and information practical and real and would promote a spirit of cooperation among students of various ages.
They would afford children opportunities for developing leisure time hobbies and would conduct to social and emotional adjustments among them. The teacher should also have a full knowledge of the changes and the accompanying psychological effects so that he or she may be in a position to impart proper sex education to the child.
One of the aspects of physical growth is the sexual development during adolescence. This brings up the problem of sex education for the child. He needs to understand the nature of biological changes and what they imply. Ignorance of sex causes inferiority which cause them to withdraw from the social group. This is how unsocial attitudes and behaviour develop.
It will be important to learn about the most important causes of delayed motor development. These are poor health status, illness such as pneumonia, rickets and diphtheria, some major operations, size and body proportions of the child, hampering clothes, lack of opportunity to develop muscle control, lack of incentive to develop muscle control (pampered and over-protected children do not have sufficient motivation) lack of practise, emphasis on specific movement before the gross movements have beer, mastered, low grade intelligence and inhibitory fears.
Teachers are advised to have an idea of the norms of motor development to determine whether the child is progressing normally. Gesell’s Normative sudmmaries for motor development, Kuhhmann’s standards of development as given in the Revised Binet-Simon test, and Bayley’s scale of fundamental co-ordinations are well-known guides in this direction.
Some work is being done, in recent years, on the norms of development of Indian children in Mumbai, Allahabad, Kolkata, Delhi and other big cities under the auspices of the department of child-study in the National Council of Educational Research and Training.