Author: John Kilbourne

The Motivation Factor

This multiple award-winning documentary shows the irreplaceable role classical Physical Education plays to develop smart, productive & mentally stable citizens, and the out-of-control consequences we face today with its absence in our society.

The United States made the decision to stop teaching real physical education 100 years ago. JFK tried to bring it back, but the effort ended with his shortened Presidency.

This documentary links the largest problems facing the US today to its current state of physical illiteracy, which comes as a consequence of no longer having educators, business leaders, or citizens understand how exercise (and particularly group exercise) can be used to solve our most pressing issues including how the US spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, has the highest incidents of mental instability, the highest national debt, incarcerates 25% of the world’s prisoners with only 4% of the population, has the worst productivity since the 1970’s, the worst education rank since the 1970’s and amongst the worst life expectancy of the OECD countries.

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Making Meaningful Sense of Play

Over the past several years there has been a renewed interest in the meaning and importance of play. Play has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, Taking Play Seriously, and in two fairly recent books, Stuart Brown’s Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul (2009), and Bateson’s and Martin’s Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation (2013).

As part of my doctoral program in the early 1990s at The Ohio State University (Building a Bridge Between Athletics and Academics), I was fortunate to study the importance of play and many of the early play theorists. These included the 18th Century educator Jean Jacques Rousseau who in Emile wrote about the importance of play for children.

Rousseau began with the idea that children should be outdoors and active. In so doing, the child would develop his senses through his experiences. The senses would then provide the background against which ideas took shape. By moving and touching everything, seeing, and hearing, tasting and smelling, the child would begin to associate the objects of the external world with the five senses (Mechikoff, 2010, p. 160).

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Seymour (Sy) Kleinman: Remembering A Visionary Leader in Physical Education

Physical Education recently lost a visionary leader with the passing of Dr. Seymour (Sy) Kleinman (August 21, 1928 – December 21, 2013). Sy was a mentor and friend to many who had an interest in a holistic, movement centered approach to physical education. Dr. Kleinman was my mentor at The Ohio State University and helped shepherd me though my doctoral studies. We had much in common including a background in dance education and performance, and an interest in developing sports performance programs for college athletes. It is primarily because of Sy that I was able to pursue a life and a career in higher education in the Movement Arts and Sciences, and beyond.

Sy, who retired after nearly forty years of service as a professor of educational policy and leadership at Ohio State was a pioneer and leading authority in the field of somatic studies. He was also a passionate advocate for the arts in education and led the Institute for the Advancement of Arts in Education at OSU for several years. I actually served as a graduate assistant for the Institute during my first year at OSU and witnessed first-hand Sy’s passion for helping teachers embrace the importance of the arts in education.

Dr. Kleinman received his Bachelors of Arts and Masters of Arts in physical education from Brooklyn College. He earned his Ph.D. from Ohio State in 1960, followed by a year as a Fulbright Scholar in Finland. From the 1960s to his recent passing he and other faculty moved the College of Education at OSU into a leading center for somatic studies.

His academic output included five books and forty-four articles. He was a visiting lecturer and led groups of students to Denmark five times from 1982 to 1995. He received the Intellectual and Visiting Scholar Award from California State University, San Bernadino in 1996. He also held a chair for two terms in the Philosophy Academy of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance.

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