Sport and Physical Education as a Means of Aesthetic Education

Aesthetics, the study of the philosophy of beauty, is not commonly thought of as a factor in the sporting education. It can be surprising therefore to find that sport and physical education provide innumerable opportunities for increasing aesthetic awareness. An aesthetic education can be attempted through the medium of the senses visual, musical, verbal and physical. It is the "physical" aspects of an aesthetic education which tend to be neglected despite the Athenian ideal of "proportion, harmony and moderation" a philosophy pervading theoretically, traditional "Western" educational thought. One area of physical education, dance, has of course not neglected aesthetics, and there is an increasing importance of educational dance in modern education. Gymnastics, at Olympic level, has become "artistic gymnastics" calling for musical feeling, imagination, and creative originality. Diving, skating, and other physical skills which demand a highly refined kinaesthetic sense, can also reach heights which are generally accepted as truly artistic. However, there are millions of ordinary people who do not watch the more sophisticated sports; neither do they attend the theatre, opera, symphony, or art gallery. They do watch football, the male element anyway, literally in their millions. Surveys, apparently show a large female, as well as male, tele-viewing audience for Rugby League. It is in this field of "mass sports", of which association football is the most popular, that the most gigantic possibilities for an aesthetic education lie.