Good morning class, and welcome to "Walking 101"

Do children really need to be taught how to walk? [Link]

I mean, I figured it all out on my own, and I wasn't even in the gifted class!

"Speaking earlier this week, the acting deputy general secretary of the ATL, Martin Johnson, said: "There's a lot to learn about how to walk. If you were going out for a Sunday afternoon stroll you might walk one way. If you're trying to catch a train you might walk in another way and if you are doing a cliff walk you might walk in another way."

Man, here I was thinking it was just left, right, left, right....

JUNIOR, YOU'RE DOING IT ALL WRONG! WHAT ARE THEY TEACHING YOU IN SCHOOL?!!!

Had to be done...

WOW... I thought you were joking about this.... But it sounds about par for the course for the "education community".

My family consists entirely of teachers. They have all seen stuff like this go on and get blown out of proportion... This seems that it is the union backing up a bunch of crazy teachers so they can expand their roll in this world and justify their jobs or to make change just to make change (no not all teachers are crazy, just a handful, like any other profession, mine included, and for the record I love my family so in essence I love teachers, just not the crazy ones). Usually no-one in the teachers world wants to hurt anyone else's feelings and they just keep their mouth shut (they roll their eyes when they are in private).

But what the heck do teachers know about physical development? They know zippo (and vise-versa).... That is why there are Pediatricians, Nurses, Physical Therapists, and Occupational Therapists. These medical professionals know about this stuff (except me, I specialize in orthopedics and barely got through childhood development class)... I would like to get the medical professionals' opinion (other than mine).

Leave teaching up to teachers (math, writing, reading, etc...). Leave cooking to the cooks, Leave policework to the police, and leave developmental training to PT's and OT's.

Or did I miss the point and start rambling off on a tangent?

I don't think Mr Johnson knows what 'totalitarian' means.

This sounds extremely stupid. School is about academic learning. Life skills should be learned in life, not school.

Hello ZombieZero:

They didn't call it "Gifted" back then... remember? Had a more brutal name as I recall my time there.... As for learning to walk... the article seems oddly presented. However, anything that helps kids be physical, look at their body, look inward.... I'll encourage

Having needed to re-learn how to walk not long ago... I will never take it for granted again.

Jeff