Sports as a liberal art

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Students come to Hillsdale College, in large part, because of the excellent liberal arts education that the college provides. We read about ancient Greece and medieval England. We study the make-up of a molecule and the anatomy of the cell. We learn how to translate “The Aeneid” and calculate the slope of a tangent line to a curve.

But what often is left by the wayside is the education of the body. Hillsdale keeps her students’ noses buried in books, which often times keeps many away from exercising or enjoying sports on campus.

However, laboring at the “gymnastic” as Plato calls it in “The Republic,” is a vital part of a liberal arts education.

In “The Republic,” Plato, through the voice of Socrates, argues that there are two important parts of education: the musical  and the gymnastic.

It is key to note that the musical education is not limited to music. It also includes other intellectual studies generally thought of when discussing what a liberal arts education consists of, mainly rhetoric.

The gymnastic education, on the other hand, is simply the training and strengthening of the body. Plato says clearly that both are important, but they can only have their true effect when used together. Practicing only one, he argues, is detrimental.

Plato, through the character Glaucon, argues that, “those who make use of unmixed gymnastic turn out more savage than they ought, while those who make use of music become in their turn softer than is fine for them.”

Socrates goes on to say, “Then the man who makes the finest mixture of gymnastic with music and brings them to his soul in the most proper measure is the one of whom we would most correctly say that he is the most perfectly musical and well harmonized.”

Plato’s statements reflect an important part of being human. We have an intellectual side, a “soul” as Socrates says, and we have a more physical body. The musical education trains one’s intellect, while the gymnastic education strengthens the body.

Developing one at the expense of the other leaves a person incomplete. If the point of a liberal arts education is to become a free human being in the classical sense, then one must sharpen all aspects of what it means to be human in order to truly be liberally educated. In this way, the gymnastic education plays an essential role in the liberal arts.

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study stating that 80 percent of adults in America don’t achieve the recommended amount of exercise. Whether this is a result of a lack of emphasis on sports and exercise within education can be debated. But placing an emphasis on exercise will certainly help increase the number of adults who continue to take part in the gymnastic education. However, the gymnastic education is not just limited to one’s own exercise.

Just as it is not only beneficial to play music but to listen to it as well, there is also great benefit to watching others train their bodies through sports and the like. In the same way one appreciates good music and finds enjoyment from it, one should also appreciate and enjoy the mastery that athletes show in their sport.

Students at Hillsdale, in large part, have no problem making it to concerts by music honoraries and orchestra performances on campus. On the flip side, the student section at athletic events is often sparsely populated. But aren’t both concerts and sporting events two sides of the same coin?

Attending a football game and participating in the gymnastic education in that way is comparable to going to the orchestra and participating in the musical education. Both events, through sight and sound, allow the observer to grow in his or her understanding of that education even if they are not able to perform the action themselves.

Music is to the musical education as sport is to the gymnastic education. So don’t just go listen to the orchestra. Go watch a few Chargers football games as well. Both play an important part in a liberal arts education.