CALLISTHENICS AS SOCIAL INSTRUMENT OF ORIENTATION Yaya A. Adekunle

The sport enhances organisational capacity, precision and understanding among the youth, writes

Quoting copiously from the postulation of the late American social crusader, Malcom X, the Osun State Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola in December 2012, at the NYSC orientation camp at Ede, told the mammoth crowd of both secondary school students and primary school pupils that “education is the passport to the future, because the future belongs to those who prepare for it today.”

The governor, in his usual self, asserted the second time: “I want you to listen very attentively, Malcolm X was a black American social crusader, he recognised education as the bedrock of every success, that was the reason why he described it as the passport to the future. You know, if you don’t have passport, you can’t travel to other country, it means the sequence of advancement in life is being determined by education, you have to take it serious”.

Aregbesola, at the point of making this assertion was at the event where free school uniforms were distributed to students and pupils in all the local governments of the state. The governor, at the event, reiterated his resolve to transform the education sector in the state as part of his six integral plans through which he canvassed for votes in 2007.

The government of Osun, as part of its revolutionary move in the educational sector also introduced school feeding system in the elementary schools, a project that annually gulps billions of naira, and surprisingly survived the heat of economic quagmire the state experienced in the last two years as a result of acute reduction in the statutory allocations due to the state.

However, the governor further moved to consolidate his giant impact on education for the purpose of building young men and women with requisite cognitive reasoning and social orientation to complete anywhere around the globe. Aregbesola introduced a gymnastic sport called Callisthenic into public schools, with performances/displays at various anniversary celebrations initially restricted to about 20,000 pupils from schools in Osogbo and Olorunda Local Government Areas.

The wide acceptability of the sport activity coupled with eagerness on the part of the government to start and complete intellectual rebirth of the young generation in the state made Governor Aregbesola to introduce a new template of the game which accommodated selected public schools in all the nine federal constituencies as well as interested private schools.

According to a senior official in the Department of Social and Grassroots Mobilisation and Guidance, Office of the Governor, Mr. Yaya Ademola Adekunle, who also doubles as one of the team leaders of callisthenics, the new template of the gymnastic sport will be enhanced by making it a competition of mouth-watering reward.

“Participation is voluntary, with the parents/ guardians of the participating students responsible for their costumes. The government will only be responsible for the training and competitions which will hold in two stages – at the Senatorial level between teams representing federal constituencies and at the state level between the first placed teams at the Senatorial level competition.

“In addition to trophies, plaques, medals and certificates of participation for the participants, prize monies of One million naira; N750,000, and N500,000 will be won by the first, second and third placed teams respectively at the Senatorial level competition in September, 2017. By November 2017, the first team in each of the Senatorial level, along with teams by interested private schools, will compete for N2 million ; N1,000,000 and N750,000 for first, second and third positions respectively, and other consolation prizes. These prize monies will be used by the authorities of the combined participating and the host schools for the development of their sporting facilities and activities.

“Calisthenics is very flexible. It all depends on creativity. At our level, displays take two levels – field composition and background display. Activities at the federal constituencies to the Senatorial competition are only based on the field compositions. At the state level on the anniversary day, a background display consisting of rows of pupils seated in a gallery at Osogbo Township Stadium will be forming captions of different words and patterns, speaking to the competing teams in the main bowl, as well as to the audience. The background will not be competing. It will only add flavour and glamour to complement the competing teams and entertain the audience. Displays can involve from a few dozen up to thousands of persons exercising in unison. As stated already, it is a function of creativity,” Adekunle said.

It was in the spirit of that new template that callisthenics game schools competition was flagged off on Monday, September 25, 2017, among students of the secondary schools across the nine federal constituencies of the state.

The Director of Department of Social and Grassroots Mobilisation and Guidance, Mr. Adebayo Ojo, who spoke to newsmen at the St. Paul Middle School, Ilobu after the display of the callisthenics sports by the students expressed his satisfaction with the excellent performance of the students, and commended the exceptional vision of Gov. Aregbesola for the adoption of the sport as a co-curriculum activity for students in more schools across the state, noting that the sport has no rival for enhancing organisational capacity, orderliness, precision, cooperative spirit, discipline and understanding among the youth, attitude and character traits fundamentally responsible for personal success in life and social progress.

“The scope of selection of students for this sport has been expanded with the new template, to include all interested public and private schools, and to give a new social orientation to students in the state as part of its educational transformation.

“Team of coaches, panel of judges as well as zonal and local inspectors of education are to be on ground, in the presence of several dignitaries, and access the performances of the participants and accrue them award according to their performances. The introduction of Callisthenics to schools’ scheme is not by chance, but an integral part of the total transformation of education in the state targeted at the eventual production of best-oriented future citizens who are socially well-adjusted, in addition to being knowledgeable and skillful. It also encourages school children to be physically strong and mentally sound through varieties of movements such as running, standing, grasping and pushing, among others, often performed rhythmically and generally without equipment or apparatus. They are, in essence, body-weight training and are intended to increase body strength, fitness, and flexibility through movements such as pulling or pushing oneself up, bending, jumping, running, kneeling, swinging, et cetera,” Ojo said.

He said that the special sports activity with a new and wider template would teach and instil the spirit of team coordination, unity of purpose and strength of problem-solving in the students, and prepare them for future challenges.