An IGL programme will focus on educating students in a manner that from the very onset requires them to be able to gain the ability and skills required to compete at an international level. It will address many different neglected areas of development in education and it strives to raise learners who can compete on a national stage from a broad and robust range of sporting activity to eventual specialization.
As students move through an IGL programme since the physical and mental conditioning for sport begins from infancy exceptional ability in sport is expected to be the norm associated with IGL students. The timeline from infancy to tertiary education will be designed to ensure that at graduation skill levels can be compared to that observed in international competition for the various sports students are trained for.
Academics and sports will be considered equally important.
Key IGL Areas of Sport and Fitness
In IGL there will be 3 key areas of fitness and sport. These are namely Fitness for Life, which teaches a physical fitness lifestyle, stretching, yoga, aerobics and other forms of exercise aimed at students enjoying a lifetime of health. There will also be IGL Sport for Life, which is the early introduction of various popular sports to students such as football and basketball. However, there will also be IGL Device Assisted Sport, these are popular areas for sport where there is the use of a motorised or non-motorised vehicle or device of some sort such as a wheel chair, bicycle, skateboard, snowboard, motor-cycle, motor-cross, motorised go-cart, rally cars and so on. Students will learn how to safely ride racing bikes, skateboards, motorcycles, drive cars, drift and compete in the various categories of device assisted sport that there are.
The hallmark of an IGL programme will be built on exposure. It will require students to experience a side of education they would otherwise never gain. For many of these sports, children would not have access to them unless they have a parent who makes the effort to introduce it to them. The role of IGL is to make these areas a standard part of a child's growth to the extent that should they be inclined to, or especially skilled they can take on any of these categories professionally later in life.
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| IGL programmes will be designed from the prenatal to the postnatal stage to arrive at a professional level of skill where students are ready for international competition. |
Students from birth should be introduced to the most diverse range of subjects, activities and sensory layers as the brain is at the height of its capacity to learn and absorb new skills. This is the stage at which the brain is a sponge and the physical body malleable enough to sculpt, here education from infancy should be the most resourced, the most layered, the most ambitious and most optimistic. For instance, under the right conditions it has been shown a growing infant can effortlessly learn to fluently speak as many as six or more languages, yet multilingual education commonly only begins in secondary school when it is far too late to exploit the brain's natural learning ability. This has to be addressed with prenatal planning. The conditions to exploit this to the child's advantage will already be in place though the IGL approach. Every child on an IGL programme will have the option to learn Swahili and the ability for a learner to be able to fluently speak the mother tongue of both parents is expected to be an important minimum standard in IGL planned for during the prenatal stage. This is in addition to other international languages such as English, French, Chinese and so on. Parents will have a say in a child's language mix. This multilingual ability, which is at the core of IGL, will be effortlessly learned using the IGL approach and further facilitated using the IGL infograph system. The IGL basic language package will be the set group of languages an infant grows into speaking fluently.
The period between primary and secondary school is the stage where mastery over skills should take place where puberty raises the physiological and mental bar and coaching should be used to hone skills to the level of a seasoned professional. This is due to the fact that over time through pre-school, primary and secondary school the child becomes more self aware, increasingly self assertive, establishes opinions and develops likes and dislikes, becomes less in awe of authority and essentially becomes less and less teachable in the areas of least interest to them. In other words they naturally begin to specialize. However, when this happens an IGL programme has already laid down the foundation for excellence which began at the prenatal stage. It will focus on fewer areas per child as they move into the skills they are the most competent at and that they are the most passionate about that carry on into tertiary education.
More on IGL Device Assisted Sport will be explained later, right now lets pay attention to IGL Sports for Life.
IGL Sports for Life
The IGL Sports for Life approach to sport will recognize the importance of sport in today's world. In today's world it offers an opportunity for students to earn a living from sport that can be as lucrative as any conventional professional career. Nurturing skill sets and making skills second nature is often a pre-requisite to being a successful professional in sports in any field. This means that exceptional care has to be paid to how students are engaged in various sporting activities from early childhood.
An IGL programme will be designed to create what would possibly be the highest exposure and credentials in education a student can have and yet find ways to make this level of education as accessible, and where possible, a minimum standard in education.
IGL focuses on 10 major Sporting areas. Some of these areas are grouped together due to the fact that the training involves similar types of hand to eye, ball to hand and ball to eye coordination and proficiency in one sport can have impact in a sport that is similar to it. The 10 major sporting areas will be integrated as part of a school curriculum into linguistics as follows:
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| It is important to note that in all physical training and sporting activity will be mapped into the IGL linguistics process. Therefore, physical exertion is itself linked to academic skill through sensory processes. |
Early Start
Just like the Aquatics programme, an IGL Sports for Life programme will require outreach by schools as part of the education programme. Handlers are expected to be sent out by an IGL accredited school to spend time with parents of a child before and after they are born to begin to coordinate how the child's introduction to sport will be crafted.
IGL Sports for life will begin to introduce sport in the critical period when a child is able hold objects or to sit up and crawl. Handlers work with the child and parents or guardians to begin to develop hand to eye coordination with items such as balls, bats and other playful sporting implements initially as an enjoyable form of playtime. Flexibility is encouraged from infancy through exercises taught and performed by outreach programmes such that suppleness from infancy is carried on as the child grows.
Added to this will be exercises and techniques for building strength and agility. This training ensures that as the child's flexibility, bones, muscles, strength, coordination and agility develop they are especially conditioned for the diverse sports offered by IGL they will later encounter. Parents and guardians are taught these flexibility, strength and muscle toning exercises with handlers and how to perform them daily with their child as part of an IGL education programme.
Since IGL training will be structured to begin from infancy to ensure that
professional levels of competency in any sport that is built
on strength, flexibility and agility are a minimum standard
learners should be able to compete internationally should they
be inspired to do so.
Added to this will be exercises and techniques for building strength and agility. This training ensures that as the child's flexibility, bones, muscles, strength, coordination and agility develop they are especially conditioned for the diverse sports offered by IGL they will later encounter. Parents and guardians are taught these flexibility, strength and muscle toning exercises with handlers and how to perform them daily with their child as part of an IGL education programme.
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| IGL Sports for Life: Flexibility, strength and co-ordination are taught and maintained from infancy into adulthood through outreach. |
As the child grows and begins to walk this coordination grows into the development of ball handling skills, flexibility, agility, strength development, coordination, strategy, higher level hand to eye coordination and so on. These skills are gradually specialized into various sports, such as football, basketball, gymnastics, athletics, baseball, cricket etc as the child's confidence on his or her feet grows. From the time a child can sit up by themselves IGL schools will already be involved in the child's education through outreach. The development of coordination begins such that by the time they are in pre-school they have developed decent sporting skills, endurance, flexibility and strength as second nature which become useful in a diverse range of sporting activities. As they move on these skills are further developed with the intention that by the time they are approaching age of 11 to 12 their level of ability and knowledge of a sport is on track to at some point being equal to the level of skill required by a professional player in any of the IGL Sports for Life areas.
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| Coordination, ball handling skills, agility and flexibility will begin to be coached from infancy through outreach programmes such that they become second nature. |
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| An IGL programme will be multi-disciplinary with a many layers. The schedules for teaching will involve master classes that begin from infancy, designed to be age appropriate in terms of emotional instruction and yet precise and of a high level of skill delivered by experts and apprentices. Students will therefore have programmes designed with content required to arrive at the highest achievable skill level from birth to tertiary education. |
The IGL training from infancy to adulthood in sport will be continuously nurtured ensuring that skills and attributes such as strength, accuracy, agility and flexibility that are essential to various sports are maintained throughout the student's education with a timeline showing the expected duration they will reach a level of skill associated with a professional able to compete at the international level.
Sport in Nature
Interacting with animals, understanding them and developing a fondness and respect for the creatures found in nature is a very important aspect of human cognitive development.
An important part of an IGL programme that is currently neglected in education is to make children less fearful and more comfortable around animals. Interacting with animals and not being unduly afraid of them is an important aspect of development for a child. Like other IGL programmes this is encouraged to begin at an early age under the IGL Sports for Life programme through trained handlers working with parents to safely nurture a child's development in this area.
An important part of an IGL programme that is currently neglected in education is to make children less fearful and more comfortable around animals. Interacting with animals and not being unduly afraid of them is an important aspect of development for a child. Like other IGL programmes this is encouraged to begin at an early age under the IGL Sports for Life programme through trained handlers working with parents to safely nurture a child's development in this area.
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| Learning to handle and train pets and understanding animal behaviour. |
Being comfortable with animals can include caring for, petting, holding, grooming, feeding and stroking them as children familiarize themselves with these living creatures. This interaction then gradually grows from understanding animal behaviour to training animals. For instance this may include training dogs to walk, sit and perform other tasks. It also cascades into the equestrian space where skills such as horse jumping, dancing horses etc are developed.
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Interaction with animals will be time-lined to grow from
care, petting and grooming to training and eventually
high level competition. |
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| The methodology for success in sport in any field should be ambitious, planned for and begin from infancy. |
There are many different sporting activities that involve the grooming and training of animals. Students should be able to eventually specialise and go on to compete in areas of their preference.
Self Sustainability and Sports for Life
Most Sports programmes in schools are average, not because schools cannot afford the many different areas of sport. They are average simply because most schools have sports programmes with average expectations and laissez faire attitude to skills development. The IGL programme will take sport very seriously and its primary objective will be to coach students such that achieving skills and ability that is regarded as being equal to that of a professional able to compete at the highest levels of competition in any part of the world is the new norm arrived at in years 12-13. This is made possible by introducing sport and aquatics early with pre-natal and post-natal planning such that by the time a child is moving from primary to secondary school professional skills are the norm combined with the psychology that allows students to approach sport with this as the new normal.
Implementing an IGL programme may be more costly than conventional education, however, there are methods through which sustainability can be achieved. For instance some facilities can be shared, especially for schools that lack the necessary land facilities on which to implement them. Once equipment, land and animals are obtained the maintenance and care for these can be integrated with the 10 trades creating an affordable and sustainable system for this level of education that can continue affordably and in perpetuity.
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