Your silent list manager has come-ith forward....

 

I am currently taking a Literary Theory class and I got into a major disagreement with my professor about jump rope (Mrs. Joy, you can ignore this since I wrote to you).  Anyway, the argument was whether you could get an understanding of jump rope without the use of language and if jump rope allows for difficult readings (understanding of complexity) of each other.  I believe you can.  I believe I can teach tricks without the use of verbal language, because I have. I believe that a good teacher (and there are bad teachers of jump rope out there - lots of them) will be able to help you cut through the complexity through levels of understanding whether you use language or not.

 

If I were to take a child who has never jumped before and showed him or her just by doing so to jump back and forth over a rope to do a bell - without saying anything, the child would usually do the same thing. Then if you pick up the rope and show them to do this with the rope... again without saying a word--a child will be able to do this (possibly with a double bounce at first).  Now, if you want to get the child to stop doing a double bounce or double jump (there's so many terms for that!), you can have the jumper pick up one end of the rope and you can take the other and then help the person force him or herself to take one leap per rope turn.  I've done this all without being able to speak a word!  I know I have... and then after getting used to the rhythm the child can jump in single bounce.  Granted, it might take a little time, but it's the once instance where people really don't understand even if they know the language.  When they pick single bounce up, they can easily do the bell or anything else for the most part.

 

As you get to higher levels, I continue to I believe that someone can learn a trick without using language by whether you are performing the trick or the discipline correctly.  If successful, the is in fact enjoying a good 'reading' of your teachings.  If they weren't, they would get whipped (unless of course they accidentally missed), or injure themselves or what have you.

 

Does this seem logical to all of you?  I just don't think that saying that you can't get a good reading of something in a sport and that it's all just mimicry is silly, because it's hard to teach someone how to do something correctly and safely--it's more than just "do this, do that" and less of just being able to say "jump now" with language at hand.  I don't think jump rope can be taught on just verbal language alone at all, nor can any sport.

 

We're not just mimicking each other, right?  We're taking very good readings of each other and putting them to use in a complex way that is hard to duplicate by just language alone.  Especially for someone like me who doesn't have the best spatial intelligence in the world, to achieve what I did--there's just no way you can do this without a good teacher.

 

Ginny