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(2) MOloric or human movement
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Strictly speaking human movement is not a psychopedagogic category. Movement is,
however, of such importance for the unfolding of the psychic life of a child that
psychopedagogics must give more attention to it. Straus (1963) states that sensing as
such is bound to vital living movement, e.g. dance. Dance illustrates the unity of
sensing and movement. Movement thus has a place in experiencing and therefore also
in learning.
With reference to the sensori-motor stage of development (the first 18 months of a
child's life), Piaget & Inbelder (1969) use the term sensori-motor intelligence. The
sensori-motor intelligence succeeds, according to their view, in solving numerous
problems of action (such as reaching distant or hidden objects) by constructing a
complex system of action schemes and organising reality in terms of spatio-temporal
and casual structures. They further maintain that during this period, a child constructs
all the cognitive sub-structures that will serve as a point of departure for his later
perceptive and intellectual development, as well as a certain number of elementary
affective reactions that will partly determine his subsequent affectivity. They
specifically emphasize that intelligence proceeds from action as a whole, that it
transfers objects and reality, and that knowledge, whose information can be traced in
the child, is essentially an active and operatory assimilation. The term 'action' as used
by Piaget & Inbelder (1969) implies more than mere movement, but movement
constitutes a very important dimension of 'action' (action implies orientation). It is a
matter of fact, only when the child reaches the stage of formal operations that
reflective thinking starts to play a more important role in his life than physical action
(Piaget & Inbelder 1969 : 47).
It is not only in the case ofchildren that movement is important. Nel & Urbani (1990:
49) contend that perceiving, acting and expressing are the three most important
characteristics of a person's relations with every thing that he is confronted with.
According to Buitendijk (1966) movements are hardly ever learnt for the sake of
movement itself. Human movement always has an existential meaning. Each