# Helix Sports - For Education & Self-Reliance



## Maximus

I heard of the term "helix sports" in a lecture by John Taylor Gatto...he was referring to education as something resembling a helix sport, whatever it is. I was curious about this and did more research and came across this book "Landscape in Sight by John B. Jackson" describing what a helix sport is in more detail. Here's are print screens taken from the book:




























So when John Taylor Gatto, former teacher/education-activist adopted the term, he took the helix sport ideals of a non guided, improvisational, non-competitive, and exploratory approach to life, and applied it to education. Gatto is a bit political, but here's some of what he has to say about helix sports:



> Here's a principle of real education to carry you through the moments of self-doubt. Education is a helix sport, a unique personal project like seatless unicycle riding over trackless wilderness, a sport that avoids rails, rules, and programmed confinement. The familiar versions of this are cross-country skiing, sailing, hang-gliding, skateboarding, surfing, solitary mountain climbing, thousand-mile walks, things like that. I think of education as one, too.
> 
> In a helix sport the players search for a new relationship with themselves. They endure pain and risk to achieve this goal. Helix sports are free of expert micromanagement. Experts can't help you much in that moment of truth when a mistake might leave you dead. Helix sports are a revolt against predestination.
> 
> Bringing children up properly is a helix sport forcing you to realize that no boy or girl on earth is just like another. If you do understand this you also understand there can exist no reliable map to tell you all you need to do. Process kids like sardines and don't be surprised when they come out oily and dead. In the words of the Albany Free School, if you aren't making it up as you go along, you aren't doing it right.
> 
> source - Education As A Helix Sport - John Taylor Gatto


I fell in love with the idea of this, so I wanted to share it with those at PerC. This is great self-exploratory practice for those whose cognitive functions favor planning. Helix sports allows those to develop spontaneity and useful adaptation to new and changing circumstances without any guided plan. This is also useful for non-Ni doms to further develop iNtuition as one absorbs new information from the adventure of unexplored environments. 

I really enjoy Gatto's application toward education, because I find my early attraction to autodidacticism, as an unconscious attempt at developing full psychological wholeness. In my personal life, my helix sports could be my ronin-esque approach to the martial arts, as I've achieved a position of independent study and tutelage. I'm also fond of hiking, mountain bike riding, rock climbing, urban exploration, and oneironautics. But one of my favorite forms of helix sports is poetry, as inspired by the Sufi mystic Rumi, and his whirling dervishes of lyrical prose.

Awareness of the path is what MBTI illuminates within the individual. Highlighting your strengths and weaknesses; seek out your deficits as challenges to overcome. The quest is a struggle, but also very rewarding when you discover your hidden potentials.


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## SilverMoon

you are so cool


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## Maximus




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## Maximus

This is an amazing Dan Osman montage.


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## Maximus




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