PILATES NA EDUCAÇÃO FÍSICA ESCOLAR: UMA EXPERIMENTAÇÃO EM ESCOLAS PÚBLICAS DE PORTUGAL

Abstract

This dissertation proposed to think and present Pilates as a content to be pedagogically treated by Physical Education in public schools in Portugal, in order to build a more powerful praxis for the students’ education. The main objective of this study was to contextualize and experience the Pilates Method which, as a knowledge of body culture of movement, problematizes and transcends the conception of a Physical Education focused on the improvement of physical skills and on the perspective of high performance sport. Methodologically, I resorted to elements of ethnographic research, bringing observations, interviews, field diary records as foundations for the construction of Pilates experimentations in two Portuguese public schools. The Pilates presented in schools proposes a critical, creative Physical Education, that does not work only with the reproduction of standardized body movements in Search of efficiency and effectiveness, but that explores sensitivity, thinking, and the (re)invention of the bodies. In this sense, Pilates uses body movement in favor of life, and, in this was, puts technique at the service of life, of the body, unlike the paradigms of physical fitness that place the body at the service of technique and, thus, of a social system that submits/subjugates them all the time. The experience with Pilates, in this conception, showed to be a strong power as one of the elements of body culture of movement for school Physical Education, indicating to the students other ways of relating with their own bodies,with other ways of knowing, appreciating and taking care of themselves, using body movement as an expressive and cultural language.