I took judo lessons when I was fourteen partly because it was the 19070s and everyone wanted to learn kung-fu and partly because it was fun bounding on the rubber mat that covered a third of the gym. Having been taught the most important part of all, how to roll after a throw, it seemed to me I was forever trying to learn against seventeen year olds who had been training for at least three years. It’s quite something to be thrown twenty times in a row and still trying to get the hang of keeping one’s feet on the ground.
I wouldn’t have thought about it much except many years later I was in the fields in my wellington boots with a heavy coat running with the dog and I slipped and fell and without thinking about it I rolled and found the speed of my running propelled me over and up again. I was so astonished to be standing up I stopped. There are not many things I learned at school that stayed with me in physical education but obviously that did. All those throws were reinforcing a behaviour until it became instinctive.
Which is of course, how so much education works. Sadly most of it is also to stop us floundering around in the mud but I guess to find out if it is successful we need a good definition of mud.