‘A singularly gifted man’: A. D. ‘Dave’ Munrow and academic physical education at the University of Birmingham

ABSTRACT

‘I think our subject can light up one facet which universities in their very nature sometimes fail to see’, said A.D. ‘Dave’ Munrow in his career-long quest to make physical education a subject worthy of study at Birmingham University. This paper follows Munrow’s efforts in early post- war Britain to forge a Department of Physical Education that welcomed scientific enquiry and articulated new approaches to the training of sports skills and techniques while guarding against a cleavage between the sciences and humanities. Female students were admitted to the programme from its inception even while he challenged the emphasis of women’s physical education colleges upon movement education and generalised skill training. His programme was well established by the time Franklin Henry at the University of California, Berkeley outlined the body of knowledge acceptable in a physical education degree, as was his substantial reputation on the international stage of physical education and sport, and as one of Britain’s leading architects of sport. Upon his early death in 1975 he was eulogised as ‘a genial spirit with a talent for subjecting views to critical examination’. ‘In the field of physical education’, said Walter Winterbottom, ‘Dave Munrow was a singularly gifted man’.

KEYWORDS:

• Dave Munrow
• academic physical education
• Birmingham University
• Berkeley
• transition generation

Acknowledgements

My thanks to the Cadbury Research Library for their generous support in sharing the collections of documents related to A.D. Munrow and his colleagues at the University of Birmingham. The author is also grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Grant 15R20579 for their generous support in gathering research material for this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Prompted by the Physical Training and Recreation Act of 1937 it was pursued by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain as part of a drive to improve public health by integrating physical education into daily life. See Charlotte Macdonald, Strong, Beautiful and Modern: National Fitness in Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, 1935–1960 (New Zealand: Bridget Williams Books Ltd, 2011), 35–9.

2 Henrietta Billings, ‘Still Fit for Purpose: The Old Gym, Birmingham University’, last modified October, 2012. https://c20society.org.uk/casework/still-fit-for-purpose-the-old-gym-birmingham/.

3 David W. Orr, ‘Architecture as Pedagogy’, Conservation Biology 7, no. 2 (1993): 226–8.

4 Fred E. Leonard and George B. Affleck, A Guide to the History of Physical Education (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1947), 420. The Central Council of Recreative Physical Training had been organised in 1935 to encourage the development of ALL physical activities, both indoor and out, for ALL sections of the Country.

5 Macdonald, Strong, Beautiful and Modern, 34–7.

6 See for some examples, Patricia Vertinsky, ‘Building the Body Beautiful’ in The Women’s League of Health and Beauty: Yoga and Female Agency in 1930s Britain, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice 16, no. 4: 517–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2012.697280.

7 Alan Penn, Targeting Schools. Drill, Militarism and Imperialism (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 28. See also Tony Mason, Sport and the Military: The British Armed Forces 1880–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

8 Peter C. McIntosh, Physical Education in England since 1800 (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1968), 242–4.

9 D. Smith, Aneurin Bevan, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Nick Thomas-Symonds, Nye: The Political Life of Aneurin Bevan (London: I.B.Tauris, 2014).

10 Peter C. McIntosh, Sport in Society (London: West London Press, 1963), 108.

11 McIntosh, Physical Education in England, 243.

12 Matt Cole, ‘Leading the Field: The Story of Sport at the University of Birmingham’, last modified 2016. https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/strategic-framework/leading-the-field.pdf.

13 McIntosh, Physical Education in England, 245–6.

14 According to B.A. Furlong in her history of Carnegie College 1 year courses for men had been held at Chelsea from 1908 to 1912 and at Sheffield from 1919 to 1923. Some training was available in 1913 at St Mark’s College in London. Carnegie College opened in 1933. The College of Physical Education at Fredensborg in Denmark was regularly advertised in Physical Education, offering one-year training courses for men and women and 2-week summer vacation courses for men and women, albeit separately. The courses covered the latest developments in the theory and practice of physical education, comprising lectures, gymnastics, athletics, swimming, folk dancing and games as well as excursions to places of historical and educational interest. The College, notes Peter McIntosh, later became a secret meeting place for resistance in Denmark during WW2. Peter C. McIntosh, J.G. Dixon, A.D. Munrow, and R.F. Willetts, Landmarks in the History of Physical Education revised ed. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 219

15 The courses were grant aided by the Ministry of Education and serving teachers were usually given leave of absence on salary to attend the course.

16 The function of the college was to provide one-year courses for men teachers who had completed a 2-year course in an ordinary training college and to provide training for those who were already qualified as general teachers. For more see B.A. Furlong, Carnegie College and School 1933–1983 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1983). In his study of Carnegie’s early training, David Kirk points out that many of these early Carnegie students such as Munrow were already university graduates in an era when only a tiny socially elite minority of the population attended university. Those who went on to become leaders in their respective fields such as A.D. Munrow were merely the super-elite of an articulate, well-educated and physically talented community of male physical educators. David Kirk, ‘The Masculinity Vortex of School Physical Education: Beyond the Myth of Hyper-Masculinity’, in Boys' Bodies: Speaking the Unspoken, eds. M. Kehler and M. Atkinson (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 51–72.

17 Cole, ‘Leading the Field’; Mike Bullock, Priestley’s Progress: The Life of Sir Raymond Priestley, Antarctic Explorer, Scientist, Soldier, and Academician (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017).

18 A.D. Munrow, ‘Physical Education at the University: Compulsory Scheme at Birmingham’, News of the Week, June 28, 1941. https//archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/archives/5ea5eb05-4201-3670-885f-fdfea47fec99.

19 92 men chose the former and 144 the latter. As each year progressed, free standing gymnastics, medicine ball work, minor games, boxing, cross country running, basketball, soccer, and athletics were added to the list.

20 Bill Tuxworth, who would become a lecturer in the programme, told me that key supporters of the programme at the University included Charles Oxnard, a medical student at Birmingham and President of the Athletics Union who pressed for better athletic facilities, and Doctor Robert Bolton, the University’s medical officer, who was on the University Senate and was a keen supporter of the programme. Several PE faculty members lived at ‘Doc’ Bolton’s house for various lengths of time, including Bill Tuxworth who is still there decades later.

21 Munrow, ‘Physical Education at the University’.

22 A.D. Munrow, ‘Physical Education in the Universities’ (paper presented at the Combined Ling Association and NAPE Conference on Physical Education in Post-war Reconstruction, London, United Kingdom, February, 1942).

23 In 1914 there were 10,000 Redbrick students and only 7000 at Oxford and Cambridge combined. William Whyte, Redbrick: A Social and Architectural History of Britain’s Civic University (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

24 Whyte, Redbrick, 185; G.G.H. Herklots, The New Universities: An External Examination (London: E. Benn Ltd, 1928).

25 Whyte, Redbrick, 218.

26 Munrow, ‘Physical Education in the Universities’, 6.

27 Ibid, 5.

28 The stipulation was rescinded in 1954.

29 Peter McIntosh would become one of the most significant historians of sport in Britain serving as Deputy Director to Munrow at Birmingham from 1946 to 1959. See for an excellent overview, Mike Huggins, ‘Walking in the Footsteps of a Pioneer: Peter McIntosh – Trail-Blazer in the History of Sport’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 18, no. 2 (2015): 132–47; McIntosh, Physical Education in England, 254.

30 Priestley was a survivor of Antarctic expeditions of both Shackleton and Scott and had won a Military cross in WW1 before establishing the Scott Polar Research Centre at Cambridge. Bullock, Priestley’s Progress.

31 Max Madders, ‘An Outdoor Group’, Journal of Physical Education 46, (1954): 11–7.

32 Max Madders was a Quaker and pacifist; he remained Assistant Director of PE between 1940 and 1976 and was the main conduit for the development of the summer camp at Coniston throughout these years. Max Madders, The Coniston Saga, Cadbury Research Library Special Collections, Staff Papers. University of Birmingham, July 1983.

33 Walter Winterbottom, ‘A.D. Munrow, OBE, BSc. An Appreciation of his Life and Work for Physical Education in the Universities’, The Times, April 17, 1975.

34 Bill Slater was the last post war amateur to play at an FA cup in Wembley. He also played the 1958 World Cup in Sweden; received fame as soccer player playing for Wolverhampton Wanderers and was 1960 footballer of the year.

35 Slater became Director of Physical Education at Birmingham in 1970 upon the retirement of Dave Munrow before leaving to become Director of Development Services at the National Sports Council in 1974. He later received the OBE and CBE for his services to sport and the country.

36 A.D. Munrow, Physical Education and Health, mimeographed paper, Cadbury Research Library Special Collections, Staff Papers. n.d. ‘Physical education in this country got off on the wrong foot by justifying itself entirely in terms of its therapeutic and health given qualities and there has been an overemphasis on Swedish gymnastics in PE’. ‘Gymnastics for keeping fit is acceptable’, he added, ‘when one has something to keep fit for’.

37 Max Madders, ‘Obituary for A.D.Munrow’, The Times, April, 1975.

38 A.D. Munrow, A.D. ‘The Significance of the First Degree Course in Physical Education’, The Physical Education Year Book 1959–60, Ling House: The Physical Education Association, (1960): 39.

39 A.D. Munrow, ‘The Role of a Department of Physical Education in a University’, International Review of Education 11, no. 2 (1965): 173.

40 A.W. Sedgwick, ‘Physical Education in the University’, Physical Education 55, no. 164 (March, 1963): 13.

41 Ibid, 15.

42 F.M. Henry, ‘Physical Education: An Academic Discipline’, Journal of Health, Physical Education and Recreation 35, no. 7 (1964): 32–3, 69; F.M. Henry, ‘The Academic Discipline of Physical Education’, Quest 29, no. 1 (1978): 13–29.

43 Bob Morford, Franklin Henry’s retirement, Strawberry Canyon, University of California, Berkeley, mimeographed sheet given to author by Bob Morford at the University of British Columbia.

44 David Kirk discusses Henry’s assumptions in ‘Knowledge, Science and the Rise of Human Movement Studies’, The ACHPER National Journal 127 (March 1990): 9–10. The problem was, he says, that this notion assumed everyone would know what physical activity actually was or that there was a common language to communicate ideas around it. Copy of the justification of request by UC Berkeley to State Board of Education declaring the major in physical education to be Academic as provided by Education Code Section 13188 (a).

45 Franklin M. Henry, Fellow # 94, 1951 and A.D. Munrow, Corresponding Fellow, 1951, in the American Academy of Physical Education.

46 Roberta J. Park, ‘A Long and Productive Career: Franklin M. Henry – Scientist, Mentor, Pioneer’, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport 65, no. 4 (1994): 295–307.

47 Park, ‘A Long and Productive Career’, 300.

48 Justification of Request by the University of California Berkeley, that the State Board of Education Declare the Major in Physical Education to be Academic as Provided by Education Code Section 13188.

49 Len Barnes, ‘Franklin M. Henry: Sports Medicine Pioneer’, The Physician and Sports Medicine 11, no. 4 (1983): 214. Henry’s career exemplified the continued emphasis he placed upon research including a pervasive thread around interest in individual differences and the belief that motor skills were highly task specific.

50 A.D. Munrow, Physical Education in the Universities, 7–8.

51 Munrow’s comments were in his unpublished diary of his Australia (Olympic) visit to Melbourne in 1956, (Cadbury Research Library Special Collections, Staff Papers, 1956), 28, 45. Bailey describes the meeting and participants at Melbourne in length. Steve Bailey, Science in the Service of Physical Education and Sport: The Story of the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education 1956–1996 (West Sussex, UK: John Wiley and Sons, 1996), 26–28.

52 Male scientists stood out as a privileged group because until 1960 they alone were exempted from conscription. For more on this topic, see Whyte, Redbrick.

53 A.D. Munrow, ‘Looking Back and Looking Forwards in Gymnastics’, Journal of Physical Education 48, no. 1 (March, 1956): 20.

54 Sheila Fletcher, Women First. The Female Tradition in Physical Education, 1880–1980 (London: The Athlone Press, 1984), 6.

55 David Kirk, ‘Curriculum History in Physical Education: A Source of Struggle and a Force for Change’, in Research in Physical Education and Sport: Exploring Alternate Visions, ed. Andrew Sparkes (London: Falmer, 2006), 210–31; David Kirk and Patricia Vertinsky, The Female Tradition in Physical Education: Women First Reconsidered (London & New York: Routledge, 2016).

56 Fletcher, Women First, 6.

57 Munrow, ‘Looking Back’, 21.

58 Munrow dedicated his book Pure and Applied Gymnastics to his long-time enthusiastic supporter, Sir Raymond Priestley.

59 A.D. Munrow, Pure and Applied Gymnastics (London: Arnold, 1963), 277–9.

60 Barbara Knapp, Skill in Sport: The Attainment of Proficiency (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), 110.

61 Munrow, Pure and Applied Gymnastics, 282.

62 Ibid.

63 Knapp, Skill in Sport, 65.

64 Kirk, ‘Curriculum History in Physical Education’.

65 Alan Munslow, The Future of History (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 148; Hayden White, The Practical Past (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2014).

66 Lynn Abrams, ‘Liberating the Female Self: Epiphanies, Conflict, and Coherence in the Life Stories of Post-War British Women’, Social History 39, no. 1 (2014): 14–35; Julia Neuberger, ‘Foreword’, in Unequal Britain: Equalities in Britain Since 1945, ed. Pat Thane (London: Continuum Books, 2010), ix–xi; Sheila Rowbotham, Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties (Allen Lane: The Penguin Press, 2000).

67 Stephanie Spencer, Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005).

68 Elizabeth Wilson, Only Halfway to Paradise, Women in Postwar Britain 1945–1968 (London & New York: Tavistock Publications, 1980). Wini Brienes offers a somewhat contrary view in White and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).

69 Patricia Vertinsky, ‘The Evolving Policy of Equal Curricular Opportunity in England: A Case Study of the Implementation of Sex Equality in Physical Education’, British Journal of Educational Studies 31, no. 3 (1983): 229–51.

70 Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 183.

71 Stephanie Spencer, ‘Reflections on the “Site of Struggle”: Girls’ Experience of Secondary Education in the Late 1950s’, History of Education 33, no. 4 (2004): 437–49.

72 1960 was also the year that the Wolfenden Committee published its report, ‘Sport and the Community’, which particularly encouraged the development of sport and playing fields in the outdoors.

73 Hal Lawson, ‘Specialization, and Fragmentation Among Faculty as Endemic Features of Academic Life’, Quest 43, (1991): 280–95.

74 Also adding momentum to the process of transforming teaching into a graduate profession with its recommendation for Bachelor of Education degrees; the first ones were awarded by Leeds University in 1968.

75 Peter Scott, ‘Robbins Report on Higher Education – Fifty Years On’, University World News (2013): 294–6. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=2013103013563748.

76 A.D. Munrow, ‘The Role of a Department of Physical Education in a University’, International Review of Education 11, no. 2 (1965): 173.

77 See Denis Howell, An Architect of Sport, Memorial Service at Friends House, London for A.D. Munrow, The Times, April 18, 1975, in Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham staff papers. GB 150 US67.

78 Wolfenden Committee on Sport & Central Council of Physical Recreation (Great Britain), Sport and the Community: The Report of the Wolfenden Committee on Sport (London: Central Council of Physical Recreation, 1961); Ida M. Webb and John F. Coghlan, Sport and British Politics since 1960 (London: Falmer Press, 1990).

79 A.D. Munrow, ‘Sport in a Contracting World of Expanding Science and Technology’ (paper presented at the International Conference on the Contribution of Sports to the Improvement of Professional Abilities and to Cultural Development, Helsinki, Finland, 1959), 117.

80 Walter Winterbottom, ‘A.D. Munrow, OBE, BSc. An Appreciation of his Life and Work for Physical Education in the Universities’, The Times, April 17, 1975.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada: [grant number 15R20579].

Notes on contributors

Patricia Vertinsky

Patricia Vertinsky is a Distinguished University Scholar and Professor in the School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.