The Trappings of Physical Education: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Abstract

This article is a reflection on the progress that has been made toward improving physical education, and on the idea of changing its name.

As I was getting the computer set up to write this editorial, the television was on in the background offering white noise to my otherwise calm and quiet home. Suddenly, I heard Chip Gaines on Fixer Upper ask his daughter what her favorite subject was in school. She answered, “PE”! Chip laughed and answered, “That's good”! My ears perked up along with my spirit. Inspiration comes in such strange ways.

Over the past couple of months I carefully perused the last two years of JOPERD articles, including editorials and viewpoints. I planned to write a synopsis about the relevance and substance of those articles. After getting this new inspiration, however, I decided instead to simply report how impressed I am with the quality and variety of perspectives on physical education published over the past couple of years. I am especially thankful to those who either focused on children with challenges or included them in their articles. The articles I read presented a noble representation and maturation of physical education and dance. The compilation of work uniquely symbolized a developmental homeostasis for all children — where the ranges of psychomotor, cognitive and affective domains are explored. No other discipline can deliver such a balanced approach to human learning and development. While some articles lean more specifically toward one or another domain, there was always a tendency to bring the messages back to the center, where the domains merge and physical education uniquely resides.

This realization led me to begin thinking more deeply about recent and past articles relative to rebranding physical education. The only thing that has remained constant over my tenure in academe is the urge to change, and while change has been most certainly emphasized over the past 25 years, the name of physical education has remained the same. While we appropriately debate and change programmatic emphases in physical education, the need for us to better understand mind/body health and development has been going on since 2500 B.C., as evidenced by the ancient archives of Greece, China and India. The title “physical education” has been used in the United States for the past 150 years, and few other disciplines can boast of such a rich history.

While we appropriately debate and change programmatic emphases in physical education, the need for us to better understand mind/body health and development has been going on since 2500 B.C., as evidenced by the ancient archives of Greece, China and India.

In my lifetime, never have so many worked so hard to overcome the public's incorrect personification of “gym class.” To a great extent, this has been caused by previous transgressions of some lazy teachers, who I have referred to as the ball rollers, gamers and coaches pretending to be physical educators. Let's neither excuse nor focus on what has transpired, as is often our tendency. Instead, let's celebrate the transformative progress so many contemporary physical educators have tirelessly and unselfishly worked to achieve. Their work is unequivocally evident in the richness and variety of programs now offered to all school-age children. I personally applaud the teachers who endeavor to make programs stronger, create variety, and share their progress by submitting articles to the journal. It is because of their significant work that the knowledge about and participation in physical activity, fundamental movement skills, fitness, and healthy habits are at an all-time high.

And, yes, the disposition of children to enjoy a physical education class is a good thing. Even after the Carol M. White Physical Education Program (PEP) funding dried up, the fruits of productive advancements are evidenced by the continued outstanding participation and leadership of physical education teachers in SHAPE America and JOPERD, which in the not-too-distant past was a rarity. Children with physical, sensory, behavioral and cognitive challenges are no longer ignored or pushed aside, and it was physical educators who first embraced an effective least-restrictive learning environment in which the educational needs of children are emphasized in all developmental domains. The journal embraces and promotes these advancements through its publication and acknowledgment of your work.

In an attempt to better understand how some physical educators felt about a name change, I sent out an email and subsequently interviewed several practicing physical educators and university faculty in Washington state by referencing Johnson, Turner and Metzler's (2017) article, “Physical Activity Education: The New Name for Our Field,” which appeared in the January 2017 issue of JOPERD. In this article the authors proposed the term “physical activity education” and to redefine physical education by using the comprehensive school physical activity program (CSPAP) model that emphasizes physical activity before, during and after school. Notwithstanding the well-written thesis of these scholars, the proposal stimulated strong responses from everyone queried. Not one person agreed that rebranding was necessary, and others whose program had changed from physical education to health and fitness warned of collateral damages that the change caused.

The entire group basically indicated that to make a name change, now, after all of the progress made over the past 20 years, would be analogous to changing the last name of one of their children because he or she just did not live up to family expectations. To make a name change, there must be significant evidence and justification to do so, along with a clear acceptance of possible undesirable consequences. The respondents could not come up with, nor had they heard, any convincing evidence that an alternative title would more accurately reflect today's school-based curriculum. Nor did they believe the profession is in such shambles that it warrants rebranding. I, too, cannot come up with a good reason for changing the name of physical education other than to escape the past. Nothing existing today has a perfect past. To continue to exist, however, means we have learned from the past and moved forward, celebrating where we intend to go by making 50 million children stronger.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James L. DePaepe

James L. DePaepe ([email protected]) is a professor in the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Health Science at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, WA.