Science, service, and the professionalization of physical education: 1885–1905

Abstract

Many of the professional organizations that exist today were created in the late 1800s. One of these is the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (originally American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education), which was established in November 1885. Most historical accounts give only limited attention to the broader contexts in which the AAPE emerged. Wide-ranging concerns about health were a major influence. So were developments in the biological sciences such as have been outlined in historian William Coleman's aptly titled Problems of Form, Function, and Transformation: Biology in the Nineteenth Century. The backgrounds and range of interest of early members were significant. Whereas the majority of the leaders held medical degrees, the field also attracted a considerable number of ‘health faddists’, entrepreneurs and others who were interested in advancing a particular cause. Luther Gulick, MD, Edward M. Hartwell, MD (who also had a doctoral degree in physiology), and George Fitz, MD (who conducted reaction-time and other experiments) were among those who insisted that the field would need to establish its claims for legitimacy on sound scientific grounds and that a respectable number of its members must engage in research. At most colleges and universities departments of physical training were headed by a man or woman (separate units were the norm) who possessed a medical degree, training for which before the 1910 Flexner Report rarely included much, if any, engagement in experimental research. They were occupied with the time-consuming tasks of examining students, prescribing exercises, directing gymnasium work, conducting anthropometric examinations and creating teacher-training programmes in an effort to meet the ever-growing need for large numbers of teachers for schools, colleges and organizations like the YMCA. Service quickly became, and would remain until recently, the dominant, albeit not exclusive, focus of the American physical education profession.

Notes

*Reprinted with kind permission from Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, Centennial Issue: 7–20. Copyright (1985) by the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, 1900 Association Drive, Reston, VA 20191.

[1] Haskell, The Emergence of Professional Social Science, vi-vii; 169–78. See also Turner, ‘The Victorian Conflict Between Science and Religion’, 360; Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism.

[2] Cassedy, American Medicine and Statistical Thinking, 190–203.

[3] Several studies deal with the origins and development of the American Medical Association. One of the more insightful is Rothstein, American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century, 114–21 and passim. See also Shortt, ‘Physicians, Science, and Status’.

[4] Kohlstedt, The Formation of the American Scientific Community, ix–x.

[5]‘Teachers’ Organizations’, in Monroe, Encyclopedia of Educational Research, 1442–6.

[6] Between 1885 and 1905 the physical education profession had three names: Association for the Advancement of Physical Education, 1885; American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education, 1886–1902; American Physical Education Association, 1903–[1937].

[7] Edward M. Hartwell, president, to American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education, 8 Nov. 1897, printed notice; ‘Editorial Notes and Comment’, American Physical Education Review 1 (Sept.–Dec. 1896), 109–12.

[8]American Physical Education Review 1 (Sept.–Dec. 1896), 109–10.

[9]‘Report of the First National Convention of the AAAPE, 4–6 April 1899’, American Physical Education Review 4 (June 1899), 148–53.

[10] Ibid., 179–90. There were many individuals who were interested in physical education but had no plans to teach the subject. Therefore it was suggested that two classes of members of the AAAPE might be established.

[11] See Park, ‘“Embodied Selves”’ and ‘Harmony and Cooperation’.

[12] Beecher's Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools and Families is among the better-known. Trall's The Illustrated Family Gymnasium was reprinted several times. Gunn's New Family Physician, contained a lengthy section titled ‘Physical Culture and Development’ by Charles S. Royce. Gunn claimed this to be the ‘hundredth edition’ of the work. Scores of other such publications could be cited. Perhaps the most comprehensive and insightful work to date on nineteenth-century preoccupations with health, physical education and games-playing is Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture; see also Whorton, Crusaders for Fitness; Walters, American Reformers, ch. 7; Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality.

[13]Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education, 1891, especially 22–4.

[14] Gulick, ‘Physical Education: A New Profession’, 65; Kroll, Graduate Study and Research in Physical Education, 27–60. To date Kroll's analysis of the ‘origins of professional preparation in physical education’ is one of the few studies that concerns itself with the ‘scientific’ origins of professional physical education in the United States.

[15] Gulick, ‘Physical Education: A New Profession’, 64.

[16] Quoted in Kroll, Graduate Study and Research, 43.

[17]Proceedings of the Association for the Advancement of Physical Education, 1885, 1.

[18]Proceedings of the Association for the Advancement of Physical Education, 1886, 26.

[19] Hartwell, ‘On the Physiology of Exercise’, 31 March 1887 and 7 April 1887. See also Leonard and Affleck, A Guide to the History of Physical Education, which remains one of the best sources on the early history of physical education in the United States.

[20] Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century.

[21] See Farber, ‘The Transformation of Natural History in the Nineteenth Century’.

[22] Moore, The Use of the Body in Relation to the Mind, 1–5.

[23] Smith, The Philosophy of Health, xi–xvi. See also Lewes, The Physiology of Common Life.

[24] Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century, 162–66. See also Mainx, Foundations of Biology, 2–23. For the influence of ‘designed laws’ on Darwin's earlier thought, see Ospovat, ‘God and Natural Selection’.

[25] French, ‘Some Problems and Sources’; Coleman, Biology in the Nineteenth Century.

[26] Smith, ‘The Use of the Sphygmograph’.

[27] Hartwell, ‘The Nature of Physical Training’, 16.

[28] See, for example, Rosenberg, No Other Gods.

[29] See, for example, Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, 123–42.

[30] See the frontispiece in The Playground 13 (April 1908).

[31] Fancher, Pioneers of Psychology, 44–59.

[32] Fowler, Physiology, Animal and Mental, 240–4.

[33]Ferrier, The Functions of the Brain, 255, 266–9; Young, ‘The Functions of the Brain: Gall to Ferrier’.

[34] See for example, Daston, ‘British Responses to Psycho-Physiology’; Fellman and Fellman, Making Sense of Self, 115–8; Carpenter, ‘The Unconscious Action of the Brain’.

[35] Richards, ‘The Physical Element in Education’.

[36] Foster, A Text Book of Physiology, 1–8.

[37] Hartwell, ‘On Physical Training’, 722. Hartwell characterized the nervous and muscular tissues as the body's ‘master tissues’.

[38] Foster, A Text Book of Physiology, 7.

[39] Park, ‘Action as Moral Necessity’ and ‘Morality Embodied’. The whole notion of action in relation to games-playing awaits a comprehensive analysis.

[40] Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford, 36.

[41] Barbour, For the Honour of the School, is one of many such works. See also Messenger, Sport and the Spirit of Play.

[42] Quoted in Greene, Science, Ideology and World View, 103. See also Greene, ‘Darwin as a Social Evolutionist’.

[43] Harris, ‘Physical Training’, 1–2.

[44] Ibid., 3–4.

[45] Hartwell, ‘The Nature of Physical Training’, 5–7.

[46] Judd, ‘Action as a Condition of Mental Growth’. See also O'Shea, ‘The Relation of Physical Training’.

[47] Hall, Adolescence, 132, 219–20; Cavallo, Muscles and Morals.

[48] Smith, ‘The Use of the Sphygmograph’.

[49] Ibid., 45–6.

[50] Fitz, ‘Psychological Aspects of Exercises’.

[51] Kellogg, ‘The Value of Strength Tests; Fitz, ‘What Nervous Tests Shall we Use’.

[52] Anderson, ‘Effect of Certain Exercises’; Scripture, ‘Reaction-time and Time-memory in Gymnastic Work’.

[53] Lukens, ‘Mental Fatigue’, March 1899 and June 1899; Anderson, ‘Studies in the Effects of Physical Training’; Hough, ‘The Physiological Significance’; McCurdy, ‘The Effect of Maximum Muscular Effort’; Hough, ‘Ergographic Studies’; Storey, ‘The Daily Variation’; Bowen, ‘Conditions Determining the Rapidity of the Pulse’ and ‘The Influence of Muscular Work’; Lombard, ‘The Action of Two-Joint Muscles’; Crampton, ‘Blood Pressure’.

[54] Lee and Bennett, ‘75 years of the American Association, 26–33.

[55]Mosher, ‘The Influence of Habitual Posture’; Lovett, ‘The Mechanics of Lateral Curvature of the Spine’; Skarstrom, Gymnastic Kinesiology; Bowen, The Action of Muscles in Bodily Movement and Posture. To these should be added McKenzie's Exercise in Education and Medicine. Although Guillaume B. Duchenne's Physiologie des mouvements was published in 1867, an English translation did not appear until 1949. Marey's Animal Mechanism: A Treatise on Terrestrial and Aerial Locomotion had been published as part of the Appleton series on science in 1879; however, Posse's The Special Kinesiology of Educational Gymnastics included an appendix (309–13) that commented briefly on mechanical details. In this work Posse urged the keeping of measurements of adults to ‘furnish coming scientists with the necessary statistics for their study of the evolution of man’ and recommended comparisons based on height, using Hartelius's tables based upon antique statuary.

[56] Gould, The Mismeasure of Man. See also Stocking, Race, Culture and Evolution.

[57] Lombroso, L'Homme Criminal.

[58] Roberts, A Manual of Anthropometry, 1–6.

[59] Ibid.

[60] The literature on Francis Galton is extensive. A useful analysis of the impact of his ideas is Cowan, ‘Nature and Nurture’.

[61] Norton, ‘The Biometric Defense of Darwinism’; De Marrais, ‘The Double-Edged Effect of Sir Francis Galton’.

[62] Tanner, A History of the Study of Human Growth, 185–96; Boyd, Origins of the Study of Human Growth, passim.

[63] Porter, ‘The Growth of St Louis Children’.

[64] Stocking, Race, Culture and Evolution, 174; Boas and Wissler, ‘Statistics of Growth’.

[65] Welch, Edward Hitchcock, MD.

[66]‘Physical training at Amherst’, Science 5 (30 Jan. 1885), 95–6.

[67] Hitchcock and Seelye, An Anthropometric Manual, 4.

[68] Wey, ‘Physical and Industrial Training of Criminals’; Jacyna, ‘Somatic Theories of Mind’.

[69]‘Anthropometric measurements’, Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education, 1886. This report was also published as The Need of Anthropometry and How to Make It Available (Brooklyn: Rome Brothers, 1887).

[70] This paper does not appear in the 1886 Proceedings but it was published in 1887 as The Need for Anthropometry. See also Boyd, Origins of the Study of Human Growth, 478.

[71] Bennett, ‘The Life of Dudley Allen Sargent’. See also ‘Dr Sargent's Normal School of Physical Training and Sanitary Gymnasium for Women and Children, Mass. 1894’ (printed circular); Dr Sargent's System of Developing Appliances and Gymnastic Apparatus; Sargent, Handbook of Developing Exercises.

[72] Sargent, ‘The Physical Proportions of the Typical Man’; ‘The Physical Characteristics of the Athlete’; and ‘The Physical Development of Women’.

[73] Hanna, ‘Anthropometric Table’; Enebuske, ‘Some Measurable Results of Swedish Pedagogical Gymnastics’ and ‘An Anthropometrical Study’.

[74] Hartwell, ‘A Preliminary Report on Anthropometry’.

[75] Ibid.

[76] Lincoln, ‘Anthropometry Individualized’.

[77] Boas, ‘Statistical Study of Anthropometry’.

[78] Burke, ‘Growth of Children in Height and Weight’.

[79] Hastings, A Manual for Physical Measurements. See also Hastings, ‘The Propaganda of Physical Education’.

[80] Hartwell, ‘The Nature of Physical Training’, 17.

[81] Edward M. Hartwell, ‘On Physical Training’, 723. A condensed version of this report, accompanied by an anthropometric chart for men and one for women was published in Draper, Draper's Self Culture. The volume was devoted to ‘Sports, Pastimes and Physical Culture’. Draper was commissioner of education of the state of New York, and had assembled an impressive list of contributors, advisers and assistant editors.

[82] Hartwell, ‘On Physical training’, 755.

[83] McCurdy, ‘A Study of the Characteristics of Physical Training’.

[84] Wacker, ‘The History of the Private Single-Purpose Institutions’.

[85] Lewis, ‘Adoption of the Sports Program’.

[86] There were exceptions, of course, including Jesse Feiring Williams, MD, who served as president of the American Physical Education Association in 1932–3.

[87] Fitz, ‘Editorial Note and Comment’, March 1905.

[88] Fitz, ‘Editorial Note and Comment’, March 1906.

[89] Warner, ‘Physiology’.

[90] Flexner, Medical Education, 58–62; Pearce et al., Medical Research and Education.

[91] Gerson, ‘Divided We Stand’; Atwater, ‘Squeezing Mother Nature’.

[92]‘Announcement and Appeal by the National Council’, in Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education, 1895, 25–7, appendix.

[93] See, for example, Brooks, Perspectives on the Academic Discipline of Physical Education; Henry, ‘The Academic Discipline of Physical Education’; Park, ‘The Research Quarterly and its Antecedents’, and other papers in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport 57 (March 1980); Kroll, Graduate Study and Research in Physical Education.