The Philosophy of Physical Education

A New Perspective

Steven Stolz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317647416
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Physical Education

The discipline area of physical education has historically struggled for legitimacy, sometimes being seen as a non-serious pursuit in educational terms compared to other subjects within the school curriculum. This book represents the first attempt in nearly thirty years to offer a coherent philosophical defence and conceptualisation of physical education and sport as subjects of educational value, and to provide a philosophically sound justification for their inclusion in the curriculum.

The book argues that rather than relegating the body to "un-thinking" learning, a person's essential being is not confined to their rationality but involves an embodied dimension. It traces the changing conceptions of the body, in philosophy and theology, that have influenced our understanding of physical education and sport, and investigates the important role that embodiment and movement play in learning about, through and in physical education. Physical education is defended as a vital and necessary part of education because the whole person goes to school, not just the mind, but the thinking, feeling and acting facets of a person. It is argued that physical education has the potential to provide a multitude of experiences and opportunities for students to become aware of their embodiment, explore alternative modes of awareness and to develop insights into and new modes of being not available elsewhere in the curriculum, and to influence moral character through the support of a moral community that is committed to that practice.

Representing a sophisticated and spirited defence of the educational significance and philosophical value of physical education and sport, this book will be fascinating reading for any advanced student or researcher with an interest in physical education, the philosophy of sport or the philosophy of education.

1 On justifications of sport and physical education

Are there good reasons for the inclusion of sport and physical education within educational institutions?

In this chapter, I aim to briefly revisit and explore some of the philosophical arguments that persistently beset that group of educational activities that we generally associate with the conceptual term “physical education”.¹ I begin by identifying and critically discussing what I consider to be serious and convincing arguments against the inclusion of sport and physical education within educational institutions as a means to construct an apology² and a coherent conceptualisation of sport and physical education. Therefore, my task at hand requires a philosophical justification to the perennial question: Are there any good reasons for the inclusion of sport and physical education in educational institutions? The conclusion, towards which I argue, is that the reasons why these arguments are so prominent and pervasive is the product of, first, misleading philosophical–educational views that are ambivalent towards play, traditional justifications that are flawed, and educational discourses that encourage and favour theory over practice, mental skills over physical skills, extrinsic over intrinsic values, and high culture over low culture as a result of dualism’s elevation of the mind over the body; and, second, a failure in part by philosophers of education and physical educationalists to elucidate rational educational justifications and conceptions of sport and physical education that are cogent and defendable.

There are legitimate reasons why the physical education profession,³ its practitioners and academics ought to be concerned with, and strive for a more secure professional status. Historically, the discipline area has struggled for legitimacy at most, if not all, educational levels due to the damaging claims made by critics who argue that physical education is a trivial pursuit and thereby non-serious compared to other forms of knowledge and understandings that are considered to be educationally worthwhile. It is clear to me that there appears to be a general consensus within the relevant literature that physical education is suffering from a crisis of legitimisation within education, particularly in relation to its nature and status.⁴ The reasons why this has occurred are multifaceted and complex, however, the physical education profession and its practitioners have to accept most if not all of the blame for not counteracting such serious claims with coherent reasons. Consequently, a lack of credible promotion has severely impeded the discussion of the educational aims, ideas, values and so on that sport and physical education contributes, to the point where its mere survival within the curriculum is at stake. Kretchmar (1990, p. 97) reinforces this viewpoint further by arguing that physical educationalists lack sufficient passion for their profession, because:

… we do not care enough. When we do care it is not with a deeply rooted, reasoned, consistent, durable, reliable passion. … In the absence of deep commitments, I sense that there is a real cause for worry about the expected lifespan of the profession.

Meakin (1983) – writing from a period when physical education scholars were beginning to develop sophisticated justifications for the inclusion of physical education as a school subject within the curriculum – quite rightly raises an interesting point that if a subject’s inclusion cannot be justified, it implies one of three things: (1) the subject is harmful to either students or society; (2) even if it does neither students nor society any harm, it does them no good; or (3) even if it does students or society good, it does so to a less significant extent than other curriculum areas (pp. 10–19). Therefore, the question of whether physical education can be justified as part of the curriculum is essentially a moral issue, particularly if the continuation of the subject is perceived to have no educational value or worth. As I see it, part of the problem why the physical education profession has lacked credibility and legitimacy within most educational institutions is in part due to an inability to produce a reasoned account of its practices. Indeed, this will involve a critical review of its practices, which to some in the profession may be quite confrontational, but if those in the profession are serious they need to be able to critically review the premises in which their practices are based. These may be concealed, but unless these premises are revealed and identified there is the risk that they may continue to control and influence physical education practice without their reasoned consent. My point here is that most practical applications will be made from a philosophical position. Whether this can be expressed clearly will not be made clear to the apologist or even to the most ardent critic unless its philosophical justifications are articulated in such a way that they are coherent and accessible to all. Therefore, the reasons why we need justifications for sport and physical education are threefold: first, because it is a simple matter of necessity at the moment; second, those within the profession need to be able to offer cogent justifications as to why sport and physical education should be included within educational institutions; and, third, to identify what the profession is (or ought to be) so those within the profession can defend and further themselves unashamedly.

If those in the profession are serious, they cannot escape the task at hand, which is of an unavoidably philosophical nature. Consequently, I intend to offer an apology for sport and physical education by outlining philosophical justifications for the vexed problem of its educational value or significance. Some supportive philosophical positions are as follows: the importance of play in assisting deep learning; subjective (extrinsic and intrinsic) value; reconceptualising knowledge, reason and education; and integration of the whole body, borrowing heavily from the classical Greek ideals of balance and harmony as a means to avoid the tendency of contemporary education to view agents as dualistic entities (mind and body) and bring into focus the sometimes ignored and forgotten dimension of our corporeal embodiment in education. Furthermore, I intend to illuminate how the experience of movement gives meaning to our existence and constitutes what it means to be a human being. However, before I go on to outline the traditional justifications of physical education some work needs to be done to provide an account of the preliminary philosophical considerations in order to contextualise what follows.

Preliminary philosophical considerations: ambivalence towards play, antiphysicalism, the problem of pleasurable activities and transcendental indifference

The educational value of play has a long history in Western education. Plato (2007, pp. 269–270; 536e–537a) in the Republic in his discussion of the education of the philosopher makes the point that anything learnt under duress and without freedom is pointless as it “never sticks”, but if the lesson takes the form of play, the learner will learn more. Ideas about play in education have been extensively influenced by psychology, sociology, philosophy and education. Since play was considered to be a naturally instinctive process and engaged in by young people, the desire to connect with this experience and the natural capacities of the learner led to the introduction of play as an educational process. As a result, the acceptance of play, games and sport⁵ as a pedagogical method of achieving educational goals significantly transformed physical education, particularly in the twentieth century. According to Mechikoff (2010), the development, acceptance and promotion of play, games and sport as methods for imparting educational ideas is important as it reflected a profound change in philosophical focus due to the growing interest in the phenomenon of play as an educational mechanism of value (see his Chapter 10).

The philosophical position of the body relative to epistemological considerations and the nature of human existence becomes an important issue.⁶ This type of discussion might seem irrelevant to an understanding of play theory in physical education; however, our concept of human nature will have a direct bearing on how we think human beings should behave and be educated and, more specifically in this case, how we think someone should be educated physically. According to Fairs (1968), the intellectual orientation of Western thought regarding physical education and the body emerges from two opposing views about physical education that have been significantly influenced by classical Greek culture. Each view of physical education is the end product of a specific sociocultural perspective and its dominant philosophical and anthropological theory of humankind. The first view of physical education is based on the concept of a harmonised and integrated balance of mind and body as the only pathway to the development of all a person’s faculties and potentialities. Fairs (1968) goes on to add that this “naturalistic” viewpoint is commonly attributed to the Periclean Greeks because they epitomised and exemplified the practical expression of this ideal. For instance, Plato (2007) makes it clear in the Republic that physical education is a balanced concept taking two forms – physical and intellectual (gymnastics for the body and music for the soul) – that evolved from the application of the “whole man” philosophy of education (pp. 101–110; 403d–412a).⁷ In pursuit of this ideal, humankind had to resist the temptation to develop any particular part of the body at the expense of the whole, as this would distort both balance and harmony. In the second concept of physical education, we start to see a diametrically opposed position of the “whole man” idea because the focus shifts to a distinctly one-sided viewpoint in which a person’s physical nature is denied and the world of sense is rejected in favour of the self-created world of pure reason. As a result the body is relegated to a low status and the mind elevated to a high status. Fairs (1968) comments that this “antinaturalistic” (or “antiphysicalism”) one-sided concept of humankind found its expression in Platonic anthropology and its fundamental doctrine that the body was a source of evil and corruption which keeps us from wisdom and acquiring knowledge. Due to Plato’s ambivalence towards the body and the paradoxical way in which he would sponsor two distinctly different philosophical concepts of the body: one being idealism, which emphasises an ascetic and strict puritanical view of the body (see Plato, 1961a, Phaedo, pp. 47–50; 66a–67e), while the other, realism, promoted humankind’s physical nature and approved the expression of one’s natural instincts through the guidance of reason (see Plato, 1961b, Republic, pp. 672–687; 431a–444e). Unfortunately, it would appear that in order to improve the intellectual and academic standing of physical education within the curriculum, physical educationalists have been selective in choosing whatever suited them, particularly in relation to Plato’s realist position of the body; consequently, it would appear that idealism has come to be associated with the Platonic tradition and its noticeable influence on Western culture, especially in education. The history of education is characterised by a range of culturally dominant positions on reality and conceptions of human nature that have arisen to a position of dominance before being dissolved and replaced by another. In a sense, physical education would appear to be in a constant state of flux due to the dominant fluctuating cultural mentality that exists at any given period of time, to the point where the history of physical education is a representation of Western culture’s understanding and interpretation of the dominant position surrounding the body. Fairs (1968, pp. 18–19) confirms the foregoing conclusion when he writes:

… during the past three thousand years only three centuries have been characterised by a cultural mentality which charged education with the responsibility of the harmonious development of the mind and body, whereas for twenty-seven centuries education has served the needs of homo asceticus and his degradation of the body or homo sensualis and his idolatry of the body.

According to Reid (1996b), the central Platonic–Cartesian tradition of Western philosophy draws a sharp distinction between the mind (or intellect) and body, which has been historically problematic for physical education. For instance, from a Cartesian perspective, knowledge and understanding stem from the operation of pure reason as intellectual states or activities, and when combined with Platonic idealism the goal of education necessitates the subordination of the physical appetites of the body due to the view that it not only keeps us from wisdom and acquiring knowledge, but is a source of all evil and corruption. Such a view is essentially rational because it places enormous emphasis upon propositional forms of knowledge at the expense of other forms of knowledge. Consequently, given such assumptions, the very nature and meaning of physical education seems problematic because the term “physical” seems to indirectly refer to the body, its nature and functioning, whereas the term “education” typically implies the mind and its development (Reid, 1996b). This influence is significant for physical education because it would appear to be based on dubious philosophical foundations and also the inability to reconcile the dualism of the mind and body that underlies Western culture and its philosophies of education. Reid (1996b) argues that this problem has understandably become a preoccupation for physical educationalists due to the paradoxical nature it seemingly rests upon. This is further compounded by the subject’s concern with accepting the “doctrine of the educational primacy of theoretical over practical knowledge”, together with the assertion that physical activities can be systematically changed in order to meet certain theoretical knowledge requirements and thereby enable physical education to satisfy the “epistemological dimension” of the official view of education (Reid, 1996b, p. 13). Certainly I think we can learn much from and at the same time gain some traction from ancient Greek culture, which managed to give physical education an intellectual respectability because it avoided the tendency to view human beings as dualistic entitities (mind and body), a view which so often characterises modern education; and, unfortunately for physical education, the acceptance of the “whole man” concept, either in theory or practice, has been one of the rarities in the history of Western culture.⁸ This is reinforced further by Van Dalen and Bennett (1971, p. 47) when they articulate skilfully the Athenian ideals of complete harmony and beauty by stating:

The Greeks gave physical education a respectability that it has never since achieved. They accorded the body equal dignity with the mind. They associated sport with philosophy, music, literature, painting, and particularly with sculpture. They gave to all future civilisations important aesthetic ideals: the ideals of harmonized balance of mind and body, of body symmetry, and of bodily beauty in repose and in action.

Therefore, it is my claim that if the body is considered to be integrated with the mind in a psychosomatic relationship, the body will have value and be esteemed, and, consequently, physical education will be in harmony with intellectual education in the fullest sense of a person’s capacities and potentialities. It will be crucial to my argument to resolve the mind–body relationship by providing a resultant view of the body with a legitimate body focus in education so a subject like physical education, which primarily deals with a special form of corporeal discourse, will achieve the recognition it desires. I will return to this argument again at the end of this chapter in more detail.

Historically, antiphysicalism has been a repressive and perpetual undercurrent in the development of physical education. To fully comprehend the cultural repression of the body and physical education in Western culture, I think, it is necessary to understand how the development of the intellectualistic tradition and religious asceticism has been influential in shaping powerful prejudicial views of the body and physical education in education. The basis of this development can be attributed to Plato’s dualistic anthropological position of personhood composed of an immortal soul (bearer of a person’s rational faculties) that temporally inhabits an evil body. The method whereby the soul can be released from its bodily corruption and the evil material world was through asceticism and the rejection of the body. Likewise, when Plato claims that a person’s rational faculty can be cultivated by separating and elevating the higher rational soul from its lower irrational part, we have the inspiration and the justification of the intellectual tradition in education. According to Fairs (1968), the depreciation of the body and the low status of physical education in Western culture would appear to have been further compounded when asceticism and intellectualism evolved in such a way as to complement and supplement one another in their common degradation of the body and their systematic effort to form human beings into an “ascetic animal”. As a result this has had a considerable influence on the history and course of human thought, particularly in European religious traditions. For instance, it was long accepted by the Reformed churches that the body was considered as something unclean and inferior that represented the animal part of human beings, which needed to be controlled, managed and disciplined. Consequently the denial and rejection of bodily-type pleasures such as play, games and sport is just an extension of the attitudes towards the things of the body that can be linked to Calvinistic Puritanism and are deeply rooted in Platonic thought. Basic to this puritanical mentality was a view that the body was the cause of our sinful nature and as a result the mind suffers from this contact. The Puritan work ethic (also commonly known as the Protestant work ethic) came to be promoted in various forms by intertwining moralistic aims of education that instilled the traits of piety and honesty in the minds of children, whilst at the same time emphasising the characteristics of the Protestant work ethic such as respecting hard work, material frugality, shunning idleness and frivolity, to the point where some adheren...