Physical Education: Liberate It Or Confine It To The Gymnasium?

The discursive foundations of physical education in the curriculum

Over recent times physical education, particularly at the senior school level, has demonstrated its scientific basis and this, to some extent, has enhanced its academic credibility within the teaching profession. The quest for such credibility has provided a rebuttal to those who see physical education in a dualistic role – one which separates the mind/body relationship (Kirk and Tinning, 1990). This separation is most obvious in the field when one hears the age old comments that "physical education is for those students with less intellectual ability", or that "it is not for achievers, it is for those who are more practical". However as Tinning et al. (1993) argue:

... the mind and body are not separate, ... we act both knowingly and intelligently, and learn in and through movement (1993, p. 38).

Moving the body is not solely a practical function. Rather it involves an embodied consciousness in which the mind and body function as a unit, not as two separate entities. The senior school and, to some extent, the junior secondary areas have begun to demonstrate an understanding of this unitary function in teaching practice and in so doing are enhancing the worth of physical education as an educative learning area and process worthy of separate curriculum time.

Another possible reason for the survival of physical education in the curriculum is that schools in today's world fulfil very complex roles. It is assumed that the curriculum should be capable of serving a multitude of wider societal demands. Historically in New Zealand, we have expected that the curriculum will equip individuals to undertake leisure and fitness pursuits and elite performance endeavours where necessary. Perhaps this is the balanced curriculum that the Ministry may be referring to in their documentation. Of course, the fitness and elite performance emphasis also has a basis in science and this factor alone gives rise to debate within the profession.

This debate ranges across the scientific aspects of physical education as well as across the sociological context out of which the subject emerges and which it reflects. The latter context receives far less theoretical and practical emphasis. Reasons for this lack of emphasis can be attributed to a number of factors including the quest for academic credibility, the ease of assessing very discrete physical skills as opposed to the assessment of more abstract social skills, and the predominance of a performance and scientific orientation at the university degree level which constitutes most secondary teachers' academic background and training. More critically, one can argue that physical education has survived despite its marginality as a curriculum area because it has had a vital role to play in the maintenance of western capitalism (Foucault, 1990).

Foucault argues that capitalism has not rejected the notion of the importance of physical activity and body control. Rather, it has used physical education and sport for the purposes of achieving body control and body discipline amongst the masses in order to benefit industralisation and corporate capitalism. Most interestingly, Foucault (1990) argues that as capitalism has refined itself, so too have there been refinements in the ways the body is internally and externally controlled and disciplined. In the initial stages of capitalism, body control was in the form of mass military style exercise; but, as capitalism evolved into a corporate form, so too has physical education and sport, emphasising health and fitness development linked to a high degree of individual accountability. However, the initial placement of physical education in the school curriculum in this country from 1877 onwards, and its early emphasis on the development of a movement culture, can be attributed to the need for physical training and fitness in readiness for possible military conflict in the protection of the British Empire (McGeorge, 1992). This early emphasis in primary schools was wound up by 1912. Nevertheless, military training remained universal in secondary schools until the 1960s. Advocates of such training stressed its disciplinary and moral benefits maintaining that it:

... would be an admirable thing for the young men of New Zealand even if the peace of the world were assured for all time, because it would improve their physique, teach them orderly habits, and give them a conception of the place of obedience in a well-ordered life (Lyttetton Times, 27 May 1911, cited in McGeorge, 1922, p. 48).

Thus, the development of our productive base was inextricably linked to the colonisation process and the political alliances this entailed. As Cameron maintains, such inter-relationships can be summarised in the following way:

The very language of physical education and sport reveals the relations of power being played out in the body ... in keeping with a capitalist mode of production, sport bodies are disciplined through work: 'work out', 'speed work' etc. ...The body is thus subordinate to the purpose of physical education and sport. On the other hand, physical education and sport builds healthy bodies, it is also used to foster control over the mind (Cameron, 1993, cited in Perkins and Cushman, 1993, p. 176).

According to Foucault (1990), Cameron (1993) and Hargreaves (1987), the role that physical education has played in controlling and disciplining the body implies that it, like other subject areas, has survived in the curriculum because of its perceived benefits to the capitalist mode of production. The process of fulfilling this role has generated the hegemonic discourse of "healthism" in Physical Education. This discourse prioritises health as an individual's personal responsibility. It assumes a universal conception of health as an unproblematic good and it implies that so called good health practices must universally be good or worthwhile for all people. It embraces a technocratic conception of the body as a machine to be maintained and tuned in a similar way to an automobile.

Undoubtedly, the philosophical and epistemological debates that have been generated both by the quest for curriculum survival and the push by Government for a more market orientated focus have facilitated the critical examination of the role physical education might play in the new school curriculum. In the immediate past, physical education theorists have tended to focus attention on the pedagogical behaviours of teachers and learners while ignoring the critical analysis of a curriculum located within particular socio-political-cultural contexts (Hellison and Templin, 1991; Kirk, 1992; Kirk and Tinning, 1990; Lawson, 1992; Sage, 1993).

To this end therefore, the debate that emerged out of the proposed naming and marginalisation of this area has necessitated that physical educators within New Zealand shake off some of their curriculum naivety. Essentially, it has politicised us and lifted the level of debate to one which acknowledges and discusses the socio-political forces which underlie and shape our curriculum area and our education system. The subjection of the area to critical scrutiny and the realisation that pragmatic accountability procedures were to be imposed within the Framework structure necessitated the development of sound philosophical and educational foundations to underlie the development of the new curriculum. This debate has informed the writing of both the unit standards and the Draft Health and Physical Education Curriculum Statement (1996).

In my work as Chair of the NZQA's Advisory Group for Health and Physical Education, and as one of the two curriculum writers, I have actively sought to establish and outline a theoretical position and a curriculum model upon which to base all developments. This approach has been deliberately facilitated through a process of widespread and comprehensive consultation, coupled with conference presentations throughout the country. These have provided the opportunity to talk with tertiary educators and practitioners in numerous regional meetings, and have resulted in the establishment of groups throughout the country who have offered candid and critically constructive comment. To date, such feedback has endorsed the retention of what has come to be known as the movement culture (the foundations of which were discussed above) as the unique contribution that Physical Education makes to the wider curriculum. There has been concern that the scientific basis of physical education has moved it away from its historical emphasis on motor skill development. This concern is, in essence, reflective of the hegemonic view of curriculum practice with its predominant focus on content and subject mastery (Jewitt, 1994). Furthermore, it reinforces Sage's (1993) argument that physical education practice often operates in ignorance of existing social relations. In the subject mastery or content model of development, the curriculum orientation gives priority to the subject matter content. Those who emphasise this model assert that it is subject mastery which is the essence of quality schooling.

For the unit standards and curriculum writers and representatives from the NZQA Advisory Group, the wide consultation process served a dual purpose. Clearly, one purpose was to establish the ideas, concerns and issues that teachers regarded as central to the development of unit standards and the curriculum. Secondly, and just as importantly, the other purpose was to articulate and further develop future positions and possibilities for physical education.

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