IHPRA Newsletter
November 2006
The Iowa Health and Physical Readiness
Alliance is dedicated to helping our citizens
become strong, disciplined and able to serve their communities, state and
nation.
While it is right to honor our veterans, it is more important to correct
the cultural deficiencies that are robbing our youth of their capacity to serve.
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It is very important to understand the
complex social forces
that have steered our physical culture off-course.
Paradigm 21 is a good start point.
Many of the WWII generation saw
the declining fitness of youth
and tried to correct the problem.
Thomas K. Cureton, Ph.D. was born in Florida in 1901. He earned degrees from the Georgia School of Technology, Yale University, Springfield College and Columbia University. Among physical educators, he is often called the Father of American Physical Fitness. While teaching at the University of Illinois during WWII, he pioneered innovations in physical training and assessment methods aimed at improving the fitness levels of his male students. His innovations would have widespread impact, and he remained an avid supporter of physical education-based conditioning programs. In the third edition of his physical fitness workbook, published in 1947, he left the preface as it was first written during WWII. In it he noted:
"Almost as in World War I, the realization that over half of the male youth of the nation are unfit on medical or dental grounds for military or naval service, and that many of those judged acceptable from the health point of view are far from being prepared in vigor and in skills necessary to serve efficiently in the present war, is both a challenge and an indictment of the kinds of experiences afforded by American society for building youthful stamina and motor control. Tests of young men have revealed an appalling lack of physical development, basic motor fitness, and physical toughness."
"An increasing number of young men are rising to the challenge of physical preparedness because of patriotism and because so many wartime activities put emphasis on physical fitness for economic advancement. However, with the men who need it most the task is not an easy one for the men or the instructors. Many still need to be persuaded that they want to give themselves to the task of meeting higher standards--to pay the price, so to speak. The social habits of some eighteen years of soft living are not easily changed. A few periods of exercise will not revolutionize their ideas, physical proportions, functional ability, or social habits very easily or quickly, no mater how vigorous. The work must be gradual and thorough with much more time spent than actually called for in three periods per week. The whole project becomes one of concentrated effort, of hard work and ingenuity, of devotion which tests the character of men. In case of successful participation, the long-time value of understanding one's own physical capacity along with methods for developing and maintaining physical fitness, and coming to appreciate the standards associated with the work, will probably stand as second to nothing gained in as much time invested. It is just too bad that it takes a war to enforce what should be a regular part of educational and public health foresight."
Almost twenty years later in 1965 Cureton wrote:
"Our lack of physical fitness hurts us nationally. The fact that the rate of rejection from the Armed Forces on physical grounds is appallingly high threatens our national security and indicates a dangerous trend. Certainly it is a cause for thought that the United States Army had to halt the induction of men over thirty-eight primarily because of loss of resiliency, poor resistance to outdoor weather conditions and inability to recuperate from work."
The Amateur Athletic Association of Los
Angeles website has an
extensive collection of free digitized physical culture articles including many
connected to military physical readiness.
The search page is here.
If you would like to discuss these or other topics on the IHPRA site, click here to go to the forum.