Should P.E. Be a Required Subject?

Dudley Allen Sargent, M.D.

            …Is it not time that more constructive work should be done in the way of increasing our mental and physical vigor, quickening the senses, sharpening the intellect, and augmenting as far as possible vitality and the natural powers of resistance?  In other words, in the terms of the subject assigned to me, “Does not physical training in view of its effect on the intellectual and will as well as on the body, deserve to become a compulsory subject in school and college and to receive corresponding credit in the system of marking?”…

            Our organic functions are molding our bodies and determining our constitutions and our temperaments and working on our wills and characters.  Through the influence of the blood, muscles and the nerves the complex mechanism which we term the body is unified.  The absolute unity of the body, this condition in which the part everywhere works in the whole and the whole in every part, is becoming more and more apparent to the educational psychologist.

            …According to the biologist the brain has been evolved for the purpose of guiding and controlling the movements of the body through the actions of the muscles.  How is this guiding and controlling power developed? The earliest movements of the child are the reflex, instinctive, and impulsive.  It does not will to move its arms and legs—it simply moves them in response to the stimuli playing upon its senses form without.  Later, if you place your finger in a child’s hand the hand will grasp it; put a glass stopper in its mouth and the child will suck it; exert a little upward pressure on its feet and it will extend its legs.  The eyes will follow a light, the head turns in the direction of a sound, and every sensation will be followed by a motor impulse. When the infant becomes a child, toss a rubber ball to it to catch.  The ball will go through its hand and strike its body or face.  The child cannot will to catch the ball because it cannot act purposely or intelligently.  It has no idea of what it must do to catch the ball. Here again, to quote Professor James “Before the idea can be generated, the movement must have occurred in the blind, unexpected way and left its idea behind.  Reflex, instinctive or random execution of a movement must, in other words, precede its voluntary execution.”

            Put it still another way, we cannot do an act voluntarily unless we know what we are going to do, and we cannot know exactly what we are going to do until we have taught ourselves to do it.  In more senses than one we learn by doing.  The simplest movement brings about a change in the organic structure of the brain, and this change leads to more complex movements and further improvements of the brain structure.  Most skilled movements give more exercise to the central nervous systems than to the muscles.  Movements calling for high degree of skill, co-ordinations, and a rapid and responsible exercise of judgment all tend through action of the association fibers to a high degree of brain development….

            But how are the vigorous body and brain attained?  No one familiar with the growth and development of the human body, especially with its bones, muscles, brain, nerves, and tissues, can doubt for a moment that useful activity has played the most prominent part in its up building.  The natural history of the muscular system alone makes clear to us that there is not a single movement capable of being performed by man which has not been preformed thousands and thousands of times before by his near or remote ancestors.   In the history of the bones, muscles, nerves, and other tissues of the body we read the records of this primitive acts and struggles through the ages.  Who can doubt the part that walking, running, jumping, swimming, climbing, throwing, pushing, pulling, lugging, tugging, kicking, wrestling, and fighting have played in the development of the human organism.  Who can question the developing influence of those great industrial epochs through which man has passed such as hunting, fishing, pastoral and agricultural stages of his existence, and the age of metals, travel, trade, and transport age when men acted as a beast of burden?   Consider the probable influence of the house industries from time immemorial and the period of the handicrafts lasting from the tenth century until the beginning of modern times.  Need I say that these manifold activities have stamped their imprint upon every bone, muscle, nerve, and brain cell of the human organism, and if we would maintain it in its present integrity must we not from necessity repeat in some form or other the sensory and motor activities to which the present development is due?

            Did time permit, it would be possible to show by further illustrations that even reason, judgment, and the so-called higher faculties are rooted in the mechanism.  We have spoken of the influence of the bodily organs upon mental state, but mental states also influence the bodily organs.   All mental states are followed by bodily changes.  As the psychologists tell us, “all consciousness leads to action.”  The action of the body upon the mind, and the reactions of mind upon body go to make up the sum of human experiences.  These experiences postulate a succession of functions that have been capitalized in structure as faculty.  All that we are able to do today is the result of our previous physical education given us through heredity or through our experiences in former years.  It is only when we consider how helpless we would be but for such physical training as we have received through our past efforts at work or play, or when we consider that there could have been no language, no art, no music, no agriculture, manufactories, or commerce-in fact no history, without physical activity and muscle training-only then is it that we begin to realize the dignity and importance of the subject. 

            ….Montesquieu said: “We receive three different kinds of education, one from our parents, another form our teachers, and another from the world.”  The education which we would naturally receive from our parents and home surroundings is now to a considerable extent wanting in consequence of the absence of home chores and industries, the large numbers living in city tenements and apartments, and other great changes that have taken place in the family life.  The education that the world gives to most of us id, in consequence of the division of labor, narrowed to the smallest fraction of a trade or vocation, where the physical and mental efforts required, though often intense, are not varied enough to keep body and mind from deteriorating.  Hence the cry of shattered nerves, heart failure, and broken constitutions. 

            …No nation has ever attained intellectual greatness that has not first laid the foundation in the physical training of their youth.  If a requirement of physical fitness and efficiency is not introduced and maintained in our preparatory schools and colleges we shall have a continuance of the conditions the prevail today where one class of pupils carries bodily training in athletics to excess, a few exhaust their vitality through excessive mental application, while the largest class does not get enough bodily training to keep in good physical condition, or to permit the realization of half their mental and physical possibilities.  This is the inevitable result where body and mind are thought to have separate interest and are made to antagonize each other.  This course would seem to put a premium upon the student neglecting his body in hopes of advancing his mental and moral efficiency, as did the monks and philosophers of old.  We now know that such a course in the long run is suicidal, and the institution that encourages it by failing to recognize the just claims of the body assumes a responsibility for which it should be held accountable.  What we need to foster among out youth is not the spirit of competition as so many think, but the spirit of emulation that makes the highest mental and moral attainments the goal to be won, recognizing the necessity of physical efficiency to the end.

            …From an economic point of view plays, games, free exercise, and light gymnastics would be the most serviceable in the public schools, but a winder range of exercise should be arranged for preparatory schools and colleges.  With such a variety of exercise we would expect to bring about not only a harmonious development of the muscles, invigorate the heart, lungs, and other vital organs, as Huxley says, but to train the body as to make it the ready servant of the intellect and will, and enable it to do with ease and pleasure all the work that a mechanism it is capable of.  Some of the specific mental and physical qualities which would be developed by such a course would be increased powers of attention, will, concentration, accuracy, alertness, quickness of perception, perseverance, reason, judgment, forbearance, patience, obedience, self-control, loyalty to leaders, self-denial, submergence of self, grace, poise, suppleness, courage, strength, and endurance.  All the mental and moral qualities may be trained and developed through the physical activities.  Moreover, if much of the so-called intellectual training obtained through books was correlated with the physical activities at the same time in life when they dominate the interest of youth, much greater progress than is now realized would be made in the attainment of intellectual results.  Here is a new field of research and scientific investigation.  

            If, however, the teacher should be so unfortunate as to tell a boy that a baseball could not be curved by a pitcher, that the speed of the boat could not be hastened or retarded by the movements of a person within it, or that the human body is always lighter than the same volume of water, I am afraid that the boy’s respect for science might be shattered for his daily experiences would have taught him to the contrary.  I say daily experiences, but when we consider that there are boys today at Harvard who have never driven a nail, sawed or spilt a stick of wood, or built a fire, perhaps this assertion needs qualifying.  The only field today where the mental and physical activities are correlated to any considerable extent is in the field of athletic sports.  I think I may say without fear of contradiction that these physical activities have furnished a greater opportunity for mental training through the expression of terse, vigorous English than any other subjects—primarily because the boy is interested in these matters and knows more nearly what he is talking about.

            The weakness of this great athletic movement today from an educational point of view is the failure of young men to apply the teachings of the classroom to the problems that arise in connection with their sport, games, and physical exercise.  Not only do they ignore the teachings of the chemical, physical, and physiological laboratories, but even the teachings of morality, ethics, and the principles of brotherly love.  What has the teaching of the classroom to do with the practice on the ball field?  To use an illustration which I have used before: If a student attends a course of lectures on hygiene and repeats to the professor, “parrot-like” what the professor has told him, about the care of his health, the importance of physical training, etc., he receives a mark to his credit toward a diploma.  If on the other hand the students are moved by the lecturer to take a systematic course of physical training which is applied hygiene, he gets no credit for it in terms by which his other school and college efforts are judged.  In one case he has sat in a stuffy lecture room and improved his memory in hearing what he ought to do; in the other case he has formed correct habits of living—increased his physical and mental vigor, improved conduct and character, and made himself a better man for anything a man be called upon to do.  Does anyone question for a moment which of these two men is best prepared for life—or which one is most likely to render service to his fellow-man?   Does not the same principle apply to the teaching of ethics in the classroom and the practice of ethics on the ball field?  Can we reasonably expect a student to be unmindful of the importance of applied hygiene, and not become equally obtuse to the importance of applied ethics?  Is not this indifference to the practice of hygiene and ethics the legitimate outcome of our faulty methods of teaching—thinking without acting, words without deeds—precepts without examples?  Can anything in education be more pernicious?  I do not know of any better way of correcting this evil, and unifying the aims and purposes of education, than by giving a scholastic value to every effort toward self-improvement in physical training, just as always has been done for purely mental efforts.  At the present time, in many schools and colleges, it is customary to forbid students to take honors in athletics, unless they have creditable standings in their studies.  In order to be consistent this requirements should be coupled with an other, I.E., that no student should be given honors in his studies unless he attained a certain grade in his gymnastics or athletics.  This last requirement would insure the conscientious student against sacrificing his health in view of raising his standing his scholarship, which at the present time he is likely to do on account of his keen competition to which he is subjected.

            Judging from my experience at Yale some years ago, if physical training were made a part of the school curriculum, the class that stood the highest in scholarship would invariable stand the highest in physical exercise.  In order that such a requirement is fair to all classes, the grading should be based upon three factors, namely, the effort, the achievement, and the mental and physical results.  In conclusion I will say that I believe such a scheme as I have described to be essentially practical, and when adopted will not only add the physical vigor of our youth but also to their mental power and efficiency.  Is not such a “consummation devoutly to be wished?”

* Dr. Dudley A. Sargent, “Physical Training as a Compulsory Subject,” The School Review, Vol. 16 (January, 1908), pp. 42-55

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