A forgotten purpose of physical education

As academics we are often described as living in the ‘ivory tower’ with little or no reality of what is happening in the real world. While I and many of my colleagues would disagree, primarily because we are often in schools watching physical education lessons taught by student teachers or engaging in research projects in collaboration with physical education teachers that keeps us grounded in the up-to-date practice of physical education, I can understand that this mentality is rather pervasive. Having said this, I think that one of my responsibilities along with teaching and service is to ‘academically’ look and research what is occurring in the name of physical education. And this leads me to the following question – what is the purpose of physical education?
It was only a couple of days ago that my colleagues and I were discussing this exact question. Research published in 2008 in the American journal , Quest, argued that the instrumental purposes of getting fit, healthy and well should not be seen as the ONLY purposes for physical education. In fact the author stated that this thought is “…conspiring to rob our profession of its soul”. Interesting point, indeed and I tend to agree. The more that I look at this question, primarily through the literature, the more that it seems to me that physical education has forgotten its purpose educationally. I think that most physical education teachers would agree that physical education is more than just skill development, more than just fitness development, more than just playing games and sport and more than understanding the energy systems of elite athlete. Those physical education teachers who share a similar mindset to mine would argue that what is missing is an understanding about the moral, ethical, social and cultural dimensions of movement. Others would say that the meaning of movement is the ‘forgotten purpose of physical education’. Whilst some physical education teachers value these educational purposes (not as replacements to the knowledge of anatomy or the development of fundamental motor skills, but as complementary to these dominant ways of knowing) they are often marginalised to the risk discourses of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and obesity.
So how might we be able to address these ‘forgotten purposes of physical education’? I think initially physical education teachers need to understand that students engage in movement related activity for many reasons and that an understanding about an individual’s subjective experience of movement in physical education is important and valuable educationally. As another researcher in physical education stated one of the key objectives of physical education is to “discover the heretofore hidden perspectives of acts and uncover the deeper meaning of one’s being as it explores movement experiences”.
Physical education teachers should be aware that there are several purposes to the teaching of physical education. There will always be a place for fitness and skill development, what I am asking is that you consider ‘other ways of knowing’ next time you teach a class of physical education.