Contributions of Physical Education to Physical Fitness

Abstract

To HAVE meaning, research must be viewed against the background of the period from which it emerged. Only by so doing can the contributions of the last three years be presented in sufficiently discerning perspective to evaluate their educational significance. The examination of large numbers of Selective Service registrants and the induction of the fit into the armed forces was followed not only by a study of rejections and their cause, but also by clarification of the physical and mental qualities necessary to meet the exacting manpower needs of war (17). The national neglect of health and fitness thus revealed, led in 1943 to the creation by executive order of a Committee on Physical Fitness functioning under the egis of the Federal Security Agency. To this action was subsequently added the support of organized medicine, thus, apathy and indifference were supplanted by widespread interest in the institution of corrective measures designed to reduce the time and effort required to bring the bodily development of inductees to a level adequate to meet the rigors of combat. Immediate therapeutics took the form of war adaptations of physical activities too numerous to cite individually. Notable among these were the extensive introduction of military aquatics, vigorous conditioning exercises, and various forms of developmental combatives. The imagination and vigor that went into the initiation of these programs stands to the credit of the professional physical educator, even tho nothing in the literature gives demonstrable evidence of the military utility of the mass pedagogical experiment to which preinductees of school age were subjected.