Harmony and Cooperation: Attitudes toward Physical Education and Recreation in Utopian Social Thought and American Communitarian Experiments, 1825–1865

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Abstract The creation of perfection on earth is an age-old and recurrent dream. In the first half of the 19th century the social utopian philosophies of Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, and Etienne Cabet spread through western Europe and were soon exported to the United States. The importance of physical education for children and recreational activities for adults was repeatedly stated in the proposals of each of these social reformers. In the United States between 1825 and 1865 there occurred a dramatic and unprecedented rise in secular communitarian endeavors. The Owenite community at New Harmony, Indiana, Brook Farm, Massachusetts (which began as a transcendental utopia and soon became attracted to Fourierist ideas) and the Oneida Community of Perfectionists are usually considered to be the most important of the period. These communities produced, by and large, a rather high standard of workmanship and living and were pioneer contributors to such humanitarian social concepts as equality of the sexes, emancipation, democratic government, and liberal education. At a time when physical education was not usually a part of the school curriculum, they each provided a program of physical education activities for their children as well as recreational activities for adults and children alike. The New Harmony community attracted a number of former Pestalozzian educators and was an important force in disseminating the views of the famous Swiss educator in the United States. The communitarian's emphasis upon harmony and cooperation as opposed to the more prevalent American spirit of competition, ambition, and rugged individualism was evident again and again in their attitudes expressed toward physical education and recreation. Amusements which stressed fellowship rather than rivalry and those which were not restricted to the young or to one sex were considered to be the best. Games, sports, dancing, and the like were to be activities of edification. Their efforts contributed to the advancement of humanitarian attitudes toward physical education in the United States.