The Nature and Values of Physical Education

Abstract

There has always been an air of suspicion about those who think philosophically about the nature and values of physical education. On the one hand, physical education teachers are apt to claim that theirs is essentially a practical vocation; a calling to the teaching of physical activities that can help students to live better lives. What need have they of a philosophy? On the other hand, philosophers of education, notably in the liberal-analytical tradition, have often sought to cast a dim light on physical education, thinking it valuable (on good days at least) – but not educationally so. I shall try in this chapter to say something about the nature and values of physical education; the knowledge and the values that are inherent within its activities and those external ones which can be gained from them. The chapter revolves around a critique of some recent theoretically sophisticated attempts to discuss the nature and educational status of physical education by three philosophers David Carr (1997), Jim Parry (1998) and Andrew Reid (1996a, 1996b, 1997). I try to show where their arguments are both helpful but ultimately inadequate for the task of illuminating what physical education ought properly to consist of and how it might better prove its educational status and value. In particular, I try to show how it is absolutely necessary to think philosophically about the nature and values of activities that are thought to constitute physical education.