The role of a department of physical education in a university

Abstract

A department of Physical Education in a university may make contri? butions to university life and studies in three separate ways. First, there is the need to provide facilities and other opportunities for sport and physical recreation for the students. No university in Great Britain would question this need, but the extent of the need, whether the need involved anything in addition to the provision of facilities and whether "additions" should include a department of Physical Education, would be subjects of energetic debate in many universities. The views stated in this article on these and on other topics are my own and not in any sense " official'' or authoritative. It can be confidently asserted that many people share the views put forward but many would be contested, some, I believe, by my own colleagues. As with so many discussions concerning universities in Great Britain, it is necessary to make a broad distinction between the older universities, frequently referred to nowadays as Oxbridge, and the newer, provincial universities often compendiously referred to as Redbrick. In Oxbridge in the late nineteenth century and probably till 1914, there were certain distinctive features. The Universities themselves were