The Nature And Importance Of Physical Education

Physical Education (PE) can be extremely difficult to define as it is fluid and is constantly changing throughout history. A broad, simple definition from the organisation (UNESCO) defines the term ‘physical education and sport’ as “the structured, supervised physical activities that take place at school and during the school day” (Bailey,2006, p398).

Kirk (2010) states that PE is socially constructed, meaning it is not based on fact, it is based on the government, experience, opinion, and popularity. PE has never had one definite nature and purpose, hence why it can be so hard to define. PE gives children the opportunity to make choices and develop their creativity in a practical environment, as well as developing useful life

In public schools’ chaos was at large with lots of misbehaving and mischief e.g fighting and poaching. Capel and Whitehead (2012) suggest that recreation (like the activities the school boys played) were for enjoyment purposes and brings a chance to feel refreshed in your own time. Whereas, they suggest PE is very different to recreation; PE has a part within education and has important values to offer; as well as teaching young people about a healthy lifestyle. A key aspect to PE is to develop physical ability so children will continue with an activity and achieve lifelong participation. The nature of these games ranged from childish to barbaric with the values of ‘every man for himself’. However, this time in history strongly supports Reid’s view on PE. He used the term ‘hedonism’ to describe it which means that PE is for pleasure and it should be enjoyable, bringing happiness and excitement and is purely recreational. (Reid,1997; cited in Macallister,2013). This led to the stage of social control from 1824-1842. Dr Thomas Arnold was the headmaster of Rugby school. He wanted to reform the school boys’ attitudes and to make them much more civilised. Arnold noticed that games could be used as a vehicle to create social control. This agrees with Greens concept of PE as in the 1800’s the main approach within PE

The nature of PE was to improve fitness to develop a healthy society. Tinning (2011) strongly believes that health and fitness should be the nature of PE and introduced the acronym HOPE, which means Health Oriented Physical Education. With sedentary lifestyles on the rise, and no rations meaning an abundance of food, and less participation in physical activity, there was an increase in diseases such as strokes and coronary heart disease. The government were keen to develop a curriculum that was fitness related to improve the health of young people. PE however was still regarded by many as unimportant (Carroll, 1974, p. 103) and at best, only of peripheral value in the school experience (Quant, 1975, p. 77). Bailey (2006) proposed that you could develop young people in 5 key ways. The first was physical development. Regular participation reduces the risk of disease which was a key factor to the reason the nature of PE in the 1970’s focused on fitness. Also, PE develops you physically as it provides foundations for sporting abilities later in life and can then achieve a healthy active lifestyle. Another key area Bailey (2006) suggested was lifestyle development. He proposed that PE is one of the few opportunities to promote physical activity among children and that there is some