Thoughts about SHAPE America

Since AAHPERD president Gale Wiedow announced the proposed new name for AAHPERD, similar to Chuck Corbin I’ve had mixed personal feelings and heard both positive and negative comments from others. But on one thing we can all agree. For our professional association to move forward it’s pretty obvious that everything can’t stay the same. So it makes sense that we should consider a new name.

As a former NASPE President I confess I’m pretty attached to the NASPE name and its public recognition as the professional association for physical educators. A few years ago our Canadian colleagues converted themselves to PHE Canada – a name that I also like but recognize that the thought of copying Canadians would be an anathema for many Americans! More recently, our nutrition colleagues renamed themselves to the daft sounding acronym “AND” yet it doesn’t seem to have negatively affected their 75,000 and growing membership.

So where does that leave me? For the past few years I’ve spent much of my time deliberating about the future of public school physical education. It’s something that concerns me, especially in this era of rapid and often irreversible change. I’ve asked myself not only “What is the future of public school physical education?” but more worryingly, “Is there a future for public school physical education?” Of course I’m convinced that there is a need for America’s youth to be physically educated, but worried about the status and support for physical education and the teaching profession.

It’s this concern that leads me to agree with Dr. Corbin. We need to move on. For too many years the Alliance has deliberated structural questions at the expense of its members. The vast majority of health and physical education teachers find membership in AAHPERD irrelevant to their needs. That’s clear from the decline in membership. I suspect that most public school health and physical educators don’t give a hoot about the name of their professional association. They want to know what’s in it for them? It’s what we do not what we call ourselves that’s the critical question facing us today.

So I’ve decided I need to quit wasting energy on name-calling games. In honesty, I’m impressed that the AAHPERD Board of Directors turned to marketing experts to investigate a new name. We all need to recognize what we’re good at, and what we should leave to others. SHAPE America is fine with me. Now let’s get on with the important stuff, or what we call ourselves won’t really matter.