Adult Behaviors Should Guide Physical Education

Twenty-five years ago, the Assistant Commissioner of Education for New York State (L. Meno) asked all twenty-six content areas in New York public education (Math, English, Science, Social Studies, Music, Home Economics, Physical Education, and so on.), to justify their content area’s impact on “Adult Behavior.” In short, he was asking about the significance of each content area and why it was important to society. It was an interesting question. It forced us to question the impact and importance of physical education to ourselves and to society.

At the time, I was asked to chair the committee responsible for responding to the Commissioner’s request. It gave my colleagues and I a chance to reflect upon the impact of physical education on adult behaviors and to identify what was critically important about our content. Why should parents and community members be willing to continue to support New York state’s physical education requirement and be happy to fund it through their school tax dollars?

The question posed to us also assumes, and rightly so, that what we do in public school physical education with children has an impact on their behavior later as an adult. It made us think about the fact that when children have negative experiences in physical education it will likely result in negative feelings about physical education and physical activity as adults. Persistently scoring in the lower half of a fitness or skill test also risks negative outcomes. It seemed obvious to us in New York state that we had far too many parents and school administrators who after having negative experiences in physical education as children grew up unwilling to support the physical education as it currently existed.

Preparing this “Adult Behavior” document, we had to focus not so much on what our traditional programs were doing but rather on what we could do to enhance our programs. By better helping children we argued that it would also be helping society. We also tried to show how an enhanced physical education program would actually save the community significant amounts of money. In 1990 the major issues facing society included: 1) a depressed economy, 2) an out-of-control increase in health care costs, and 3) a significant increase in violence in society.

Fast forward to today. Not only do we have similar societal issues, but these same issues have increased or gotten worse as the children of the 90s are now adults. Health care costs have exploded and tripling obesitity and type 2 diabetes have been added to the serious health threats facing children and society. Twenty five years ago these were adult diseases. Now they are childhood problems. Violence has worsened and is now prevalent in our public schools in a form of bullying or worse, terrorism.

I believe we need to revisit the challenge we faced 25 years ago, when we made the case for public school physical education on the basis of how we could positively impact tomorrow’s adult behaviors. It’s time for us to re-examine physical education’s goals with a focus on the future and not just the present.

If it’s true, and I think it is, that what we do to children in schools will impact their behaviors later in life, and keeping in mind that goals must be reflective of adult behaviors, we need to focus on two key goals: 1) promoting physical active lifestyles, and 2) nurturing collaborative, caring, and respectful citizens.

The first goal, a physically active lifestyle, has to do with reducing health care costs. Through research it’s clear that physical activity even at low to moderate levels, has an immensely positive effect on the prevention of numerous physical diseases. These include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, colon cancer, and osteoporosis. We know that in order to become physically active adults, children must learn fitness and nutrition concepts (k-12), goal setting skills, and personal physical activity program planning and assessment. Additionally and most importantly, children must develop positive attitudes about the value of being physically active.

Learning fitness concepts and developing positive attitudes towards physical activity are the foundation of today’s Physical Best and Fitnessgram programs. While the teaching of key concepts and skills is important, I’m convinced that even more critical is helping children to have positive feelings about learning when they are in physical education. Too often, children are organized or assessed in ways that compares them with others. It’s easy for fitness assessment, skill instruction, and physical activity to turn out to be negative rather than positive experiences for those with lesser ability.

We need to remember that the abilities children bring to our classes are mostly determined by genetics and the environment in which they were raised. Our goal is not to get “children fit whether they like it or not.” Instead if our focus is on future adult behaviors physical education’s goal must be to have children develop a “love for activity” so that they will want to participate voluntarily, which is of course what they will need to do as adults. When we looked at the data in 1990 we calculated that if adults were a little more active and established active lifestyles, in New York State alone taxpayers would save $3-6 billion in health care costs (Feingold, 1994). Imagine the savings today!

The second “Adult Behavior” goal we set in 1990 and which I believe is as relevant today was to develop collaborative, caring, and respectful, citizens. We made the case then that through games and group activities, students can learn valuable social skills such as cooperation, team work, leadership, cultural respect, and respect for all regardless of skill level, gender, race or sexual orientation. We pointed out that in order for students to learn these valuable lessons they needed guidance from qualified physical education teachers. We noted that the games and play by themselves did not teach these values, but rather it depended on teachers who knew the pedagogical strategies for the achieving these goals. Today, as compared to 1990, there are many more strategies, such as TPSR (Hellison, 2011) and Project Hope (Metzler, 2013).

Too often, children play games with the sole purpose of winning the game, rather than learning life skills or enjoying the experience. Unfortunately, if students believe the purpose is only to win, it often results in winning-at-all-costs attitudes, rather than appreciating the participation, fun and learning of social skills. We need teachers who views gymnasium as “laboratories about life” and who create the environment for students to learn. This idea also supports the important notion that certified teachers who are content specialists are critical in helping students to develop these valuable attitudes and behaviors. Twenty-five years ago our committee emphasized that it’s not just play, recreation, or recess that teaches social skills, but rather qualified teachers Today, unlike in some states, New York State still requires certified physical educators (k-12).

Besides the focus on adult behaviors, active lifestyle habits (learning to love activity vs getting children fit) and social skills (cooperative and respectful behaviors through games vs win at all costs), several additional research-supported issues have been established in the past twenty-five years that are worth mentioning. These include the role of activity on stress reduction (which is critically important to adults), the role of activity on self-esteem (important both for children and adults), and the role of physical activity on academic performance (critically important for children). Also, because of the interdisciplinary nature of physical education, many teachers have found physical education class experiences especially helpful in meeting state learning standards.

In summary, I urge today’s physical educators to examine the impact of physical education on adult behaviors. I believe it would help to direct and establish the significance of our subject matter in America’s public schools. The challenging issues we face in today’s society are similar to the issues we faced twenty-five years ago: Economy, health care, and violence. Physical educators can and should be major players in addressing these issues. It is not that motor skills, fitness testing, and play are not important, but physical education is significantly more important in the eyes of those outside our profession when we emphasize our capacity to equip children with desirable adult behaviors and address some of the most pressing societal issues. In my view, no other school subject has greater potential than physical education to help solve some of the most important societal issues we face today.

References

Feingold, R (1994). Making Connections: An agenda for the future, Quest, 46, 357-366.

Hellison, D. (2011). Teaching personal and social responsibility through physical activity (3rd ed), Champaign, Il., Human Kinetics.

Metzler, M., McKenzie, T., van der Mars, H., Barrett-Williams, S., & Ellis, R. (2013). Health Optimizing Physical Education (HOPE): A new curriculum for school programs. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 84 (4),41-47

For full documents with full references written in 1990 and updated in 2013 for New York State AAHPERD, feel free to contact me. Feingold@adelphi.edu or 516-877-4764.

Note – The New York State Education Department requested dropping physical education in 1984 and in 1988. Since the Adult Role Paper, written in 1990, New York State has not questioned whether physical education should remain.