A Dream for Physical Education

I write this preparing to fly to Singapore to attend the country’s biennial conference for physical education teachers. Smaller than most US states, Singapore’s education system is government coordinated and dedicated to sustaining the future needs of one of today’s most successful Asian nations. Supporting this mission, the country’s physical education leaders are focusing on creating effective school PE programs that will reverse the sedentary living trends threatening the nation’s health. It’s no easy task. Similar to the US, obesity is trending upwards in Singapore. And Singaporeans, like most nations worldwide, are seeking solutions.

 

For two reasons, as a physical educator I’m not inclined to take much responsibility for worsening obesity. Obesity’s tripling over the past 30 years has paralleled most of my professional career – a spectacularly unimpressive record that I’d prefer to ignore. But more importantly, physical educators simply don’t have much control over most of obesity’s causes. Reports of worsening obesity do however alarm me, because it is symptomatic of declining physical activity and physical activity is something that I do believe physical educators should be trying to promote.

What’s amazing amidst all of the changes taking place in the world today is the unchanging need for the human body to move in order to grow, develop, and stay healthy. Looking into the future we face environmental uncertainties, global economic challenges, inevitable international and domestic political squabbles and conflicts, and ongoing scientific, medical, and technological breakthroughs. But however these outcomes change our lives we can be pretty certain that people everywhere, and especially children, will continue to need opportunities to be physically active.

In one sense this is great news for physical educators because it seems to guarantee us job security. After all, this is what we do isn’t it? We get children moving. But that’s also the problem. Based on worldwide obesity data we don’t seem to be doing a very good job. Where is the evidence that children today are becoming more physically active and – as we often claim as our purpose – leading healthy and active lives both as youngsters and then as adults? Sadly, we don’t have much to shout about. And this is worrisome.

Like many others, I’ve been wondering how best to get people active. Presently, in the US, millions of federal and foundation dollars are being devoted to preventing an economic and health train wreck, and lots of smart minds are deliberating solutions. I decided to take a slightly different approach. Instead of trying to solve the dilemma for an entire population or even a community, both of which were a bit mind-boggling to me, I chose to think small. Specifically, I decided I’d look for a single role model. If we want to get people to be physically educated, surely I thought it makes sense to try to learn from the lifestyle of an exemplary physically educated role model. And after much searching I found what I was looking for. I went next door and thoughtfully watched “Walkin,” my neighbor’s dog.

Walkin is remarkably healthy despite not being highly educated. She did not attend school and didn’t participate in physical education classes or interscholastic athletics. What she’s learned wasn’t from reading, television, or online media. I’m not sure she got advice from anyone. And interestingly, Walkin doesn’t use any technology to monitor her physical activity.

Finally, based on my observations, it does seem that she has a fairly limited repertoire of movement skills; mostly walking, running, and jumping to catch objects in her mouth. Nevertheless, for many years she’s naturally done all that was needed to stay healthy. Throughout the day Walkin runs and walks when she wants to, sits and rests when she feels like it, and eats when she’s hungry. She sticks to a healthy diet and doesn’t overeat. And following this regimen not only has Walkin for many years enjoyed an active and healthy lifestyle; by all appearances she seems remarkably happy.

Well as I learned, the formula to Walkin’s success was pretty simple. She was raised and lives in an environment that allows her to follow her natural instinct to move and to regularly eat the right amount of healthy food. It’s a success story illustrating what we’d like to achieve in physical education. But if you think about it, this story could have had a very different ending. If Walkin had been raised in a cage or tied to a short tether that limited movement, she would not only have been unable to become a physical education role model but would in fact have become conditioned to sedentary living. And this of course is exactly what we are doing to our children today. We’re raising them in conditions in which it’s impossible for them to learn the habits of an active lifestyle.

Like Walkin, all children begin life similar to happy puppies and then we adults force them into the lifestyles of sad old dogs. We all know quite well that from the first day of life babies love to move, to explore, and naturally don’t want to stay still. Moving is the way in which they learn, and their movement skills naturally evolve as they learn to move. For a time, they experience the joy that movement brings to their lives. But then as adults and parents we mess up this natural instinct by restricting their environment, putting them in places such as daycare and classrooms where other adults do it for us, or we start them doing things such as watching television that begins conditioning them to be inactive.

And so begins the transition from a naturally active lifestyle to a sedentary lifestyle for which we will later criticize them. It’s pretty ironic, isn’t it, that so many adults like to criticize the slothful lifestyles of young people when in fact it’s adults who are responsible for this very condition.

The solution of course is pretty obvious: Let them move. Quit messing with their natural instincts. The challenge is how to get there – and in particular for those of us in physical education – working out how we can best assist. Those of us who do our best to model what it is to be physically educated know the answer. There are two essential conditions: Motivation and Opportunity. People who are physically educated schedule or seek out regular opportunities to be physically active. It’s part of our lifestyles and as natural as cleaning our teeth in the morning. And importantly, it’s not something we feel obliged to do because of a sense of guilt, but rather something that if it were at all possible we’d schedule our other daily responsibilities around. More like a positive addiction.

As we look to move physical education forward in the 21st century, it’s this combination of enhancing motivation and creating opportunities that holds the key to our success and justifying our existence to a skeptical public. Many years ago, management consultant Peter Drucker challenged forward-looking organizations to ask themselves the question, “What would you look like if you hadn’t inherited what you are currently doing?” Physical educators need to ask themselves the same question. We have to be willing to reinvent ourselves, and to be different if we are going to be successful both in our mission and in preserving our jobs.

On a side note, and before discussing how we might like to reinvent school-based physical education, let’s acknowledge that something else has to happen to get kids physically active. We all know how absurd it is to let things get bad, and then to try to solve them when in fact they could have been prevented at the outset. It’s an uphill battle trying to reignite the passion of children conditioned to be sedentary to enjoy moving again. The years leading up to the time that children begin school and receive formal physical education establish the foundation for their physical activity and eating habits. We know from research on reading that children who get behind, stay behind when they begin school. Why should physical activity and eating be any different? For physical educators there’s a big difference between helping active students to expand their movement skills and motivating inactive students to move.

At the school level in the US we are beginning to see greater public recognition and concern about the decline in children’s physical activity and its negative consequences. The involvement of First Lady Michelle Obama and AAHPERD in the new Lets Move, Active Schools initiative presents exciting possibilities. Like others, I find helpful to think about ways to increase children’s physical activity by looking at how most children spend their school days. For about 13 years, children spend close to 7 hours daily in school. With some creative thinking, the school day offers lots of opportunities to get kids active in addition to the all too often brief and infrequent periods scheduled for physical education.

Active forms of transportation (walking, biking, etc.) to and from school, playgrounds designed to promote activity during recess breaks rather than standing around, and classroom physical activity breaks run by classroom teachers are all attracting attention. Research showing the (all-too-obvious-to-most-of-us) positive connection between physical fitness, physical activity, and academic performance is helping to spur more flexible school scheduling. Before too long, even athletic administrators are likely to be convinced or compelled to open up after-school athletic programs and create a “sport for all” tradition, instead of persisting in defending today’s elitist “survival of the fittest” competitive mentality. Were all of this, or even a significant portion, to become the new norm in public education the much-heralded national goal for all children to be physically active 60 minutes daily could easily be achieved.

But if all, or even a part, of this futuristic scenario is to happen a question to be resolved is “Who is going to be responsible?” Well the news is that in many schools physical educators, who are recognizing that the way in which we think about physical education has to change, are leading these initiatives. Charles Darwin had this to say about change, “It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.” And my feeling is that for physical education to survive in the 21st century it similarly has to change.

Not surprisingly, it gets confusing and frustrating for many physical educators, already with busy schedules, to consider the possibility of being expected to take on new and additional responsibilities. But that’s the problem. We have to think differently about physical education teaching in the future, and of course to prepare future physical education teachers differently. Whatever age you are it’s pretty easy to remember jobs that existed a few years ago that don’t exist today. Many of us can remember family members, relatives, or friends who believed their jobs secure until one day their world was turned upside down. What they did was no longer needed. The world had changed and was leaving them behind. The same was true for businesses such as Woolworths, TWA, Pan Am, Kodak, Hollywood Video and dozens of others. At their peak, did these companies ever imagine they would become irrelevant?

Contrary to most of today’s jobs and careers in which a willingness to change and adapt to the world is expected, in education we’ve gotten used to the idea of a relatively unchanging job, guaranteed for life. In the 21st century that belief will take us on the path towards unemployment. To survive and prosper, physical education has to meet the needs of the day. The ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius expressed this far more eloquently: “Only the supremely wise and the abysmally ignorant do not alter.” The difficulty of course is anticipating what we will need to do in the future.

Computer scientist Alan Kay highlighted perhaps the best approach for our profession when he said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Instead, of simply hoping to survive, physical educators have to become participants in creating the circumstances in which what they do will be valued and supported. They must create their own future.

But what physical educators do in schools has to go beyond simply expanding opportunities for young people to be more physically active. And this is where physical education teachers have a chance to really solidify their value. As noted earlier, becoming physically educated requires two ingredients. One of these was Opportunity and through modifying children’s daily schedules this is doable. But secondly, children need to value physical activity as something worth doing. Many years ago, a physical educator named Clark Hetherington wrote that it was more important what children chose to do outside of physical education than what they did while with us in our classes. Absent motivation, it matters little to create places and programs offering physical activity. Not much will change.

At one of the recent PE 2020 forums, former high school teacher-of-the-year Tracy Krause told the audience that he believed developing relationships was critical to being a successful physical educator. It’s clear that if today’s students aren’t interested in listening to their teachers, or have no respect for what they say, their physical education experiences are unlikely to be positive. Perhaps more than ever today, young people need adults who model the behaviors they advocate, and are interested not just in teaching content but in the lives and the challenges their students face. What makes this especially difficult under traditionally organized physical education is that teachers only see their students briefly each week, and often interact with hundreds of different individuals.

A second quality Tracy emphasized was relevance. It can hardly be a secret that too many of our students don’t like what we teach in physical education. Unfortunately, if the content about programs is not meaningful for our students it’s not going to motivate them to be physically active. We have a history of choosing content that we as teachers enjoy teaching, instead of content our students might prefer and that might have community connections. Looking ahead, as schools change it’s likely that student schedules will become more flexible and compulsory attendance on certain days and times eliminated. We would be wise to ask ourselves whether the students we are teaching would choose the activities we are offering them if their participation wasn’t required or coerced?

In honesty, I’m not much of a dreamer. I don’t very much like surprises. I prefer knowing what’s coming and being involved in the planning. It’s more likely to happen, and I don’t have to rely exclusively on others. But it’s easy for physical educators to take a ‘wait and see’ approach. It’s easy to think that AAHPERD, or our state professional association, or someone else will take care of us. That’s not going to happen. Our future will be decided by the decisions that we make or don’t make.

Some years ago, author Malcolm Gladwell popularized the term “tipping point.” It referred to the idea that things can go relatively unchanged for many years and then something often unexpected occurs, tilting the balance and initiating a cascade of change that can be unstoppable. The good news for all of us is that there is still time for us to rethink what we are doing. Through our actions we can become the tipping points that turn children on to physical activity, and in the process secure a healthy future for the physical education profession.