Category: PHE Current Issues

This category includes essays and articles on a wide range of topics. Read what’s good and what the challenges are about current teaching and coaching practices, and what physical and health education must do to thrive in the future. It’s a place to share, discuss, and debate ideas. Read and join the conversation.

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Why We Cannot Cancel Physically Active Play

As we find ourselves at this time in the world where a pandemic has changed the intricate details of our lives, we are forced to focus on the essentials of life. Guidelines about how to safely interact with others and protect ourselves from the virus are governing the daily actions of people worldwide. Businesses, purchases, travel, and most activities have been labeled as essential or non-essential. Halting non-essential engagements has caused businesses to shutter, cities to become vacant, sports to be postponed, and shoppers to cautiously venture into grocery stores and purchase inordinate amounts of toilet paper.

With many of our typical activities labeled non-essential, I wonder if our normal lives have been filled with an abundance of non-essential things/activities. Are birthday parties, hair salons, music concerts, and sports simply fluff that fills the spaces between the essentials of life? Or, is there more to living life than meeting/obtaining the essentials? Though we must fulfill our physiological and safety needs to stay alive (i.e., the essentials), if we neglect or cannot fulfill other human needs (e.g., social, intellectual, emotional, self-fulfillment), are we whole?

Because I am a physical educator, my mind has been drawn to the impact the pesky COVID-19 pandemic is having on physical activity (PA) and sport. During this time of caution, PA is one part of our lives that has been deemed both essential and non-essential. As non-essential, sporting events and seasons, from professional to recreational, have been canceled or postponed throughout the world. NBA, NHL, MLS, and MLB seasons were suspended or delayed. The NCAA basketball tournament was canceled. High school spring sports throughout the nation were canceled. The 2020 Olympic Games are postponed. Thousands of recreational races and youth sports leagues were canceled or are delayed.

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Dehydration: A Concern for Basketball Players

(2 Minute Read)

Proper hydration is a key component of effective athletic performance. However, the importance of hydration during a basketball practice or a game is often overlooked by athletes and their coaches. Many players don’t recognize the effect dehydration has on their on-court performance.

As little as a 2% body weight loss during practice/game can reduce decision-making and basketball-specific skills, slow response times and cause tiredness to occur faster (Baker, Conroy, & Kenney, 2007; Baker, Dougherty, Chow, & Kenney, 2007; Dougherty, Baker, Chow, & Kenney, 2006). Therefore, it is necessary for players to enter a game well-hydrated and maintain hydration throughout the game, as the result of the game may depend on split-second decisions in the closing minutes.

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COVID-19: Isolated Without Sport

As a sport ethicist, I am often asked to comment on current issues in sport.  With COVID 19, there are a variety of challenges facing sport.  Most of us have lived our sporting lives on the court, on the field, in the pool, in the pitch, or in the gym, I will limit my remarks to the experience most affected by COVID 19 as it relates to sport – we cannot physically play.

I was driving past our city park when COVID-19 first began and littered around all the children’s beautiful playground equipment was yellow plastic caution tape, barricading the area.  A sign prominently said, “OFF LIMITS.”  However, scattered about the park were children running and playing with their parents, present.   A few days later, I was in a meeting and made a comment about the barricaded playground equipment and then errored when I asked, “When is play off limits?”  I was lectured by others for not understanding the ramifications of children playing together and taking their germs home to their grandparents.  Interestingly, I continued to hit a sore spot on this issue of children getting the chance to play.  I asked several other people in the community about the yellow caution tape barrier around the playgrounds, and all of them agreed this was an essential action by the city council.  I wonder, is this action essential and is it an ethical issue for this COVID 19 time we are living in?

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When Sportsmanship Means More Than Shaking Hands

(2 Minute Read)

Common thought tells us that youth will develop moral character by participating in sports. Unfortunately, moral character development is not simply soaked up from the environment, but needs to be taught and modeled (Lumpkin, Stoll, & Beller, 2003).

Although morality is based on the rules of culture (i.e., religion, family, etc.) imposed on the person, the person must “…[take] them as his own and [regulate] his own conduct by them” (Frankena, 1973, p. 8).  Humans are designed for morality, but it is only through appropriate education, which includes thought discussion, and reflection guided by moral role models in an appropriate environment – that a person can develop morally (Lumpkin, Stoll, & Beller, 2003). When moral education works, sport can be an ideal space for moral character to be taught and modeled by sportsmanship behavior.

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Turning the Tide: Time to Increase Participation Numbers in High School Football

The National Federation of High Schools reported the lowest participation numbers in high school football in 19 years, a drop of 3% or close to 30,000 fewer athletes playing high school football (NFHS, 2019).

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On the national scale, many believe the research and media coverage of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and high concussion rates are the major causes affecting participation rates in high school football (Schonbrun, 2018; Niehoff, 2019). In a Forbes article, Bob Cook (2018) gives analysis and reasons for the drop in numbers for high school football. In addition to CTE concerns, Cook points to the poaching of students from urban and rural schools by charter schools, sports specialization, a decline in the “hero-worship” image of being a football player in high school (e.g. due to competing interests), and the growing popularity and competition from other sports (e.g. lacrosse).

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Participation in Sport: Is it Fair, Good, and True for Everyone?

Limited opportunities exist for athletes with physical disabilities to participate in sport (Martin, 2018), specifically, no foundation presently exists for creating generations of athletes with physical disabilities (Shaw & Stoll, 2018).  Many students and children with physical disabilities are excluded from institutional sport, recreation, and physical education where they can learn the fundamentals of a healthy active lifestyle.

A concomitant problem arises, as this population of youth is growing up without the fundamental knowledge of how to be active. However, what if there was a better way to provide individuals with physical disabilities the knowledge and skills for a healthy active lifestyle?  The purpose of this paper examines an argument to include students and athletes with physical disabilities in sport, recreation, and physical education beyond the minimum requirements by law.

Historical Background
The problem of inclusion is not historically modern since people with physical disabilities were excluded from every aspect of life. They were left to die on the streets, were killed at birth, or were hidden away (Rimmerman, 2013). Often the brutish societal behavior was collaborated through early laws.  From the inception of the law, i.e., Mosaic Law, Roman law, Hammurabi’s code, and Hebraic rule, individual rights were seldom addressed. Instead, what was good for the masses ruled, and thus the minority, that is people with disabilities, were excluded or eliminated.

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Ethics and the Educator: Conquering the Myths of Ethical Practice

As educators, we think we know what is right.  We think we are ethical. Unfortunately, quantitative data suggests that we are not ethical, we do not know what is right, and we cannot apply basic ethical principles to the majority of ethical dilemmas we confront daily.

Having served as a coach and a teacher at all levels of public and university education, I have been an educator for over 50 years.  I hold a baccalaureate from a liberal arts college, and a master’s and doctorate in physical education in which I read religion, history, and philosophy.  I have been researching moral reasoning in competitive populations for over 35 years.  Throughout my research and extensive work with educators (i.e. teachers, coaches), I will offer five myths[1] that work against an educators’ understanding of ethics and offer an argument that more education is necessary if we are to overcome the myths of ethical practice.

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