Adult Behaviors
Should Guide Physical Education
by Ron
Feingold, Professor Emeritus, Adelphi University
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.
Biography: Ron Feingold, is former Dean
of Education (5 yrs, 04-09) and former department chair at
Adelphi University (35 years, 74-04 and 09-13). Besides appointment
at Adelphi, he was a faculty member at the University of Arizona,
(66-7) and University of Illinois, Chicago (67-69). Ron has
been a leader in the profession including roles as president
of NYSAHPERD, EDA, NAPEHE, AIESEP, and AAHPERD. Ron has received
lifetime achievement awards from several groups outside of
our profession including the Long Island Heart Association
(James Dowling Award) and the Nassau Sport Commission. However,
his greatest honor is from NYSAHPERD, which named the only
annual Convention Lecture in its history, the Ron Feingold
Lecture in 2005. As an AAHPERD professional, he was instrumental
in the development of Physical Best and the establishment
of the North American Society of Fellows.
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