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This viewpoint evaluates the National Physical Education Service, which the federal government implemented in 1918 to combat low levels of physical fitness and poor physical development in youth, and determines what 21st-century health professionals can learn from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical literacy is a term that has increasingly gained popularity in recent years. A variety of individuals and organizations have promoted the use of the term internationally, and a variety of claims have been made for the benefits of using the term. A historical overview allows the reader to consider physical literacy as one of many terms that have gained popularity in the field and describes divergent views as well as areas of agreement concerning the term physical literacy. Three North American institutional approaches to physical literacy are discussed. Other issues are also discussed, including assessment and other literacy types (e.g., health, sports). The article is designed to provoke thought among professionals and representatives of institutions concerning physical literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented examining the history of physical fitness and physical education as a cultural movement, charting its origins to 1820s England and Germany. The author connects the movement to influences by Romanticism, English nationalism and political changes during the era. Introductory comments are given discussing the etymology of the term "fitness." An overview is then given of the physical fitness culture of the 19th century, led by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn.

In this article we try to think in new ways about the educational relevance of physical exercise at school, revisiting a concrete practice that is mostly seen as superseded, namely Swedish gymnastics. A phenomenological analysis of this ‘forgotten’ discipline will show that physical education might be taken in a very literal sense as the exercising of the body properly. Going against the criticism that this kind of gymnastics necessarily implies the subordination of corporeity to biopolitical regimes, we argue (referring to the work of Canetti and Agamben) that this practice might set physical activity free of any meaning whatsoever, and that it therefore might grant an experience of corporeal democracy. We argue furthermore that on this point Swedish gymnastics is opposed to other activities and especially sport, which have become dominant today. We hope that our analysis can stimulate the debate concerning the activities physical education-curricula should comprise. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the development of male and female physical education and scouting in early twentieth-century Iran and the construction of ideal gender images through the process of implementation. Utilizing articles from various Iranian periodicals, it argues that physical education constituted an important medium for the state and its new middle class supporters to convey two major messages, which internally circulated among themselves and reinforced their distinct class consciousness. While the press presented images of equality between moral, healthy, and productive boys and girls as civic partners in working to bring the Iranian nation back to prosperity, it also made sure by discrediting such counter images as masculine women and consumer women that Iranian girls would not deviate from proper motherhood. The paper also suggests that Iran's experience was influenced by developments in other parts of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the history of Danish radio broadcasting the founder of Danish radio gymnastics, Captain Jespersen (1883-1963), stands out as a charismatic figure who still today appeals as an intriguing voice from the past. After some dramatic falls from his horse Captain Jespersen was injured several times, but through the personal experience of a religious call he felt obliged not only to seek recovery himself but to spread the message of human perfection through self-discipline to the whole Danish nation. During morning gymnastics in the radio, he tried to awaken Danish radio listeners not only by means of some rather rigorous schemes of gymnastics and the use of military-like commands but mainly through encouragement to spiritual transformation, often deriving from Martin Luther and St Paul, which sometimes even resulted in the domestic performers standing still and freezing for an extended period of time. Though Captain Jespersen advocated 'a healthy soul in a healthy body', to him the religious spirit of man should take control over the sinful body. This could be done by a lifelong conduct of self-control developed though gymnastics every morning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although stadium construction has become an obsession in this century, a different set of sensibilities were evident in the early twentieth century with fitness programs gaining support within communities across the United States. Since the 1990s the number of scientific studies that support the importance of regular physical activity has become immense. However, as the authors of a recent article in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health observed, in spite of impressive research, transforming the scientific knowledge into effective social policy remains a great challenge. This was not always the case. During the 1920s programmes that provided opportunities for children, youth and adults to engage in games, sports and other healthful activities grew extensively. Educational and civic-minded organizations, municipal agencies and private citizens all contributed. Economic problems brought forth by the Great Depression notwithstanding, a large number of programmes continued to enable Americans to engage in a wide range of physical activities that fostered healthy lifestyles. This article examines a multiplicity of successful efforts that were made to 'Bridge the Gap between Knowledge and Practice' in the US between 1918 and 1940. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While sports and physical education originated in the nineteenth century, fitness on the other hand is generally seen as a typically late-twentieth-century phenomenon. In order to understand how the modern fitness culture has become what it is today, it is important to recognize how some of its roots had already evolved more than a century before. This article uses early developments of the 'fitness industry' in the Netherlands between 1850 and 1900 as an illustrative example. Against the background of the European struggle between Continental and Anglo-Saxon systems of physical education and sport, this article focuses on the connections that were made between industries, ideas, buildings, fitness equipment, manuals, magazines and the early body artists and entrepreneurs. The convergence between the early fitness industry and the 'self-help industry' contributed to a crucial shift from the 'acrobatic, distant body', to the commercialized, fit and good-looking bodies which were displayed and 'sold' as inspiring examples. This article questions some of the crucial preconditions of these processes of globalization of the early fitness industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When W.M. Conant (out-patient surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital) addressed the Boston Society for Medical Improvement in 1894 he spoke for many of his contemporaries when he declared that the two aims of exercise were the hygienic and the educative. The former was concerned primarily with muscular, circulatory and digestive functions. The latter emphasized the nervous system, brain and by extension 'the mind'; how the organism grew; and how 'character' was formed. Growing interest in such matters was fostered by a recognition of the need to improve the nation's health and was facilitated by developments in the biological sciences. Expansionist tendencies and a perceived need for strong, virile and resolute leaders also became factors. Whereas systemized forms of gymnastics might be valuable, sports such as rowing, baseball and football were deemed to be more so. For those physicians, physiologists, and others who emphasized hygienic and educative (sometimes referred to as educational) goals, the new gospel of strenuous activity partook of, yet differed from, the glorified accounts of athletics that appeared in the popular press. They, too, stressed physical vigour and 'moral courage' but within limits not to be exceeded by an overemphasis on 'contest victory'. United States Commissioner of Education William T. Harris, whose remarks had opened the well-attended 1889 Boston Conference on Physical Training, was among many who considered physical education, then a new profession dedicated to the study and care of the body and aimed at the perfection of the individual, to be important. Developments in evolutionary biology, physiological psychology and especially psychological studies such as G. Stanley Hall and his students began to produce in the 1890s were significant in moving physical education increasingly towards a psycho-social orientation by 1906. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the professional organizations that exist today were created in the late 1800s. One of these is the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (originally American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education), which was established in November 1885. Most historical accounts give only limited attention to the broader contexts in which the AAPE emerged. Wide-ranging concerns about health were a major influence. So were developments in the biological sciences such as have been outlined in historian William Coleman's aptly titled Problems of Form, Function, and Transformation: Biology in the Nineteenth Century. The backgrounds and range of interest of early members were significant. Whereas the majority of the leaders held medical degrees, the field also attracted a considerable number of 'health faddists', entrepreneurs and others who were interested in advancing a particular cause. Luther Gulick, MD, Edward M. Hartwell, MD (who also had a doctoral degree in physiology), and George Fitz, MD (who conducted reaction-time and other experiments) were among those who insisted that the field would need to establish its claims for legitimacy on sound scientific grounds and that a respectable number of its members must engage in research. At most colleges and universities departments of physical training were headed by a man or woman (separate units were the norm) who possessed a medical degree, training for which before the 1910 Flexner Report rarely included much, if any, engagement in experimental research. They were occupied with the time-consuming tasks of examining students, prescribing exercises, directing gymnasium work, conducting anthropometric examinations and creating teacher-training programmes in an effort to meet the ever-growing need for large numbers of teachers for schools, colleges and organizations like the YMCA. Service quickly became, and would remain until recently, the dominant, albeit not exclusive, focus of the American physical education profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines an 18th-century copper engraving by Daniel Nicolaus Chodowiecki that was published in "Methodenbuch für Väter und Mütter der Familien und Völker (Textbook for Fathers and Mothers of Families and Others)," written by Johann Bernard Basedow in 1770. The illustration depicts students at the Philanthropins institution engaged in some form of physical activity, including horseback riding, gardening, or fencing. According to the article, the physical activities had the advantage of helping the pupil enhance his attentiveness to his own body or nature. The article discusses attentiveness training, teachers during the European Enlightenment, and Basedow's educational philosophy, which linked the physical activities and the personalities of his students.