FEATURE
Once I finished school, I (eventually) took to fairly regularly running and swimming, the former at University where about 7 years after my last compulsory cross country, I went jogging down the river at the end of a long evening studying. The latter took place rather later (slightly more than fifteen years after my last school swimming lesson). In fact when I think about Phys. Ed. I am uncomfortably aware of some very negative stereotypes. So I before I launched into a wildly prejudiced opinion column on the subject I decided to find out something more about it.
I wondered how a such a department at a university compares to my experience of other University Departments. What kind of people work there? What sort of training takes you into a career in Physical Education, etc. My expectations were very uncertain, mostly featuring old men in tracksuits and lots of shouting. So I spoke to Professor Robert Schutz of the School of Human Kinetics at U.B.C. (University of British Columbia) here in Vancouver to get an inside perspective on a range of questions. It turns out my own preconceptions are not unusual, in fact that type of reaction is one of the reasons the name was changed from School of Physical Education and Recreation the more appealing "Human Kinetics" which lacks some of those negative (or at least stereotypical) associations. Mention Phys. Ed. and practically everyone thinks of volleyball, rugby or whatever, and someone screaming "come on, RUN!" The physical rather than the cerebral.
It is, says Schutz, "a prejudice we fight all the time." The School is in fact quite separate from Athletics which is a separate entity. The Faculty includes people who have no interest at all in sports as such. Its work covers a wide range of activities, and he makes a point of correcting me when I talk of "training," he prefers to talk of "education," and points out that they have faculty members funded by the Medical Research Council, The Social Sciences and Engineering Research Council, NSERC, and others, just like any other faculty. He sums up by recounting a conversation with a Wisconsin bus driver towards the end of his three year doctoral study in mathematical psychology and computer science (he started out as a mathematics and sports teacher).
"What do you do?" the driver asked.
"Well, I'm finishing my Ph.D."
"What in?"
"Physical Education."
"Wow, how many push ups can you do?"
Given my own experiences I wondered how much the quality of the Phys. Ed. experience was valued both within and without the subject. The "party line" is that positive experiences at a younger age encourage participation later and even when participation is not voluntary it seems it may have some connection with activity at later stages of life. Schutz believes that one of the things which contributes to a helpful environment is a healthy level of competition, but "healthy" is defined rather differently from what my preconceptions might have told me. In fact there has been a good deal published about the effects of competition, the National Coaching Association has even published guidelines outlining the desirable levels of competition for different age groups. The overall feeling seems to be that at certain ages at least, declaring a winner should be avoided, and Schutz himself prefers to emphasize the participation in competition rather than who wins and who loses. In fact he had raised one of the problems I had been loosely thinking about myself. The disincentive an unhealthy competitive environment can provide when only the winners get any positive feedback and everyone else is a loser -- leaving the experience with very negative impressions. I vividly recall a very strong "winner" ethic -- explicitly stated or otherwise. There were empty phrases that went with it "its not winning that matters," but school and society around one made it quite clear by their behaviour that winning was all that really mattered.
I retain the uneasy feeling that however noble ones conscious sentiments about the subject (and by no means everyone would agree that obsessive competitiveness is altogether a bad thing), changes of policy do not necessarily find expression in changed attitudes at a deeper level. Attitudes and beliefs are expressed by far more than simply what we tell each other verbally or even consciously. But then I "did my time" (as I think of it) on the other side of the Atlantic and I wondered if there was some difference in the Canadian perception of sports as opposed to other nations. As it turns out, Schutz himself along with a colleague (Frank Small) at the University of Washington did research in that area. Generally, he thinks that psychologically the values associated with sports remain very similar across Canada, the US and Europe. However, he noted that whilst many US institutions absolutely require their students to take part in one or two semesters of Phys. Ed. courses, he is aware of no Canadian Universities that have such a requirement, a fact which may reflect some underlying differences in the philosophy of the two countries. In fact it seems that (in general) parents, teachers and students all value Physical Education pretty much equally with (if not higher than) other subjects, up until having to compete for university places, then it drops somewhat in the list of priorities (you don't need Phys. Ed. to get into college, but you do need a lot of other things).
Well, if there were no big national differences I wondered if there were province to province differences. After all the possibilities in British Columbia (with an accessible coastline, mountains all over the place, and fairly stable weather) are very different from Manitoba (-40C on a bad day and chronically cold all winter, no realistically accessible coastline, and inescapably flat), you might think that aside from the inevitable differences in what sports people do, there might also be differences in attitude to it. Apparently not however, the only variation that Schutz could suggest was that in BC people may tend to be more active (because there is more variety of available activities), but at the same time that fitness monitoring programmes are less active here. I wonder if it is simply that the assessment programmes a re most used where people have the least choice of what they can do, where people have more choice they are out doing something rather than worrying about how much exercise they ought to be taking. In any case there is little doubt that public exercise is financially significant both because of the commerce related to sporting activities and because of the probable health costs of unhealthy life styles including leading a very inactive life and not maintaining a "healthy" level of fitness.
I was certainly surprised by the reality of a Phys. Ed. Faculty compared to my one dimensional preconceptions. Above all, I was pleased to find that the things which had left me (and I think most of my schoolfriends) with such negative impressions have in fact been recognized by professionals in the Phys. Ed. area. Whether that has translated or ever will translate into a changed mindset in society at large is something we shall just have to wait and see.
Dr. Euan Taylor, Vancouver, Canada
ertaylor@unixg.ubc.ca
