Throughout my career there has often been debate whether physical education is a practical subject, an academic subject or a combination of both. Ofsted’s current position is that it should we should focus on both declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge, specifically 1) motor competence 2) rules, strategies and tactics and 3) healthy participation. My personal reading of Ofsted’s current position is that they favour declarative knowledge and I worry that valuing this type of knowledge over procedural (and other types of knowledge) may end up with the subject becoming one that is ‘studied’ rather than ‘experienced’.
I’ve come to see the subject as neither practical nor academic. If the main purpose is for children to see a place for movement, physical activity and sport within their lives and then participate in them throughout their lives, then this is about a way of living. This makes PE an existential subject. The aim of learning within an existential subject is an individual’s whole mode of being. We try to enhance how they are “attuned to the world, find meaning and value in life, and make life choices“, specifically for us in relation to their bodies and engaging in culturally relevant forms of movement. This means the subject isn’t about learning an agreed body of valuable knowledge or developing a specific set of culturally relevant skills. An existential physical education is both knowledge and skills, but for the purpose of freedom, choice and responsibility.
Herner Saeverot claims that “existential education is not obtaining objective truth, it is rather a matter of obtaining subjective truth“. A person’s existence is not an objective matter, where knowledge, skills and goals can be clarified in advance. Rather, existence is a subjective matter. As my good friend Greg Dryer says about PE – we are the subjective subject. This raises a pedagogical dilemma. Do we have the right to tell others how they should exist in the world or should we help them to find out for themselves how they wish to exist and be in the world? In my own practice I have found telling children and young people they should be physically active and giving them prudential and pragmatic reasons to be quite ineffectual (but this does not mean that there isn’t a time and place for this direct approach).
PE as an existential subject means it’s not about helping a child to a predetermined type of existence, but to support them to think about their preferred existence and to help them to make progress towards that direction. This is because we can never force meaning (and for our subject the meaning that movement, physical activity and sport have) onto another person. As Saverot says an individual must make that leap themselves. To help them take that leap we must remain patient, we must take them seriously, we must be attentive and slowly and surely add something that enriches their present form of existence.
Scott Kretchmar provides a nice way of thinking about this with his thoughts on chairs. Much of our education is done sitting in chairs. Much of what constitutes a good life can be found sitting in chairs. In the subject we are often faced with children and young people who have already been converted to “the sedentary faith”. Kretchmar states “Physical Educators do not need to deny that many of life’s good moments happen in chairs.” Nor do we want to just provide them the knowledge and skills needed so they can exercise to be fit and healthy, so they can return to their chairs and be more effective when they do. Instead we need to extend an invitation to children and young people to “leave their chairs for extended periods of time and live there.” Educating them that part of a good life can only be found where not a single chair can be found.
We must tempt children to see the richness that a life involved in movement can offer them. Telling people how good a way of living is, is not an effective way of convincing them to live that way. Otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing the rise in sedentary behaviour and the reduction in physical activity across the globe. PE should not be about compelling and forcing children into a certain way of existing, but helping them to clarify their own and supporting them on that journey.
If the purpose of PE is to nurture positive relationships between individuals and their bodies, their body whilst moving and moving with other bodies in culturally relevant forms of movement then PE is neither a practical nor an academic subject. It is an embodied, affective and most importantly an existential one.
drowningintheshallow 