Physical Education, History of

Early America

The colonists brought to America this desire to provide a common education for all children. The earliest undertaking for these settlers was often the establishment of schools of some sort. As early as 1647, the Puritans of New England had passed a decree mandating that schools be established for all children. However, not only did physical education have no acknowledged place in education, but the educational spirit influenced by the prevailing Puritan attitudes was hostile not only to play, believing it to be a sin, but to all activities related to play, including sport and even physical exercise.

Yet, a few educational leaders in colonial America, influenced by the Enlightenment writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke, urged that schools provide for the physical activity needs of children. Locke had expressed the idea that vigor and discipline of the body were the chief aims of education, while Rousseau proclaimed that physical and intellectual education were intimately bound together. Chief among these early proponents of physical education in America, Benjamin Franklin recommended schools provide activities to engage pupils in games, running, wrestling, and swimming, and he did so as early as 1743 in his Proposal Relating to the Education of Youth.

In his writings on education, Thomas Jefferson also expressed his belief in the necessity of physical exercise as a part of general education, while fellow patriot, Dr. Benjamin Rush articulated a need for physical education in his 1772 sermon, Sermons to Gentlemen Upon Temperance and Exercise. Although the theories regarding the need for physical education inspired many of America's educational leaders, it would not be until after the War for Independence that exercise and games would come to be seen as necessary for the proper growth of children and that schools should be responsible for the physical as well as the intellectual education of youth.

European Roots

On the eve of the American Revolution, Johann Basedow, an ardent follower of Rousseau, opened a school in Dessau, Germany, in which gymnastics were given a definite place in the school curriculum. This was the first time physical education was included as a part of a school program. Basedow and other European educators would come to have a significant influence on the development of education in the new republic. Molding much of the early thinking on physical education in American educational circles were the works of Johann Friedrich Gutsmith, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (of Germany), Per Henrik Ling (of Sweden), and Franz Nachetegal (of Denmark).

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