Chronister 1

Dear Dr. Amy Lynch-Biniek,

This was defiantly one of my favorite papers to write. Physical fitness is a very important
aspect in my life, and to have been able to focus in on the changes made in physical education
over the past 50 years was very rewarding. I wanted my paper to flow easily so I began
explaining what physical education was originally like in the 1960s. I wanted to provide a
foundation on physical education by starting with the original standards and goals that were set.
By giving this brief history I was able to build off of each year and explain the differences made
in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90, and 2000s. During the first revision I decided to add my last two
paragraphs, which allowed me to speak to the audience and provide statistics, important
information, and explain the final goal of my research paper. For example when I say, I believe
that because of the change in physical education has been so drastic over the past five decades,
that it has increased the rate of childhood obesity. While doing my second revision, I went
through some of the definitions I provided, such as the Hygienic Standard in the 1960s, and
summarized what they mean. I explained that, The hygienic standard was used to enforce the
overall goal for each student, as well as enforcing safety in gym class, and then I begin to go
into more detail in the next sentence. While writing this paper I tried to speak to my audience,
current physical education teachers, by using information they should be familiar with and giving
personal examples they would understand. The one revision I wish I could have made would
have been to talk to physical educators that have teaching experience from each decade.

Chronister 2

Kayla Chronister
Dr. Amy Lynch-Biniek
ENG 023: College Composition
27 April 2016
How has physical education changed over the past 50 years?
Growing up I remember having gym class almost every day throughout elementary
school all the way to my junior year of high school. During my years in public school I
remember gym class changing from doing activities on scooters and the famous parachute day,
when you and your class mates would all grab an edge of the parachute, throw it in the air and
then tuck it under you when you sat down, to playing baseball and kickball and completing
certain objectives as a group. These type of activities taught us team work and coordination, they
gave us a set of skill that we can use after graduation. However back in the 1960s students
would do gymnastics and weight training, which focused on creating muscle and learning body
movement. Activities they did in the past are completely different when compared to the current
activities performed in gym class.
In the last 50 years physical education classes have changed drastically. During these past
five decades the standards for physical education has changed a few times, along with the
definition, goals, and activities that are performed. With this drastic change that has happened in
physical education, fewer students are going to their gym class and few are learning how to live a
healthy lifestyle.

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In the 60s and 70s physical education standards were based off of the definition of
physical education, created at that time, and the hygiene standard. This means that the used
physical education in a safe manner to develop fit, strong, healthy men. Then during the 1980s
and 1990s gym class became less focused on weight training and more focused on playing team
sports. In the early 2000s the standards were changed once again. This time business leaders
called for an education reform, instead of playing sports in gym class now students did activities
to learn a basic set of skills and different types of knowledge that will benefit them in the career
field. Educators need to recognize the increased rate of childhood obesity compared to the
change in physical education, maybe then they could change the standards one more time to help
benefit the health of students.
What was physical education like 50 years ago? In the 1960s physical education
standards were created to fulfill the goals set by the definition of physical education and the
hygiene standard. In the book, Physical Education in the Secondary Schools, the definition of
physical education is defined as an integral and indispensable phase of education, concerned
with the growth, development, and adjustment of youth by means of a systematic program of
physical activities and related experiences selected and organized according to social and
hygienic standards and directed toward specific outcomes. This means that the goal of the
Educator was to better the students physically, mentally, and socially by guiding them through
instructions and in total body activity to increase the strength of the students and better their
health. Another important part of physical education in the 60s is the hygienic standard which
the book defines as, a proper progression, attainable but high enough goals, safe and hygienic
practices, the condition of the learners, and the environment. The hygienic standard was used to
enforce the overall goal for each student, as well as enforcing safety in gym class. It was created

Chronister 4

to ensure that students would be pushing themselves hard enough to make progress but in
manner safe enough that no injuries were acquired. Physical education was more militant at this
time due to the various wars that went on years prior such as, World War I, World War II, and the
Vietnam War. The goal was to create strong muscular men and to prepare them for a war front.
The book, Physical education in the Secondary Schools, explains the philosophy of physical
education as, an age old process in the development of youth, meaning physical education has
always strived to ensure a positive development in youth. In the 1960s physical fitness became a
national concern, the President became worried that the youth of America were not as healthy as
they were in the past. At the time President Kennedy decided to create the JFK challenge to
ensure the health of the American youth. He used La Sierra high school to create a standard for
the program. However in the article, The Federal Government Takes on Physical Fitness, the
author explains that they could not impose a national program, so instead JFK created and
promoted a curriculum to improve fitness and challenged educators to enforce this curriculum.
This curriculum involved high intensity workouts to build a stronger body and mind.
In the 1970s there were specific goals that the educators aimed to accomplish. In the
book, Teaching Physical Education; a Systems Approach, the authors Singer and Dick list the
goals of physical education. During this time period the goals were to develop skills and
knowledge of movement, learning to move skillfully by using exercises, sports, games, dance,
and aquatics, enrich the understanding of force as related to movement, condition the heart,
lungs, muscles, and other organic systems in the body and to develop a desire to continue
involvement in recreational sports. Physical education classes informed the students on how their
body performed different tasks and how to stay healthy. The authors of this book defined
physical education by saying, Physical education is not a fact or a set of facts. It is a response- a

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series of responses- that initiate motion, that frees men from inertia, that expresses life in
unlimited variations. In the 70s movement education was very important and the basis for
physical education. The students were informed on how their bodies had the abilities to perform
different movements and to have an overall awareness of their bodies. In elementary schools
educators used gymnastics to strengthen the students knowledge of movement. In high school an
important aspect to physical education was to weight train. The objective was to use free weights
to strengthen the muscles of students and to make each student physically fit. Students would
have their picture taken, with a full body view, and wearing only shorts, then at the end of the
year another picture would be taken for comparison. This would be used for their final grade.
Educators would video-tape their students performing different lifts to express their knowledge
of weight training. The purpose was to have a processed proof of what the students have learned
over the year.
The primary objective of a physical educator in the 80s was to facilitate student
learning. In Teaching Physical Education for Learning, the author explains that during this time
period there were no standards. The standards that were made were decided by the physical
educators themselves. In the 1980s the goals of physical education were to accomplish
psychomotor, cognitive, and affective learning. Psychomotor refers to an educational outcome
specified for the development of physical ability and /or neuromuscular skills as defined in
Teaching Physical Education for Learning. The author, Judith Rink defines cognitive learning as
an outcome based off of knowledge and thinking related process, and affective learning as a
specific outcome for the development of feelings, attitudes, values, and/or social behaviors.
Each educator would build a set of standards and lesson plans based off of the goals, and what
type of aspects needed to be incorporated. Lesson plans were broken down into three separate

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aspects; curricular, unit, and lessons. Students would later have informal and formal evaluations.
For a formal evaluation there were skill tests, written tests, records of performance, videotaped
formal analysis, and won-loss records. Then for an informal evaluation they have a rating scale,
description of student performance, check list of completed skills, and an observation of time
use. The purpose of the evaluations is to collect information to judge the outcome of the
instructional process. In the 1980s there was a range of different physical activities done in gym
class. Schools started playing more sports, such as football, baseball, volleyball and others, and
began doing less weight training, in hopes of making students more interested in participating.
The standards for physical education during the 1990s are to conform to the needs of
unique learners and students with disabilities, co-ed programs with a gender neutral design,
multicultural learning experiences, racially integrated activities that understand the diversity of
the students, and a basic education that should develop greater competence in academic skills.
With war becoming a distant memory educators now wanted students to have skills that will help
them after high school, out in the working world. Before in physical education the goals and
standards were specified to benefit men more than women, however in the 1990s things begin to
change. Another factor in switching to an activity-based education was to provide a wide range
of activities to accommodate to the uniqueness of different learners and separate genders. One of
the big questions during this time was Should Physical education be an elective or a
requirement? This is important because if gym class becomes just an elective than some
students will stop taking physical education and then the physical health of these students will be
affected in a negative way. I believe this because when I was in school I often remember hearing
many of people saying if they never had to show up to gym class they wouldnt. For many
students the physical activity they do in gym class is the only physical activity they do all day. In

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the 1990s the book Designing the Physical Education Curriculum, Vincent Melograno describes
the meaning of physical education as the learners individual needs including, cognitive,
affective, and psychomotor, are satisfied explicitly through all forms of physical activity. In the
90s they began to have fitness standards that they were later tested on. These standards included
balance, power, speed, agility, coordination, flexibility, and other similar components. They were
tested by performing timed runs, push-ups, sit-ups, sit-and-reach, and different types of jumps.
In the early 2000s there was another change in physical education. In the United States
big business leaders called for an education reform. This meant that they wanted to ensure that
the future graduate employees could perform a minimum set of skills and knowledge at a basic
level. Now each state is responsible for developing their own set of standards. Once the state
creates its new set of standards, the physical educators are required to create their own lesson
plans by using these standards. There are six different standards that were used as a basis for the
curriculum. In the book, Standards-based Physical Education Curriculum Development, defines
these standards as; to demonstrate competency in motor skills and movement, understanding of
movement concepts and principles, participate regularly in physical activity, maintain a healthy
level of fitness, has responsible personal and social behavior, and values physical activity and
health. In the early 2000s it was also important that a physical educator was properly educated.
A physical educator is a person who knows the benefits of being physically fit, someone with
learned skills that are necessary to perform different activities, participates regularly in physical
activities, values a healthy life style, and is physically fit. Several different factors that influenced
curriculum development included; societal interests, mobility, accessibility, choice,
accountability, and time. The goal of societal interest are more or less the new activities in gym
class. The authors Lund and Tannehill describe these activities as activities in the past that were

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the focus of after school and weekend play in local parks. The purpose of mobility is to
provide diverse opportunities to students all over the country. Accessibility is important now
because the instructors want students to have more access to these new activities, such as parks,
YMCAs, and other facilities. Choice is a developmental factor because the educators want to
accommodate to each and every student. The purpose of accountability is to hold each student
accountable for the physical activities they are doing. And finally time, teachers have to connect
P.E. to education or else they will get a time cut, which means there would be less time for
physical activities. To summarize, the pedagogical approach to the current standards are for kids
to enjoy learning, and want to take time and effort to learn a new skill often determined by the
business leaders of America.
Over the past 50 years physical education has changed immensely, and a popular
correlation that follows this is the increase of childhood obesity. According to the Center of
Disease and Control, [CDC] in the past 30 years alone the rate of childhood obesity has more
than doubled from 7% to 18%, in children ages 6-11. In the same amount of time, the rate of
obesity in 12-19 year olds has quadrupled from 5% to nearly 21%. One third of children are
either over-weight or obese. Over-weight is defined as being above the standard of body fat, and
obese is defined by the Medical Dictionary Online as being grossly above the standard.
Now that I gave you all this information you may be wondering where I am going with
all of this. I believe that because the change in physical education has been so drastic over the
past five decades, that it has increased the rate of childhood obesity. Originally in physical
education, class was more intense and it taught the students how to move their body, and how to
use it. They did strength training to help build muscle and burn fat. Needless to say the overall
goal was to make sure that the students were healthy and to build strong young men. Now in

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physical education the curriculum has been manipulated to conform to the wants of business
leaders in America. As well as making the class easier for students, it became less focused on
physical fitness and more focused on physical activities. When these changes were made it was
to protect the class, so it wasnt at risk of budget cut, however it caused the curriculum to be less
intensive and it hasnt greatly impacted the students physically.

Chronister 10

Works Cited
Bookwalter, Karl W. Physical Education in the Secondary Schools. Washington: Center for
Applied Research in Education, 1963. Print.
"Childhood Obesity Facts." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, 27 Aug. 2015. Web. 28 Apr. 2016.
Lund, Jacalyn Lea, and Deborah Tannehill. Standards-based Physical Education Curriculum
Development. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2005. Print.
"Medical Dictionary Online." Overweight. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2016.
Melograno, Vincent. Designing the Physical Education Curriculum. 3rd ed. Champaign, IL:
Human Kinetics, 1996. Print.
Rink, Judith, and Peter H. Werner. Teaching Physical Education for Learning. St. Louis: Times
Mirror/Mosby College Pub., 1985. Print.
Singer, Robert N., and Walter Dick. Teaching Physical Education; a Systems Approach. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1974. Print.
"The Federal Government Takes on Physical Fitness." - John F. Kennedy Presidential Library &
Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.