Organization of Department of Physical Education
The college departments that cover this field in whole or in part are known by various names. We have departments of Physical Training; of Physical Education; of Physical Culture; of Hygiene; of Physiology and Physical Education; of Hygiene and Physical Education; of Physical Training and Athletics, and so on.
An analysis of these college departments shows that they all concern themselves with much the same important objects, although they differ in their lines of greater emphasis. We find, too, that in some colleges the department includes activities that form separate, though related departments in other institutions.
The activities of such departments fall into three large divisions, each one of which has its logical subdivisions. One of these large divisions may be called the division of health examination. It has to do with the health examination of the individual student and with the health advice that is based on and consequent to such examination. The second division has to do with health instruction covering the subject matter of physical training. The third division covers directed experiences in right living and the formation of health habits, and includes the special activities noted above.
We often refer to the first division noted above as the division of medical inspection, physical examination, or health examination; to the second as hygiene, physiology, biology, or bacteriology; and to the third as gymnastics, physical exercise, organized play, recreation, athletics, or narrowly as physical training.
The prime purpose of collegiate physical training, then, is to furnish the student such information and such habit-forming experiences as will lead him to formulate and practice an intelligent policy of personal health control and an intelligent policy of community health control. The collateral and special objects of physical training vary with the individual student under the influence of his previous training and his present and future life plans.
The Collegiate Department of Physical Training is primarily concerned, therefore, with the acquisition and conservation of human health—mental, moral, and physical health. Because of his physical training, the college man should live longer; he should meet his environments obligations more successfully; he should be better able to protect himself from, and better able to avoid, injury; he should lose less time on account of injury, poor health, and sickness; he should get well more rapidly when he is sick; he should be better able to recover his health and strength after injury or illness; and he should therefore give to society a fuller, happier, and more useful life.
Such a department is concerned secondarily with (a) those special defects of earlier physical training that bring to college, students in need of neuro-muscular training and organic development, (b) with social, ethical, and character training, and (c) with the conditioning and special training of students for athletic competition or for other extraordinary physical and physiological demands.
In the light of the above statements, the objects of physical training may be summarized as follows:
I. The fundamental and ever present object of physical training is the acquisition and conservation of vigorous, enduring health, the summated effect of perfect functions in each and every organ of the human body.