Futures talk in physical education

John Charles in his 2005 Delphine Hanna lecture to the National Association for Kinesiology and Physical Education in Higher Education (NAKPEHE) in the USA observed that there has been little systematic study of physical education futures, though there nevertheless has been some interest in futures research periodically and there exists a slender volume of writing. The Delphine Hanna lecture series, Charles noted, has often contributed to futures talk, and the NAKPEHE sees itself as a ‘future-oriented professional organisation’ with a specialist Future Directions Committee. While Charles welcomed this role for the NAKPEHE, he acknowledged that its futures research had yet to match John Massengale’s (1987: 2) vision of ‘a group of professionals associated with the general field of physical education who have the ability to conduct advanced research with some creativity’ in the style, if not on the scale, of the RAND Corporation, the Institute for the Future, the Hudson Institute and others. The book edited by Massengale, Trends Toward the Future in Physical Edu-

cation, was an explicit attempt to initiate the creation of such a group of professionals, though by itself it did not generate the momentum needed for systematic futures research that could tackle the problems facing physical education at the time, where ‘for years physical education has lacked the ability to predict, control or determine its own destiny’ (Massengale, 1987: ix). According to Massengale, physical education instead has been the testing ground for short-lived fads and the whims of sectional interests. The main motivation for carrying out futures research, clearly evident in Massengale’s

introduction to Trends Toward the Future and in most other futures talk, is to gain some degree of control over the fate of the field, either in schools or higher education or both. Most futures writers, like Charles (2005: 272), readily agree that ‘looking ahead is a risky business’, and that the process of prediction cannot overrule complexity, uncertainty and chance. Futures talk in physical education is nevertheless on the whole optimistic and aspirational. Speakers typically deplore feelings of helplessness and hopelessness; what they fear most is having no control over or responsibility for their own future. Most futures talk acknowledges the importance of history as a beginning

point for understanding the present and the future. W.L. Steel (1965: 19) in his ‘Twenty years on’ paper to Carnegie students and alumni quoted Churchill, who reputedly said ‘the further you look back the further you can look forward’. George Sage (2003) took the opportunity of providing the foreword to the book edited by Laker, The Future of Physical Education, to provide a brief historical context for the chapters that followed. Charles (2005: 269), like many others, talks about learning the lessons of the past; ‘even as we drive forward toward the distant horizon, we should keep the rear view mirror in our peripheral vision’. Yet despite this widespread acknowledgement of the importance of history for futures talk, few futures writers use history in any depth,1 and not all who do base their analyses of the future in history make coherent connections between present, past and future. But as Charles, Massengale and others acknowledge, there is more to

futures talk than understanding the past. Analysis of trends in physical education, both in schools and universities, and of broader social and cultural trends, is also important.2 Seeing the ‘big picture’ (Charles, 2005: 285), increasingly in global terms while making connections to the local, is part of the intellectual and creative work that analysts of the future need to undertake. In the best futures talk in physical education, we see most though rarely all of these elements. In this chapter, we listen in on a selected sample of futures talk to find out

what physical educators have predicted, aspired towards and hoped for as a means of framing the analysis to come in the rest of this book. We are interested in what they have had to say about physical education futures, but not only this. Each prediction emerges from an analysis, if not of the past, then, at least, of the present (Dening, 1993). The questions we choose to ask about the past and the language we use to frame these inquiries tell us much about the inquirer’s current preoccupations, concerns and values. We might add that any prediction about the future is also a comment on the present, on how the present is understood, and on those aspects of the present that we feel may be deficient and in need of remedy. In the first two sections of this chapter I investigate the futures talk about

school physical education. In the first section the talk is about the ‘decline and fall’ of physical education, about its demise and eventual disappearance

from schools. In the second section, the talk is more positive and is focused on the ‘rise and triumph’ of physical education or, at least, on new forms of physical education which are more successful than those currently practised. In the final section we listen in on futures talk in the higher education field and find there a 40-year old and, at times, fractious and acrimonious debate about the proper name for the field and its characterisation as a profession or a discipline. What becomes clear from all of this futures talk is that the future fate of school physical education and the forms of the subject in higher education are, as Lawson (2009) understands, intimately intertwined.