ABSTRACT
It is important to appreciate that in many English public schools, including Marlborough, during the second half of the nineteenth century athleticism was not merely a term signifying a liking for healthy outdoor activities: to use Robert Nisbet’s striking phrase, it was ‘a neologism born of moral passion’ operating at the level of an educational ideology. 2 Through it, physical exercise (team games in particular) was indulged in considerably and compulsorily in the belief that it was a highly effective means of inculcating valuable instrumental and expressive goals – physical and moral courage, loyalty and cooperation and the ability both to command and obey – the famous ingredients of ‘character training’. As such, it was enthusiastically embraced by many pupils, masters and parents. Though not unopposed, it was widely supported as a favoured ethos, and in many public schools it appears to have exerted a considerable influence until after the Great War. Today the term still serves as the descriptive label of this once powerful and now extinct educational ideology.
