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are learned, impacts are made, and lives are altered through the kind and quality of experience
one has through motor activities. The greatest problem confronting the profession of physical
education in the twentieth century has been the problem of controlling these experiences so as
to produce anticipated outcomes, of controlling the quality of them, so as to refine the out-—
comes other than strength to the point where the academician can see them.

It is perfectly true that things other than motor skills can be taught through physical
education. In wartime, as in peace, the teaching of these things offers an oft overlooked but
nevertheless high opportunity for the teacher of physical education. By and through class
management, personal conferences, readings, class discussions, and personal suggestions the
teacher can seek values related to skill. He need not always be concerned solely with a wrist—
snap or a follow-through but he can, and he should, seek actively and consciously some of these
other outcomes.

Social behaviors and controls.—Sports are merely tools to be used in the process of
development. Good or bad, socially useful or socially unacceptable qualities can be produced
from football, or tennis, or any activity. Activities are neutral until the teacher or the
team or the gang declares how the tool shall be used. Virtues do not grow automatically from
sport participation. The.team may endorse lying, cheating, and thuggery, or it may endorse
the opposite. It depends upon leadership—the leadership of an adult or of tradition—the
leadership which intentionally and directly transmits a culture of courage, loyalty, or bravery;
or of fine manners, sportsmanship, honesty, and courtesy. Courage in football or dogged per-
sistence in basketball must be sought; the courtesies of tennis or golf must be taught and their
transfer from football to war, from golf to business, from baseball to international affairs
again depends, after the intelligence of the learner has been taken into account, upon the
vigor with which the teacher will make the analogies, comment on the behavior, and make clear
what conduct is expected in any and all situations. The teacher of physical education must
recapitulate the culture, must work at it, as hard and as diligently as he works at a spinner
play or at a dribble.

 

An understanding of the democratic way.—-Can a contribution be made to the preservation
of the democratic way of life through a physical education? Where do we gain our early under—
standing of democracy? If the inter—play of personality constantly found on the playing field
can be properly directed, the field, the court, the pool, the out-of-doors can be most signif—
icant as laboratories of the democratic process. Conversely, men can be taught to hate each
other, to hold others in disrespect, to take advantage, to "get" the "other guy," to nurse
racial prejudices, to seek advantage, all through sport. In war, some of these latter qual-
ities are necessary. American men cannot fight the enemy with kid gloves on. Because we must
win this war we may have to forsake some of our notions of clean combat. Activities can be
chosen and taught in physical education in such & way as to produce these fighting skills.

But if the essence of the democratic way is to be measured by the quality of our respect for
the other personality then let no physical education department in America shirk its duty now
to teach constantly and persistently those personal relationships which contribute to rather
than detract from the democratic way.

Growth in confidence, self-respect, and self—esteem.—These are not to be discounted
at any time. Success in games contributes to this growth. The dub who learns, the average
player who "gets a kick" out of doing well, experiences a success that is salutary in its
effect upon his confidence. It is difficult to see these qualities develop from the kind of
physical education which drills hundreds of men in routines which have no deep meaning or
carry little sense of purposeful achievement. Men need an opportunity to create for them
selves, to measure results, to acquire a self-sufficiency attainable only through practice
in self-direction. These values can also be sought in physical education.