py THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
. SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
LAWRENCE

November 17, 1942

br. Forrest C. Allen
Director, Department of Physical Education
University of Kansas

My dear Dr. Allen:

Thank you very much for your courtesy in submitting copies of the physical
fitness tests which are being currently used in connection with the physical
conditioning program.

If the assumption that the only valid test of educational activities is to be
found in the formula "What does the doing of this thing do to the person who '
does it," then I am still firmly convinced that the tests which you are impos-—
ing are singularly ineffective and of very scant value.

My reason for reaching this conclusion lies in the fact:that physical fitness
in the last analysis is not a question of chinning or broad jumping but a
question of metabolism, of circulatory efficiency, of hormone balance, and
of general structural condition,

the correlation between ability to chin and these elements to which I have
called attention has never been established. It may even be negative; it
certainly is not ideally high. I judge from reports which reach me from time
to time that in a sizable percentage of your material the correlation is
actually negative.

As a friend of yourself and of your department, 1+ most earnestly urge that

the staff proceed at the earliest possible moment to the development of a type
of testing which will actually measure fundamental fitness rather than the
specific fitnesses which we now use-as the measure of effectiveness.

I think that the department has an almost providential opportunity for moving
forward from the near medieval type of procedure which has been traditional in
physical education to something which would be really sound and scientifically
defensible.

I am submitting these conclusions and suggestions with full recognition of the
limitations which are imposed upon you by circumstances beyond your control,
but I do believe that we will get nowhere in our effort to make education
really functional and scientifically sound by easy continuation of practices
that look unsound and indefensible.

With very best wishes for continued success,’ I beg to remain

Sincerely yours,

(ayn ales.

Raymond A. Schwegler |
Professor of Education

   

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