CHARACTER BUILDING THROUGH PHYSICAL EDUCATION*
C. H. McCLOY

State University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa

Physical educators have for years claimed to be builders of character.
Not infrequently such claims are buttressed by reference to a few students who
have engaged in physical education programs and who have changed in the course
of a few years from being individuals of rather inconspicuous personality to indi-
viduals of outstanding character and ability. The physical educator has been
prone to claim the credit for such metamorphoses. Examination of the evidence
has not been impressive. The literature is strangely silent with regard to those
individuals who took the same courses or belonged to the identical athletic groups
at that same time but who have changed for the worse.

When one examines the methodology proposed to produce character education
through physical education one usually finds such processes based upon faulty
psychology and on methods of education long since abandoned by the leading educa-
tional philosophers.

Recent studies by competent investigators! 4) have thrown much doubt on the
character building efficacy of a number of institutions, When these studies are
analyzed and compared with what is known of the learning process the wonder is not
that character results have failed to come through either physical education or
other such movements but that anyone should have expected such results to be forth-
coming when the methods used were not specifically planned to secure changes in
character and were not in harmony with modern educational techniques. We have in
far too many cases trusted rather blindly to an all-wise Providence and to G.
Stanley Hall,

This paper is an attempt to outline a process of character building through
physical education, laying dowm the foundations of the process upon our present-
day knowledge of how man learns.

DEFINITIONS

Before proceading to discussion it would perhaps be well to define our
terms. The term 'character’ as used in this paper, is not in any sense limited to
the sence, of morals, It has been defined by Lewey as the ‘interpenetration of
habits". Dewey, in his book Human Nature and Conduct, uses habits in the sense
of learnings. This definition may be rephrased as the interpenetration of learn-
ings, If everyone had read Dewey's book and understood his description of charac-
ter this definition might be adopted as adequate.

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* The writer is indebted to numerous authors in the field of character education.
His greatest indebtedness for this paper is to Dr. W. W. Charters from whose book
THE TEACHING OF IDEALS much has been draw. The principal other sources aside
from educational psychology are HUMAN NATURE AND CONDUCT by Dewey, NATURE OF CON-
DUCT by Symonds, the teachings of Professor Judd concerning the importance of
verbal responses in transfer of training, and the interpretation of Dewey's
philosophy by Professor Kilpatrick. The writer has dram freely from these
sources and wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness.

C.H.McC,

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