History and Evolution of Physical Education and Gymnastics

Posted on Nov 2, 2024 in Physical Education

1 – Prehistory and Antiquity

The aim of exercise is heading for survival and the struggle for life.

Prehistory

Physical activities are demonstrations that accompany man from his appearance on earth. There were two forms of physical culture:

• Peoples war: Exercises to combat the fierce and as preparation for war.
• Sedentary peoples: Exercises mix of magic and religion, with those who fight against the mysterious forces that they considered the causes of illness and death.

Antiquity

• China: What most influenced in this country was the Kung – Fu.
• Japan: They considered physical strength as a religious duty. The national event is Jiu-Jitsu (the art of flexibility).
• India: Highlights the main expression yoga (and is still practiced today). It has religious objectives, therapeutic and warriors.

2 – Greece, Plato and Galen

The educational system of Greece has a great influence on physical education. The word gymnastics means naked. The end of Education is based on the arete that was a synthesis of physical courage and military discipline, so they used physical education as preparation for war and hunting at an early age. In addition, attached great importance to physical education as the basis of bodily perfection (but education was a privilege of the aristocracy).

The Big Games

There were a lot of games:

• Pythicos Games: At Delphi every 4 years in honor of Apollo.
• Isthimicos Games: In Corinth every 2 years in honor of Poseidon.
• Nemean Games: In Nemea every 2 years in honor of Hercules.
• Olympic Games: In Olympia every 4 years in honor of Zeus.

The Sacred Truce was a time of peace during games between the peoples involved. The purpose of the big games was not only produce champions, but the young sports fan who has an enthusiasm for the effort and that the ideal of living is the nobility of the soul both in the arena and in life. As for the Olympic games, helped the excessive rewards professionalism, commercialism and the deterioration of the Olympic spirit. The Emperor Theodosius abolished the Olympic Games.

Sparta

It was a warlike people. Their education and physical education had a military character and military gymnastics appears, which is a set of exercises to train for war, coupled with moral values, discipline and patriotism. Good physical condition is important to fight and defend the homeland. Characteristics of Physical Education were pleased by the game, competition and the satisfaction for the win. Athletes Spartans were a model for the rest of the Greek world. The medical fitness is used as preventive medicine by Hippocrates and was accompanied by a diet.

Athens

In this village, like so valued education for personal improvement. Through the exercise achieve the balance and harmony in the development of man, not just the strength for military purposes. The Athenian ideal is the kalokagatia, which is the synthesis of beauty and goodness. There were three types of teachers: the grammarian, the harpist and Nature With Love (gym teacher). At the gym exercise is not only practiced but also was where they train professional athletes, elite, and there are philosophical and artistic discussions.

Plato

In Plato there are two distinct stages in their conception of the body and the soul of man. In its first stage gives importance to education stating that the body must be given body and soul all the beauty that are susceptible. The second phase is said that physical education must serve to prepare to defend the city. His pupil Aristotle put to the gym next to the medicine, which he said have the same goal. Education for him has to be intellectual, forgetting the body.

Galen

This continues philosopher Aristotle’s ideas about the gymnastics, gymnastics for him is a part of hygiene and medicine itself. He believed that the exercise was not only important but also the rest part of the training.

3 – Rome and the Gladiators

In the early days of the Roman period were peasants and the military education. In the days of empire, the Patricians had great concern for the body. Thus the cult of the body is more related to formal and enjoyable life with educational purpose. Seneca Physical Education disrepute by saying that a gym is ridiculous grown in excess and harmful. There were three types of gymnastics:

• Professionalism: The purpose was the spectacle, the struggle and victory at any price.
• Military Gymnastics: Conquests needed well-trained warriors, for it used the financial management of the sword, javelin, sling, spear, bow, running, jumping, long walks, sleeping in the open, riding and weight lifting.
• Medical gymnastics: follow the instructions of Galen.

In the baths (public baths) would gather to spend time together to gyms, libraries, etc … At the circus were held chariot races and horse fights between gladiators and wild animals fights, etc … The chariot races and gladiatorial combat was most essential in the sporting prowess of Rome. In the amphitheater also held between fights between gladiators and wild beasts.

The Gladiators

The gladiators were condemned, slaves and prisoners of war. The gladiator conquered in many battles could regain their freedom. Gladiatorial schools were created, which educated the physical preparation, the purpose of these schools was to prepare the gladiator for survival, since some fights might last days. In this type of fighting there is a contempt for life. In conclusion, Physical Education in Rome was developed largely through the gladiators.

4 – The Middle Ages

In this period both education and physical education fell. The body and physical training is reduced to the gentlemen, whose objectives were geared towards the fight for religious ideals, to protect the weak and the cult of woman. The Knights practiced the race (even with weapons), depth and height jump, fight, handling a spear, swimming, climbing and horse riding. They began their education at the court of a man and there would finish her education in good table manners, games, music, song and dance (rarely studied reading and writing).The activities conducted were the fair (each other) and the tournament (between sides) Among the people circulating the minstrels and itinerant trader with his stunts of all kinds, became the first gymnast in history. The Physical Education Christianity rejection because the body conceived as the bearer of human sin, knowledge alone should be directed to the soul, the spirit and the body is a prison for the soul. In the Middle Ages you could see the medical gymnastics influenced by the Arabs.

5 – The Renaissance

It was an important time for education in general. Revive the ideas of classical Greece and the value of the human body is recognized again. Mercuriales establishes a link between the fitness of the Greeks and of modern times. It is recognized that the body must be cultivated, like intelligence, since no intelligence can develop if the body is formed. Humanists are the forerunners of this new trend for Physical Education. Victoriano gives Narrow gymnastics has contributed to educational objectives and is implemented in your school. In Spain, Luis Vives maintained that physical activities are premature and recommended games for children’s health. In conclusion we can say that: the magnificent Renaissance Schools of Physical Education became an important part of General Education.

6 – The Empire, Naturalism and Pestalozzi

Empiricism (John Locke)

Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge is based on experience, while denying the possibility of spontaneous ideas or thought a priori. The most representative is John Locke. The author of the fact that the child has been to educate the body and to make it strong. In his thinking on education, a first part devoted to physical education. The objectives of education are:

• Achieve good health.
• Command of the body.
• Recreate the spirit through the Games.

Physical Education is understood as all bodily activities that tend to further the goals of education. It also gives importance to swimming saying that is useless a man who can neither read nor swim.

Natural (Rousseau)

Movement which claims that nature is the whole of reality and can be understood only through scientific research, denying the existence of the supernatural. Rousseau is the founder of natural education. The author maintained that man is born healthy but society corrupts. Therefore proposes a return to nature as a path to education. Physical Education is the procedure to contact the man. Rousseau says that if he wanted to cultivate intelligence, had to cultivate the body to make it robust and healthy. Rousseau is the first teacher that makes the body involved in the formation of intelligence.

Pestalozzi

He was a follower of Rousseau but did not share the idea of man’s corruption by society. This author takes the view that movement is essential for the child. The aim of education is to develop the whole man, achieving personal autonomy, moral, spiritual and physical. He said that Physical Education can not depart from mainstream education. His ideas are diffused throughout Europe and institutes are created pestalozianos in those who did various activities:

• Bodily exercises: Games and sports.
• Hygiene: manual labor.
• Walking: Study of the medium.
• Basic gymnastics.

There are several types of gymnastics: natural, reasonable, Industrial and Military.

7 – The German School

Guts Muts is considered the granddaddy of German gymnastics. His youth gymnastics is the first practical manual, methodical and modern gymnastics, which considers the value of physical exercise and health as a basis for a good life. Notes to Physical Education as a learning process essential in education. The author provides a methodological progress and classification of gymnastic exercises. Moreover, it gives importance to educational games.

Jhan patriotism mark before the Napoleonic invasion. The education system is called Turner, based on a human work (addressed to each person) and patriotic (domestic purposes). The gym was organized in a paramilitary schools. The Guts Muts pedagogical ideas were stifled by the nationalist trend Jahn. Muts gymnastics and the Jhan, are opposite on goals and objectives, technical and methodological procedures.

8 – Swedish School

Ling is considered the father of Swedish gymnastics. The purpose of Physical Education is to develop a regular and smooth the body through the implementation of rational exercise. Ling gives his gymnastics training and corrective in nature. Work your gym from the mechanical, physiological and anatomical teaching. His most important work was the preparation of tables of gymnastics that created it from organizing and systematizing the work of his father.

9 – The French School

Amoros was Spanish but was exiled to Paris and was the founder of the French school. Believe in Real Madrid Pestalozziano Institute, and get that physical education is compulsory in school. Love is based on Pestalozzi Jhan and therefore your gym had a pedagogical purpose but military in form. The gym was the basis of modern society and has a threefold purpose: to develop the physical qualities, increase energy and engender feelings high. His approach is realistic, gradual and globalized.

10 – The English School

In England the children of the nobility and the bourgeoisie lived in the general laziness, were bullied by the seniors and they were engaged in gambling and drinking. Arnold in 1828 was appointed headmaster of Rugby where he develops his ideas on Physical Education. We try to educate through sport and to achieve a moral end transform teaching and making sport lifestyle. Sports games i used to inculcate the sense of responsibility, appeal to reason and righteousness, lies and despise abide by the rules and regulations. This causes the creation of sports clubs in schools, a club was as a society. Despite the criticisms leveled against his ideas triumph.

11 – The Baron of Coubertin

This author was a teacher, historian and diplomat. At first was devoted to trying to change the French education system, but fails and strives in the Olympic Idea. Meet Arnold and includes their ideas on sportsmanship, fair play, moral values, mutual support and identification with the rules. These ideas were transferred to the Olympic Ideology.

In 1894 Congress approved the reinstatement of Olympic Games and in 1896 comes at Athens restoration. Coubertin said that the most important of the Olympic Games was not to win but to compete, as well as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.

12 – Gymnastics 19th Century – Path of the Center

The motion of the center is influenced by the German School. It has two manifestations:

The Modern Gymnastics

The modern gym begins with Bode, but the ancestors are Noverre in the eighteenth century, Delsarte in the nineteenth century and Duncan, Dalcroze, Laban and Wigmann in the 21st century.

• Noverre: I was thinking of using nature and his example as a source of inspiration (for dance).
• Delsarte: Create a variety of gestures and harmonic laws of motion are: the law of harmonious posture, Law and Law of the opposite movement of muscle function harmoniously.
• Duncan: It is the precursor of all the rhythmic motion. The idea you transmit to us is that we must dance to the music and not dance to the music. Your Physical Education refers to the physical preparation of the dancer must be in the hands of a gym teacher.
• Dalcroze: He’s a musician and found that students learn best music through the movement creates a methodology based on body movements which develops a sense of rhythm and expression, but use it as a means, not as an end. His idea is that we should develop all parts of the body both physically and mentally for personality development.
• Laban: The dance teacher and choreographer. It focuses on ballet and Laban harmony in space depends on three factors: space, duration and severity. For children to achieve adequate movement should explore, experience and repeat the exercises.
• Wigmann: Keep in touch with Dalcroze and Laban, but preaches the creative intuition. Its goal is the artistic expression of personality and uses the body as a tool to give it flexibility and ease. His gestures are oriental inspiration.
• Bode: He is the creator of expressive gymnastics. Case School of Gymnastics as a reaction against the physical concept of an anatomical and physiological systems and gymnastic movements against analytic constructed. All with the goal of man to achieve a reunion with the natural rhythm of movement. It is governed by the principles of the whole movement, change of pace and economy of motion. Bode’s work continues Medau, Jalkanen and Idla.
• Medau: studied at the Dalcroze School and the Bode. Intended to be a musician but studied to master. His responsibilities at the gym are the use of portable devices, to adopt a correct posture through breathing modeling. He developed his fitness through improvisational musical work.
• Jalkanen: Worried contractures, bad attitudes, poor work of the muscles and bad breath. The major contribution to modern gymnastics is the expressivity, with the contraction and relaxation of muscles, correct posture and good breathing.
• Idla: Based on Bode and his method seems to be in the field of Modern Dance.

Gymnastics Nature Austrian

Its creators were Gaulhofer and Streicher. His work is joint and Physical Education to get into teaching as an important subject. For them, physical education is a total education whose starting point is the body. Called to the gym as natural, because the exercises are in relation to age and nature of the child, are based on natural activities, classes are conducted in nature, their teaching course, the movements are natural and its goal is that the child come to nature to be healthy and sociable. Its purpose is to develop the whole man (body, mentally and spiritually). Her gymnastics is based on 4 pillars: compensation, training, performance and artistic movements.

The sessions make a distribution of work.

13 – Gymnastics 19th Century – North Movement

It produces neo-Swedish gymnastics from two demonstrations: a technical and pedagogical, in which we find authors like Bjorksten, Bukh, Falk and Carlquist, and other scientific demonstration, with Lindhard and Thulin.

• Bjorksten: Founds the Nordic women’s gymnastics federation. He brings to the gym for children and indirectly affects the male gymnastics. He understood that Ling’s gymnastics was inappropriate for women and children for their militarism. He brings to the gym: speed, ease, swings, experience of movement and economy of forces.
• Bukh: Create basic or fundamental gymnastics, so it is based on Ling’s gymnastics, but disagree on its spirit of dogma and closed the exercises used. Its purpose is physical objectives are: to regain and maintain natural flexibility, strength and skill of man.
• Falk: Invent the school gym. Try isolated from initial positions that have a recreational aspect, greater ease of movement and a new concept of discipline based on the order (organization of children in class).
• Carlquist: Follow the ideas of Ling and continues the work of Falk. It brings the idea of the minimum voltage, which is now called coordination (higher performance with minimal effort).
• Lindhard: Allows entry of gymnastics in college, the sight of the gym from a physiological and anatomical parts of the world criticizes some gymnastics.
• Thulin: Provides child gymnastics, gymnastics terminology and scientism. He comes to the conclusion that we must stimulate the desire of youth to measure their strength and make great brands through competitions. Young people have the need for free-form movements and using games.

14 – Gymnastics 19th Century – Path of the West

This move follows the influence of the French school. There are two streams: the scientific event, whose main authors were Marey, Lagrange and Tissie and technical-pedagogical manifestation, whose greatest representative was Herbert. As a connecting link between both events we find Demeny.

• Marey, Lagrange and Tissie: They have common characteristics that consisted of raising the gym to a scientific level and bring it to college. Following a heated literary production. However, the study from a medical perspective is not taken into account the educational domain.
• Herbert studied primitive societies and activities of primitive man. Its purpose is a natural method that is based on a progressive methodological action continues from childhood to adulthood to ensure development.
• Demeny: Makes a link between scientific theories and pedagogy. Focus gymnastics applied to problems of physical education sciences. He also studied human and animal movement (cronofografía) and controls applied to the results of the practice of Physical Education. The most important thing is that not talking about gymnastics, but physical education itself.

15 – 1950 to the Present

Current Sport

Gradually the sport becomes more popular and goes apart from the RU. There are two positions, the EF in the school as a way to train champions and PE at school with the aim of education through physical activity.

There are 3 current key sports are physical and sporting Ed the Ed psychomotor and body expression.

Other sports are running, the European center, basic skills (USA), multisport, the alternative of activities in nature, physical activity and health, and tourism and sport.

Doping

The company considers a drug.

The doping is any foreign substance to the body which leads to improved performance of the athlete, an artificial way.

The phenomenon of doping is caused by the pressure of society on the athlete to call for continuous improvement of athletic performance.

The school should take the emergence of alternative non-competitive sports, which do not have to beat growing brands.

Psychomotor

The Psychomotor arises in France as a result of research by several authors who concluded that man not merely a biological entity, but is conditioned and conditioned cognitive and affective structures of personality.

Picq and Psychomotor Vayer define as a pedagogical and psychological education that uses the means of the EF in order to standardize and improve the child’s behavior.

Thus arises the psychomotor rehabilitation, which is the origin of the Psychomotor. Its purpose is a re-education to enable the treatment of behavioral disorders through movement.

There is also the psychokinetic BOULCH LE, defined as the general method that uses education as a means of human movement in all its forms. Study the movement from a global perspective and divides it into two systems, the muscular system first, and nutrition and its influence on motor performance and the second the CNS to coordinate other support systems and mental functions. The aim of education is to foster the development and that man is able to locate and operate in a constantly changing world.

Education Experienced

Its authors Aucoutier Lapierre and, looking at the Psychomotor a new way to educate children in the school and learning were taxes of adults. Children need to experience a number of fundamental notions such as cold-hot, big-small, … first then contrasts these notions as the child discovers a more complex world through contrasts. It develops in the child’s creativity and spontaneity.

Body Expression

It was popularized in the ’70s, is influenced by Rousseau.

The body language is the ability to externalize internal processes throughout the body and its actions.

Aerobics

The Cooper Aerobics KH believe it refers to exercise that is done in the presence of oxygen, which is the key to aerobics.

Cooper assesses aerobic capacity through its test of 12 ‘.

Its aim is to improve cardiovascular fitness.

J. Fonda as popularized on the TV, through performing the exercises with music, in a more playful. This type of aerobics has little to do with the Cooper home.

Fitness

It appeared the last stream comes from USA, is produced by the cult of the body rather than a stream is a philosophy of life. Produces a positive attitude towards life.

Pierre Parlebas

Professor EF. Construct a new science to the EF. Considers that the purpose of PE is not movement but the motor behaviors.

Cagigal

Spanish is a sociologist and psychologist. He is considered a pioneer of psychology in sport. It states that PE is not foremost education and training of the body.

Muska Mosston

It raises the styles of teaching as an evolving process aimed at a personalized learning, a cognitive process. These teaching styles emerge as the need to find an effective process of teaching.