A guide to the history of physical education

A little about the book

Fred Eugene Leonard traces the development of physical education through the institutions, teachers, and social purposes that shaped it. Beginning with ancient European practices, he follows changing ideas about exercise, schooling, bodily discipline, and public life into modern systems and their American counterparts. The subject is larger than a list of sports: it concerns the place assigned to physical training within education and the different results societies expected it to produce.

The book is organized as a historical guide for readers who want to understand why particular methods arose and how they traveled between countries. Leonard combines biographical sketches, descriptions of institutions, and references to earlier writing, making it useful for following both people and practices. Its account reflects the educational priorities of its own early twentieth-century setting, including strong interests in health, citizenship, and national organization. Readers looking for present-day exercise advice should instead treat it as a history of the ideas and professional networks that helped establish physical education as a recognized field of study.

Things You May Not Know About A guide to the history of physical education

• Twenty-eight chapters. Leonard explains in the preface that only five of the twenty-eight chapters were entirely new, with the others revised from earlier publications.
• Tested in the classroom. The arrangement grew out of courses Leonard taught at Oberlin College and during multiple summers at Harvard, connecting the book to teaching practice.
• Research required European travel. Leonard describes studying specialist collections in Stockholm and Berlin, as well as visiting important centers of physical education elsewhere in Europe.
• A tribute to Hartwell. The dedication honors Edward Mussey Hartwell, whom Leonard credits with opening an American path toward the historical study of physical education.
• Illustrations began as teaching aids. The preface says the illustrations were selected from nearly six hundred images Leonard had used as lantern slides in his courses.