Physical Education: critical review and prospect

Abstract

The subject matters of the Physical Education Course are analysed. This analysis demonstrates the nature and the manner the subject matters may be elaborated and taught in a Physical Education Course concerned with building its own body of knowledge. The political, economical and social contexts of production reflected in the subject matters give rise to such questions as the subject matters in the course and the way they contribute to attend to the needs of the great majority of the population. In trying to answer these questions different tendencies of Education/Physical Education are classified and organized into critical and noncritical tendencies. In the latter, subject matters and the way they are presented are instruments of social reproduction; and critical tendencies the subject matters are directed in a progressive perspective, with achievements. Thus Physical Education is attributed with features and subject matters of its own in a perspective of social transformation.