BURRL97.448 Who's developing who in school physical education?

analysing developmental discourse

Abstract

This paper is a small part of a broader study which is investigating

the role of developmental discourse in school physical education. I

critically examine the nature and function of several examples of

developmental discourse as represented in the work of Greek

philosopher, Plato and Enlightenment thinker, Rousseau, drawing links

with contemporary exemplars as evidenced in disciplinary claims of the

physical education profession. A particular focus throughout is the

notion of "balance" which has consistently permeated educational

discourse from antiquity until now. A critique of developmental

discourse presents conceptual and practical challenges for physical

educators, several of which are discussed in the conclusory section.

Introduction

All young people in New Zealand have the right to gain, through the

state schooling system, a broad, balanced education that prepares them

for effective participation in society (The New Zealand Curriculum

Framework, p. 5).

At a recent New Zealand conference on priorities for research in

education, a school Board of Trustees member expressed his concern

about the jargon-loaded content of many ministerial documents in

education. He claimed that while the Education Review Office1 required

trustees to provide a balanced education for all students, nowhere was

it explicitly stated what was meant by a balanced education. "What on

earth is a balanced education?" he asked the room full of delegates,

all of whom had some key role to play in the education of children,

teachers or graduate students. "You researchers should be working out

what this is - how can we provide it when we don't know what it is?"

This man's statement struck a chord with me. It was the first time I

had witnessed a school administrator with the mettle to actually ask

that question. Broad sweeping statements like "developing the whole

child" and "providing a balanced education" are made regularly in

education contexts, but I had never heard anyone openly interrogate

their substance in a public forum full of educational "experts." The

trustee's statement also raised questions for me about the ways in

which "balance" as a concept is enmeshed within much of physical

education policy and practice. Physical Education teachers, for

example, often claim that physical activity contributes to the

production of balanced children through enhancing the physical, social,

emotional and psychological dimensions of children's development (Crum,

1995; Diamant, 1991; Light Shields & Light Bredemeier, 1995). Notions

like balance are part of a wider language of developmentalism (Morss,

1993; Stone, 1996) that informs education in general and physical

education in particular. It is my contention that developmental ideas

are so much a part of our everyday conversations and professional

justifications for what we do and why we do it, that it is not often

we stop to think about what lies underneath the rhetoric and question

the foundational principles which inform our use of developmental

precepts. What other discourses, ways of viewing the world and

thinking about children inspire our commitment to a developmental

bedrock?

By developmental discourse I am referring to an aggregation of

commonsense and psychological notions and practices which configure

children (and adults for that matter) as naturally evolving along a

linear trajectory, from simple to complex, young to old, beginning to

ending and so on. I am referring to the dominant discourses of

developmental psychology which describe human growth as a series of

age and stage related phenomena (Morss, 1996). I am including the

kinds of notions that rendered Robin Williams, who played 'Jack' in the

Hollywood box office smash movie hit, a curiosity to children and

adults who watched the movie. 2 I am also alluding to the ways in

which we speak about the relationships between phenomena like the mind

and the body and the ways in which societies as a whole are seen to

progress onwards and upwards from primitive to modern and postmodern.

The constellation of ideas around the nature of human beings, nature of

the world, and nature of knowledge that infuse our everyday actions

and those of professionals working within different disciplines are all

implicated in a discourse of development.

Ideas and theories about childhood and child development inform both

the practice of teaching and the claims we make as professionals about

what schooling can do for children. In the context of school physical

education there are numerous examples of developmental discourse. In

policy documents and curriculum statements a language of

developmentalism pervades. Developmentalism is manifested in

prescriptions like developmentally appropriate practice in physical

education and in very way we structure programs, who we offer physical

education to, what we offer and at what age and stage we deem it

appropriate to provide certain sorts of physical education content.

Given that developmentalist arguments are my sphere of interest, the

aim of this paper is simply to track some of the presuppositions of

developmental ideas back in time to antiquity. I want to identify what

threads of the present are identifiable in discourses of the past and

to examine the relationships between different discourses operating at

particular junctures in history. While the emergence of Psychology as

a scientific discipline, and its offshoot developmental psychology,

have spurned the most obvious mass of developmentalist claims (Bradley,

1989; Broughton, 1987; Morss, 1996) and Walkerdine (1993, drawing on

insights from Aries, 1962 and Foucault, 1977) has suggested that the

'developing child' as such, did not emerge until the beginning of

compulsory schooling (and even then was a quite class specific brand of

being), I am interested in this paper, in looking back a little further

to classical humanism of Plato and Aristotle and the romantic ideals

of Enlightenment thinker, Rousseau, whose ideas seem to have influenced

many of those in the child study movement that followed. As recently

as 1988, American educationist Allan Bloom (in the Closing of the

American Mind) has been calling for a return to the 'great works'.

Bloom is not alone in his belief that the origins of Western thought

lie in works of Ancient Greek philosophers and certainly Homer, Plato,

Aristotle and colleagues get more than a passing mention in education

courses at university today. Many writers, especially feminist critics

like Moira Gatens (1991) and Linda Nicholson (1986), are now

challenging this assumption, revealing the middle class, male bias of

positions which source Ancient Greece as the origin of western thought.

I concur with much of this critique, but if these ideas are part of

the fabric of our thinking then they are worthy of analysis, whether or

not we like where they came from. What I am looking for is evidence

of developmental claims that can be found amongst the work of these

thinkers. I am not interested in positioning classical claims in causal

relation to what can be discerned now but, rather, to see whether any

of the truths of those times have endured and how those truths may

relate to more current ones.

I am particularly interested in the umbrella notion of balance and/or

harmony which seems to infuse such things as relationships posited

between mind and body, nature and nurture and the role of physical

education in fostering various attributes which may contribute to this

ideal of "balance" - an ideal which seems to permeate education policy,

child rearing literature and commonsense understandings of children's

needs today.

The 'whole child'

In recent years, educationists have been increasingly concerned with

the whole child and a mass of human service professions have evolved to

nourish him/her. Psychologists, counsellors and educational

psychologists have joined teachers in schools to ensure the emotional,

intellectual, spiritual and physical constituents of children are held

in equilibrium. In New Zealand educational policy certainly

foregrounds notions like "total wellbeing" and "developing the whole

child." In 'Te Whariiki', New Zealand's Early Childhood Syllabus,

secondary school curriculum statements and even in university

programs, the 'whole person' is centre stage. In schools, there is a

move toward abandoning traditional parcelling up of curriculum content

into discrete units like Maths and Science. Rather, the

interrelatedness of knowledge and all aspects of personhood is

stressed. No longer is a child's ability to voice the 'right' answer

in a Mathematics test the crux of education. Instead, the processes

he/she uses to arrive at the answer, the information he/she draws on to

generate it and the way he/she relates maths problems to his/her life

outside the classroom is stressed. Further, a child is not conceived

as just a head that goes to Maths with his "rational" mathematical cap

on but rather, she is a child with a raft of needs which must be

attended to. She must engage in "reflective thinking", have hands-on

experiences and she must see how a mathematical equation relates to

other aspects of her life. She must see the total picture and become a

whole person, drawing on the physical, emotional, intellectual aspects

of her being to make sense of problems at hand. Similarly, in tertiary

settings a language of 'life-long learning', 'holistic' learning and

helping each student reach his/her 'full potential' has replaced the

more narrow academic focus retained previously.

I would argue that in physical education, the notion of the child as a

whole is particularly fervently embraced. As a discipline and

professional practice we claim that we can contribute to all facets of

personhood - spiritual, mental, emotional and physical (Best, 1978;

Crum, 1995). Physical education, according to our rhetoric, is a

powerful vehicle for development of the whole person - not only does

it provide balance in the curriculum, permitting children to escape the

rigours of classroom confines and academic demands, but it provides

scope for components of the individual to be developed that may not

ordinarily be fostered in an education without the "physical". The

fostering of team spirit, co-operation, sportsmanship, camaraderie and

self esteem in students are just a selection of attributes deemed

within the scope of physical education's developmental powers. One of

the most extreme of our claims is that physical education actually

provides the centre point, the pivot for synthesis of all these

attributes (Hargreaves, 1986). We worry about those who are really

brainy and perform well in school but don't exercise. We agonise over

the 'brainless jock' image associated with physical education and try

very hard to prove that the container popped on the top of that

superbly crafted body stores a fined tuned and well oiled "mind

machine." Somehow, physical activity or moving bodies are the medium

for synthesis of these characteristics. New Zealand's draft Health and

Physical Education curriculum statement embraces Hauora - a Maori word

for "total well being." Even the way this document is set out implies

an interweaving amongst all of these elements so as to bring about a

synthesis, balance or harmony between them. Further, many of our

theorists and teachers posit a causal relationship between physical

development of a child and emotional, spiritual and intellectual

development (Hellison & Templin, 1991). Developing the "physical" is a

precursor to facilitation of the intellect, the emotions and the soul.

This notion of fostering holistic development was very clearly embraced

by Greek educationists. Creating the "whole" man was the raison d'etre

of education and the principle of balance was crucial to this life-long

developmental endeavour. Plato, Aristotle and Greek philosophers before

them aimed to preserve a "balance" between the moral, intellectual,

emotional and physical needs of boys. Further, a harmonious

relationship between different parts of learning was stressed with the

interrelatedness of all knowledge emphasised (Castle, 1961).

Mind & body

As a metaphysical dualist, Plato viewed human beings as divisible into

a corporeal (bodily) and spiritual existence. While mind was accorded

ontological priority, development of the body was seen in conjoint

relation to cultivation of the soul. Plato's catchcry, 'Care of the

body for the sake of the soul' certainly resonates strongly with

professional assertions in physical education today, despite the 3000

year temporal gap (McIntosh et al, 1986; Mechnikoff & Estes, 1993).

The notion of procuring a harmonic balance between mind and body is

also central in discussions on the kind of education which would

generate an 'all round' individual. The analogy of a carriage

(structure of body ) and two horses (brain and body) is used by Plato

to explain the mind/body relationship.

Unless the two horses have been equally trained, the speed of the

carriage will suffer - not only that, if one of the horses should be

better trained, or be stronger than the other, the stronger one will

naturally do more work than the weaker one. By doing this, the weaker

one will be dragged along, and, by so doing, will consequently suffer

through forcible over-exertion; and the stronger one, representing in

that case, possibly, the mind (brain), will break down in the long run

from being compelled to draw the carriage as well as the weaker

horse...(in David, 1889, p.5).

The composition of Athenian education was designed to preserve this

harmony, as revealed by Plato's decree: "Can we find a better

(education) than the traditional sort? - and this has two divisions:

gymnastic for the body, and music for the soul" (Republic, Book 11, p.

253). A preoccupation with balancing the mind and body and avoiding an

excessive focus on either is further evident in statements like the

following from Claudius Galen (AD 130-200), an early physician whose

ideas have retained some currency even to this day.

In the blessings of the mind athletes have not...Beneath their mass of

flesh and blood their soul are stifled as in a sea of mud....Neglecting

the old rule of health which prescribes moderation in all things they

spend their lives in overexercising, in overeating, and over-sleeping

like pigs...they have not health nor have they beauty. Even those who

are naturally well proportioned become fat and bloated (in Mechnikoff &

Estes, 1993, p. 44).

Bodily Balance

The notion of balance does not apply only to relationships between mind

and body and the balancing of mental and physical work that emanate

from them, but also to balance as evidenced in the physical structure,

composition and stance of people's bodies. How people position their

limbs and in particular, the degree of uprightness of a person's stance

has long been associated with intelligence and character (Park, 1994;

Vertinsky, 1991, 1994).

The positioning of limbs in Greek statues is one example of the

tremendous interest in the concept of bodily balance expressed in

ancient times. Impressed with the physical superiority of Greeks,

Mrs. Roger Watts (1922) claimed that Greek statues appear to have

assumed untenable postures requiring exquisite balance to maintain

them. Examples of bodies being deliberately shaped to meet specific

ideals abound in all cultures and according to Watts, Ancient Greece

was no exception. Mothers were accorded responsibility for modifying

the shape of their children's feet, to enhance their ability to perform

extraordinary feats of balance (Watts, 1922). Further, Watts

claimed that the ability to achieve balanced postures and attainment of

an upright stance were directly involved with the development of

intellect. In discussing an ape's progress toward an erect stance, she

had the following to say:

To this gradual straightening into an erect position may be ascribed

another extraordinary result, the importance of which cannot be

exaggerated. The ape is becoming more intelligent; he is developing

into a reasoning animal and quite lately he has begun to throw stones!

I suggest that this awakening of the intelligence may be attributed to

the altered position of the diaphragm which in the human being is the

radiating centre of all power and control through the medium of

tension, and would appear to have become so through the influence of

some unknown force operating throughout the vertical only (Watts, 1922,

p. 17).

Socrates too, encouraged a balanced growth of the whole body,

privileging dance as the most significant medium for achieving this

balance.

You know those who accustom themselves to the long foot-race have

generally thick legs and narrow shoulders; and on the contrary our

gladiators and wrestlers have broad shoulders and small legs.

Now...the exercise of dancing occasions in us so many various motions,

and agitating all the members of the body with so equal a poise,

renders the whole of just proportion, both with regard to strength and

beauty. (Xenophon, Banquet, 11, 15)

Balance in a more physiological sense has also been of considerable

importance in the past. Galen (AD131-210), a Greek physician of 2nd

Century Rome, and Aristotle (384-322BC) drew on and extended the

classical knowledge of Hippocrates (460-375BC), advancing a thesis that

human beings are composed of four essential humours - blood, yellow

bile, phlegm, and black bile. The "cold" humours represented passivity

while "hot" humours epitomised "action". Each of these humours needed

to be held in balance with excessive focus on any one of them producing

mal-developed beings. Galen discouraged running for example, "because

it wears a person thin, furnishes no training in bravery, and causes

some parts of the body to be overtaxed" (in Mechnikoff & Estes, 1993,

p. 45). This humoral model of bodily processes was also explicitly

gendered. Men were hot and active while women were passive and cold.

Men's bodies were more perfect in terms of amount of heat they

possessed and also in terms of anatomical structure. For Aristotle, the

female was a "deformity of nature" (Papps & Olssen, 1997, p. 48), a

view which underwent few changes before the 17th century. The impact

of Aristotelian and Galenic concepts of the body on women in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been well chronicled by

Vertinsky (1994) and Park (1994) and the thesis that differences

between men and women are located in biology and as such are 'natural

facts' continues to inform social theory and educational practice

today.

Character, morality and Physical Education

A crucial part of developing the complete person, who is balanced in

physical repose and able to maintain a harmonious relation between mind

and body, is the fostering of "character" or "morality". A

preoccupation with moral considerations has plagued the physical

education profession for centuries (Diamant, 1991; Park, 1987; 1991;

1994; Vertinsky, 1987; 1991) and in the practices of today there remain

numerous examples of interconnections being drawn between being good at

physical activity (particularly sport) and being "good" in general.

Students who are good at sport are regularly chosen as school prefects,

people with physical education or sporting backgrounds are selected to

front television programs and business opportunities often arise for

physical education graduates who have had little formal training in the

"field" but are perceived as well-disciplined, enthusiastic "high

flyers." The antithesis to physical activity breeding "good" people is

evidenced in treatment of those humans society does not perceive as

"good." The suggestion is often made, for instance, that unemployed

people would benefit from some form of rigorous physical training (eg

joining the army or participating in work schemes involving physical

labour). In New Zealand, wilderness adventure schemes for prison

inmates have been piloted with a view to "changing the character"

and/or "boosting the self esteem" of participants. The assumption

behind requiring the "ungood" to become physically active is that

engaging in physical activity can make them "good" or better than they

were.

In a different sense being physically inactive is often associated with

a kind of moral slide. Those who seem uninterested in physical

activity are admonished for being lazy, their failure to exercise being

equated with a "lack of control", "will power" and emotional weakness.

The Athenians believed that an out of shape, flabby body was a sign of

poor education and similar sentiments permeate today's health/fitness

discourse. Certain character credentials are accorded those who are

obviously physically active. "Going to the gym" is increasingly

becoming a pre-requisite for social standing. Deliberate exercise is

connected with being "virtuous", and "good" .

Links between "the physical" and "the good" or physical capacity and

moral development have roots in the work of both Plato and Aristotle.

Crucial to the creation of a whole child who could balance extremes of

excess and defect, know what was 'good' and contribute to the social

order was the need to foster character . For Plato:

The conduct of a man in his exercise is a very important test of his

character; and those who establish a system of education in music and

gymnastic are not actuated by the purpose of applying the one to

improvement of the soul and the other to that of the body. They

introduce both mainly for the sake of the soul (in Board of Education

Syllabus of Physical Training for Schools, 1933, p. 5).

Intellectual and political currents of the time demanded both physical

splendour and moral fortitude and physical education was the vehicle

for strengthening that moral countenance. As Greek poet Homer put it,

"a faultless body and a blameless mind" (in Diamant, 1991, 5). In

Plato's ideal city (The Republic), he decreed that character training

should precede intellectual training and Aristotle agreed. "A purged

system of character-formation will be succeeded, at a safe age and for

sound pupils, by a development of the intellect..." (Aristotle, in Hare

et al., p. 57). When Aristotle discusses the development of 'virtue'

he does so in terms of practice. The "good" is achieved by "living the

good". "Right practice" will lead to right thinking and development of

good people.

Rousseau too, suggests strong links between practical activity and

character, or more particularly, optimal intellectual growth. For

Rousseau, human movement was central in the creation of an ideal

individual and community to serve democratic ends. In his system, the

physical educator would seem to be the "ideal" teacher. A strong and

healthy body was a precursor for intellectual growth and indeed a

child's health was viewed as the bedrock upon which other aspects of

her whole being could be developed:

Exercise his body continually; make him robust and healthy in order to

make him wise and reasonable. Let him work, be active, run, yell and

always be in motion, let him be a man in his vigour, and soon he will

be one in his reason (Rousseau in Mechnikoff & Estes. 1993, p. 120).

Implicit in these exhortations from Ancient Greece and the

Enlightenment are a desirable sequence of "stages" that humans should

progress through en route to "the good" and some necessary conditions

for development of character and intellect. A snapshot analysis of

the stages of development suggested by educationists like Plato and

Rousseau and discussion of who and what are charged with

responsibility for ensuring the passage of a human through these stages

will follow.

When and how should a child be developed?

Nature/nurture

The formative influence of "environment" on the manufacture of

character is a pervasive theme in Plato's work as well as that of

Rousseau. By environment, Plato was referring to physical,

intellectual and especially moral influences on the young. His

educational prescription required both protection from certain

environmental influences and a prolonged period of direction and

guidance from adults. As with many current day developmental theories,

Plato's doctrine placed considerable stress a right start in life:

The beginning you know, is always the most important part, especially

when you are dealing with anything young and tender. That is the time

when the character is being moulded and easily takes any impress one

may wish to stamp on it (Republic, 11, 377).

Education is growth to Plato and children, like plants must be

protected from nasty influences that may impede that growth. "The

first shoot of any plant, if it makes a good start towards the

attainment of its own excellence has the greatest effect on it

maturity" (Laws, (trs. B. Jowett). vi, 165). Parents and teachers

(pedagogues) were charged with providing moral and physical

surroundings to facilitate a child's ability to wean himself from one

stage of growth to the next (Castle, 1961).

Similarly with Rousseau, the plant analogy and allusions to growth

through a series of stages are inscribed within a discourse which

equates "natural" with "good" and posits education as the route to a

natural unfolding of human potential. While Plato advocated excessive

engrafting of the young plant, however, Rousseau prescribed more subtle

manipulations of the child's social and physical environment to

engender desired growth from infancy to the mature ideal state of

adulthood.

For Rousseau, children were born good and innocent, at one with

nature, yet potentially corruptible by the artificial interests

promoted in society (eg. competition, search for status and image). In

his blueprint for producing an autonomous individual self, Emile, he

advocated a careful structuring of a child's environment by a tutor,

who through controlling everything that was thought or learnt, could

lead the "born natural " child to the good. Through education, a cadge

of independent thinkers could conceivably come out thinking the same

thing - a kind of bottom up "common will." An enculturation process,

therefore, was the vehicle for facilitating a child's return to

"nature" and the manufacture of a society as harmonious and uniform as

nature itself.

Gendered development

A drive toward "balance" was evident also in the conceptions of human

nature which Rousseau embraced for men and women. Deciphering the

essential 'nature' of children was a necessary precursor for producing

a suitable educational plan and for Rousseau, the biological asymmetry

of boys and girls demanded a different education for each. While "in

everything that does not relate to sex the woman is as the man..."

(Rousseau. 1975, p.112) , strength and capacity for active

participation in life are accorded to men, and women are attributed a

passivity and weakness.

Many before and since Rousseau have used biological determinist

arguments to deprive girls of any sort of education at all yet Rousseau

surmises that the sex difference he identifies actually calls for a

special sort of education, one suited to the nature of woman and the

function she will serve. "Once it has been shown that men and women are

essentially different in character and temperament, it follows that

they ought not to have the same education" (Rousseau, 1975, 133).

While accepting that girls are born with a wide range of capacities,

Rousseau has decided that what is "natural" to women is motherhood and

domesticity. Thus, traits irrelevant to this endpoint are weeded out

and natural qualities of use to a mother and domestic worker are

fostered and developed. Careful control of childhood activities

(nurture) will facilitate 'natural' qualities in women, according to

Rousseau.

Learning to dress dolls breeds coquetry skills and encourages an

appreciation of fashion which can be transferred to the girls' own

adornment later in life. Docility is the preferred disposition of

adult women and thus childhood 'zeal' must be reigned in. Too much

play will distract girl children from tasks at hand. They (girls) must

get used to being stopped in the middle of their play and put to other

tasks without protest on their part (Rousseau, 1975, p. 140).

Crucial to Rousseau's educational program is a vision of the natural

physical and moral order of society and the gendered role mature adults

should play in that order. Woman's natural place is in the private

domain of the home, while men must have access to both private and

public domains. Boys' and girls' respective educations must be crafted

in a fashion which will generate human beings capable of fulfilling

their "natural" roles in society. That crafting necessarily required

the placing of limits on children at particular times. A desire to

follow nature as it should be led Rousseau to design an educational

plan which duplicated the evolutionary life-stages. In a Rousseauean

view, a baby in its early days will exhibit characteristics which were

common among all humans in the early days of evolution. Little

children are like "natural man" progressing from an essentially amoral

beginning to a reasoned and reasoning adult acting in accord with

nature.

Stages

Stages are an integral aspect of developmental explanations and very

clearly have been used by philosophers from antiquity to the present to

organise children's educational programs. Stages are certainly

regularly used to inform physical education curricula and teaching

today. The 1987 New Zealand Syllabus for Physical Education, for

example, compartmentalises children's learning activities in very clear

age-related states, attributing different characteristics to children

of particular ages. The information about children may be drawn from

the science of human development rather than natural or religious

sources yet many would argue those sources are just as ethereal as

those used by Plato or Rousseau.

Stages are politically located and often embedded within wider

discourses relating to gender and class. Plato devised different

stages for different classes of children as evidenced in The Republic

and Laws. Rousseau's conception of men's and women's natures led him

to prescribe a disparate educational blueprint for boys and girls.

What is similar about any notion of human growth progressing in a

stage-like manner however, is the assumption that certain things must

happen at particular points in a child's physical growth if balance and

harmony are to be maintained. If a child is not walking by two years

of age, for example, a parent worries and if they are not toilet

trained by three years of age, professional services are sought.

Development of particular capacities at a one age pre-ordains

development of others at a later stage and excessive development in any

one sphere (eg. mental/physical) is held to jeopardise the equilibrium

of the whole. Achieving developmental milestones requires the

regulation of children's habits and dispositions and the juxtaposition

of particular developmental operations to preserve the symmetry of the

whole.

Despite the obvious differences between stages of development

prescribed at different temporal junctions, stages are, more often than

not, presumed to be universal. Differences between children are

glossed over and diversions from set patterns become construed as

deviations from some postulated "norm". Rousseauean girl as "active"

citizen is an aberration, the naked girl wrestling in a Palaestra in

Greece unthinkable, yet clearly ages and stages are both temporarily

and culturally specific phenomena, their contents cultural artefacts

rather than natural facts. Girls are active now and some even get

naked to wrestle. Girls have not necessarily changed yet how we think

about their capacities has. When developmental milestones are

universalised and normalised, those not fitting in are marginalised and

pathologised.

Teleology

Stage theories like those postulated by Plato, Aristotle and Rousseau

are also heavily implicated with a notion of progress towards some

telos. Development is always oriented towards a particular goal, some

pinnacle of attainment. In Plato's case the endpoint of human

development was located squarely in the past, in the ideals

encapsulated within "the forms". Essentially the endpoint was the

origin - they were one and the same. For Rousseau, we find the

endpoint of development is once again located to some extent in the

origin of personhood. It is when baby Emile is littlest that he is

closest to nature and nature is the key ingredient in human

development. Born into the world at one with nature, society strips

much of what was good away from the unsuspecting child. What needs to

happen to optimise child development is an education in accordance with

nature, one that turns children toward the origin of all things good

rather than away from it.

Crucial to the teleological argument is a notion of people going

through some process of regulated natural change in a particular

direction (Morss, 1996) and implicit in such arguments are evaluative

connotations. Progress is onwards, upwards, out of something inferior

toward something better. It is almost always linear progress (whether

backwards or forwards) and oriented toward a state or ideal more

civilised than that which went before. Reacting to the somewhat harsh

treatment of children characteristic of Puritan times, many have

construed Rousseau as advocating a softer approach to children, a more

civilised approach (Baker, 1995). Evolutionary guru, Charles Darwin

viewed progress as passage from an animal, savage childlike state

towards that of a civilised adult. This sort of trajectory is accepted

as given. One never thinks of progress as being towards something less

civilised than that which came before, and it is not often we say

babies have got more going for them than adults. The promise to young

ones is the autonomy they will be granted when they finally "become"

adults". Progress is "good" and perfecting child development is the

route to a better society.

Conclusion

Plato knew how to develop children, but then again, so did Rousseau.

How some ideas about developing children have come to prominence and

others have been discarded is a phenomenon intimately connected to the

social, cultural, political and moral fabric of the times. As we have

seen, some of the key aspects of Rousseauean philosophy and those of

Plato and Aristotle are still remarkably present in current education

doctrines, despite the obvious temporal and cultural dislocation from

1997. What does all of this mean? Does it matter that we are still

embracing some of these doctrines and seem to have clung to them,

despite very little empirical evidence to support their "truths?" I

think it does matter. Particularly in physical education, where so

many of our disciplinary claims and pedagogical practices are derived

from knowledge about mind/body relationships, the biology of children

and developmental trajectories, it is important to resubmit some of

these assumptions to critical scrutiny.

Many ancient truths have been given a scientific gloss, in the

twentieth century yet what reasons do we have to presume their

foundations were correct. Just because developmental ideas are so

entrenched, should they remain so, particularly if leaving

developmental arguments untouched could conceivably disadvantage many

children? Who is developing who in physical education? Are we

prisoners of outmoded developmental frameworks which actually produce

children the way we observe them, as Walkerdine (1993) suggests, or are

the ways in which we view children's development so thoroughly

sedimented that we cannot think differently? Perhaps, more importantly

we should be asking why we are developing children in the ways we do?

What are our investments in children developing?

Critical psychology challenges us to look again at the received wisdom

of the past and re-examine our beliefs about developing children. If

natural facts can be shown to be cultural artefacts then let us look at

the variety of cultural artefacts available. Multiple truths require

multiple accounts and diverse practices. In privileging developmental

explanations for human change, other explanations are not considered.

Whose interests do these discourses serve?

Developmental explanations are always made for a reason. Plato wanted

to build a community of right thinking citizens while Aristotle wanted

to train men of character to better serve state interests. Rousseau

sought to preserve the harmonic balance of nature by developing

gender-specifically trained humans. Developmental arguments are used

to justify particular treatments of our young so what are our reasons

for using developmental ways of speaking about children? Furthermore,

how we think about these issues has implications in terms of practice.

If we conceive child development as naturally occurring along

predetermined path then as teachers we are compelled to refrain from

interfering with this natural trajectory. If physical education's

intent is to contribute to manufacture of balanced individuals then

maybe it is fitting to analyse the nature of what it is we think we

are bringing into equilibrium. We continue to talk glibly about

physical education's contribution to intellectual growth, self-esteem,

emotional maturity, yet the location of many of these mental states

eludes us and even if we could conceptualise more clearly what is meant

by mind and body, the relationship between these entities is nowhere

near settled. How do the ways we currently imagine children inform what

we do in the name of them?

Layers of technical and pseudo technical language have been applied to

our nature as human beings (Olafson, 1995). Peeling back the

developmental veneer may reveal tried and tested historical truths

which physical educationists remain comfortable adhering to. On the

other hand, a closer examination of our past in conjunction with our

present may uncover suppressed truths, or alternative explanations for

what physical educators today continue to refer to as 'the developing

child.'

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1 The Education Review Office is New Zealand's independent review

agency charged with evaluating the effectiveness of schools in

achieving educational outcomes.

2 'Jack' was born with a rare disease which caused his physical body to

develop at rapid pace. When his chronological age was 1-, his body

resembled that of a 40 year old. At chronological age 17, his life was

almost over. 'Jack's' intellectual capacities did not 'develop' at the

same rate as his body. Others found it difficult to comprehend the

mismatch.