Freedom Places

Freedom Places - Scott Kretchmar

I’ve always found it difficult to talk about what we kinesiologists and physical educators do. So too have many others. Before many of you were born, two physical educators fought over a pair different ways to describe our pedagogical activity. A physiologist named C. H. McCloy endorsed “education of the physical.” His adversary, Jesse Williams, argued for “education through the physical.”

For obvious reasons this was dubbed the “battle of the prepositions.” McCloy preferred the “of” preposition because he championed vigor, health, and muscle. Williams pictured us working “through” the physical to secure broader social objectives, character development, skills required for good citizenship.

I never much liked either phrase because I never saw us as working on or through the physical part of the student. I’ve always believed we taught the student, the whole student, period! And recently, I’ve landed on what I think is at least one better way to describe our contributions.

We help students expand their freedom places. That is what education is about—helping students develop the habits, skills, knowledge, and attitudes that give them more places in which they are competent . . . maybe even creative.

I call them “freedom places” because they are sites where our students can do lots of things they couldn’t do before. Consequently, they are free in those places like they never were before.

All good teachers should be in the business of helping students find and develop their zones of competence—in number places, verbal places, musical places, social places, citizenship places, and movement places. In order to underscore the importance of our own educational contributions to this process, I once wrote that there are only two places in the world where our students need to be free: in chairs . . . and everywhere else! You and I are promoters of freedom places in a good portion of the “everywhere else.”

Good luck with your teaching.

Scott Kretchmar

Professor Emeritus

Dept. of Kinesiology

Penn State University

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