My Back Pages

Fitness and Health

Ben Licciardi

In the March 1963 issue of Educational Leadership, Charles Bucher, a professor of education at New York University, discusses the central role of education in helping students develop healthful habits and follow a fitness regimen.

Read the article: Editorial: Fitness and Health (PDF)

Bucher notes that, just as educators teach English so that students can communicate and mathematics so that they can calculate bills accurately, teachers must educate children about health and physical fitness so that they can stay healthy and vital. To do this, he says that students "need to know scientific facts essential to good health, possess desirable health attitudes, develop skills to make activity exciting and enjoyable and be physically active."

To help educators evaluate their health and physical education programs, Bucher reviews a number of key terms and concepts. Among other issues, he explores how health education and physical education differ, how fitness implies more than just physical prowess and includes a "full and balanced existence," how education must be an integral part of a larger instructional program to be successful, and how interschool athletics represents only one piece of a larger puzzle.

In "My Back Pages," we look at important issues through the historical lens of the Educational Leadership archives. ASCD members can access EL issues from 1943 to the present by signing in at the right.

Ben Licciardi is a project coordinator in ASCD's Information Resource Center.is a staff writer at ASCD.