PE, sport, health, the Olympic Games

Physical and Sports Education has been particularly mistreated in recent times. Deemed incapable of curbing a sedentary lifestyle among adolescents, National Education has increased its measures, calling on external stakeholders, to compensate for its inadequacies. EPS has also been criticized for its inability to make France a “great sporting nation”. Didier Delignières, professor at the University of Montpellier and dean of the Faculty of Sports Sciences (UFR STAPS) proposes in this forum to “bring a little order to this surge of announcements, of sometimes contradictory positions” and to “draw up a picture of PE teaching and its evolving trends”.

EPS as a vector in the fight against a sedentary lifestyle

The problem of a sedentary lifestyle, and its correlates in terms of overweight and obesity, is particularly debated. In this respect, we mention a “ tsunami of physical inactivity and sedentary lifestyle “. A simple slogan is repeated by health, sport and education authorities: we must encourage individuals, at home, at work, at school, in their travels, in their leisure time, to “move” .

This ideology of “ move at all costs » was the basis of the launch, in the school context, of “2S2C” (2020), of the “ 30 minutes of daily physical activity » (2021), and experimentation « 2 hours of sports at college » (2022). Propelled by thunderous announcements about the construction of a “sporting nation”, in the dynamics of Paris 2024, but mainly centered on public health issues, these measures are presented as necessary complements to EPS.

These interventions do not involve teaching: we emphasize the fun side of these activities: no difficult learning, pleasure above all… It is little more than a question of opening beaches and spaces for “gesture” (Delignières, 2021a), to try to motivate students, hoping that they build lasting habits on this occasion.

We can nevertheless recall that for almost thirty years, EPS has been concerned with building in students the way in which they will manage their physical and sporting life, throughout their lives, with the leitmotif of encouraging them to a sustainable practice. . What is certain is that the influence of a teacher, working over time on stable groups, is more effective than the one-off interventions of external speakers, which are used in the aforementioned programs.

The hours dedicated to PE, however, remain very modest, if the fight against a sedentary lifestyle is so important. We can also mention the time lost in reaching sports facilities, often far from establishments, and the lack of premises to allow students to change and shower. There is a responsibility here which mainly concerns local authorities, who should consider educational establishments by systematically integrating the necessary facilities within them or on their immediate periphery.

PE as a propaedeutic to high-level sport

Another theme, directly linked to the Olympic excitement, refers to the inability of PE to participate in the growth of competitive sports. A certain number of high-level athletes have expressed themselves in this sense, denigrating the interest of EPS, and declaring that France was not a “sporting country”. We can also consult the article by Pierre Godon (2024), “ Is PE really responsible for the distaste of many French people for sport? », which recently brought to the surface a PE teacher bashing of good faith.

In a more substantiated manner, the Court of Auditors (2019) mentioned a “ profound divergence of vision between the conception of physical and sports instruction [sic] and the expectations of the sports movement “. The aims of PE were particularly targeted: “teaching programs in France aim less to provide students with physical performance than to develop skills […] linked to notions such as socialization, learning citizenship and the relationship with health.

Let us be clear at this level: apart from in a few speeches from the Gaullist era, EPS has never aimed to detect the future sporting elite. On the other hand, PE has in fact for more than twenty years had an explicit aim of citizen training, postulating that the collective practice of physical and sporting activities constitutes an important place for learning to live and work together, while respecting the differences. In the world we live in, this type of purpose should not be treated with contempt…

PE teachers: diversified conceptions

If the EPS is strongly attacked from the outside, it also provides sticks with which to be beaten. We must already recognize that it is served by particularly abstruse programs. Weighed down by poorly understood theoretical references, they relate more to the organization of an analytical bureaucracy than to the impetus of a political vision. They are based on a classification (“learning fields”), with a very questionable architecture (Delignières, 2021b). The evaluation procedures distinguish, in an analytical logic, “motor”, “methodological” and “social” skills, evaluated separately, leading to a completely artificial process (Delignières, 2020).

Furthermore, we should not believe that PE teachers present a united front. PE has always been marked by important conceptual debates, and there is little consensus on what the discipline represents, on what should be taught there. It seems useful to me to distinguish certain “currents” or trends of development in current proposals and practices.

A culturalist EPS

The National Union of Physical Education, in a proposal for “alternative programs”, defends an EPS defined as “study of physical, sporting and artistic activities”. The recommended activities are above all heritage, sporting and artistic practices, offering students a rich range of know-how, built up by generations of practitioners, for study. This proposal does little more than align PE with other school disciplines, the majority of which are based on the study of scientific, literary, technical or artistic corpora.

This position affirms the requirement to confront students with technical learning, with competition when it is constitutive of the activity, with performance (Svrdlin, 2024). However, it does not posit PE as a propaedeutic to high-level sport: it is above all a question of working towards a democratization of the practice, from which large sections of the population remain excluded (notably girls and the working classes). It is about working to develop a “sport for all”, united, cooperative and inclusive.

An educational EPS

This culturalist orientation is contested by another current, protean, but sharing strong reservations with regard to traditional sports, competition, performance and technique. This trend appeared in reaction to the sportivization of PE, in the 60s and 70s, led by authors such as Jean Le Boulch or Pierre Parlebas, promoters of psychomotor education. This mistrust seems to have spread widely among teachers, who want to distinguish themselves from “coaches”, to define themselves mainly as “educators”, and are often offended by the name “sports teacher”, widely used by students, their families and the media.

This approach sometimes results in the defense of a Physical education (without “S”), aimed at general motor education: development of motor coordination, lateralization, etc. (Delignières, 2020). This Physical Education, without excluding the use of certain situations inspired by traditional sports, significantly broadens the list of possibilities: traditional games or games from other cultures, psychomotor exercises, etc. In the current context, this return to psychomotor skills could tend to bring PE into the club of “fundamental knowledge”: reading, writing, counting, and moving… Some see it as a lifeline for the discipline (Dal, 2023 ).

This trend also tends to take up the principles conveyed by “new pedagogy”: a focus on the child, on his interests and aspirations, rather than on the content taught. Currently, these principles are claimed in the approach of the “Plaisir & EPS” group: it is a question of promoting the mobilization of the student by allowing him spontaneous success in situations corresponding to his aspirations and his possibilities of the moment. We thus hope, by capitalizing on experiences of immediate pleasure, to build lasting loyalty to the practice. However, we can question teaching that is reluctant to take students out of their comfort zone. We can also wonder if by aligning too much with what the student is, with his desires and his immediate pleasure, we are not letting him vegetate in his social determinisms (Delignières, 2021c).

A hypermodern EPS

Finally, there is a third trend of development, which is not strictly speaking a “current”, but which seems to be strongly emerging in teaching practices. We are seeing the recurring appearance of “new activities” (Spikeball, Poullball, Foobaskill, etc.), in order to obtain student support by getting closer to “youth culture”, an exploitation of fitness activities, fitness and personal development (bodybuilding, step, yoga, etc.), and massive use of digital technology (tablets, social networks, etc.).

With reference to the work of Serge Lipovetsky, I described this trend as “ hypermodern “. (Delignières, 2021d). For Lipovetsky, hypermodernity characterizes the evolution of lifestyles in neoliberal societies. In the area that concerns us, it is expressed by a focus on the individual, a concern for oneself and one’s body, the frantic search for new sensations, and by hyperconnection, via connected objects, social networks and online tutorials. The INJEP barometer (Müller, 2023) shows that the current practices of the French are essentially carried out alone, at home, for hygienic reasons, and by widely exploiting digital resources.

We can fear that these developments will cause PE to drift towards simple animation, modeling its practices on “the sport that is done” in current society. We can consider this evolution of practices as inevitable, and say that we must adapt to it, or even prepare students to become frivolous consumers of a commercial offer of fitness and well-being. But I think that ” if School must provide answers to the ills of society, it perhaps does not have to flatter its failings » (Delignières, 2021d).

As we can see, the picture is quite complex. Manhandled by its supervisory ministry, despised by the sports movement, the EPS would really need to display clear guidelines on its goals, its relationships with the sports movement, its position within the School and in the face of acute problems. which is currently affecting it, and more broadly in the developments in society. It is a complete overhaul of the discipline that we should work on, and this approach cannot be limited to proposing locally a few educational innovations, however remarkable they may be. Such a refoundation can only be based on a political project, based on clear consensus on the type of society that we wish to build, on the goals that the School must pursue to contribute to it and on the role that EPS can play in this global project (Delignières, 2024).

Didier Delignières