VISIONS OF POSSIBLE PHYSICAL EDUCATION FUTURES

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it" - Alan Kay, 1989

The NASPE PE 2020 initiative inspired almost 2000 people to share their visions of physical education in the year 2020 and beyond. The essays make for interesting reading. Significantly, most writers shared the hope that physical education in the future would inspire young people to develop healthy and active lifestyle habits.

Differences that did surface among the essayists seemed mostly to be about HOW to achieve this mission. There were lots of different perspectives, which perhaps emphasize that "one-size-fits-all" physical education programs will not work in the future.

For example, we've all grown accustomed to students being required to attend physical education, and to do whatever we present to them. But the more you read about changing trends in public-school education it's clear that we are moving towards greater individualization, more choice, and less compulsion. Physical education will likely need to do the same. For those anticipating a 10, 20, or 30-year future career in physical education there's lots to think about.

It's easy to dismiss futuristic thinking as some kind of gobbledygook, crystal ball gazing, unrealistic guesswork. But of course it isn't. Companies worldwide invest huge financial resources into anticipating what's going to happen in the future and how it will affect them. While nothing can be certain, a careful analysis of trends can reveal likely challenges and potential opportunities.

In the past few years, groups such as the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) have used a technique known as "scenario creating" as part of their thinking about and planning for the future. The NIC has examined trends and where they seem to be headed, and imagined the possible consequences. Here's how the process has been described:

In all the fictionalized scenarios, we highlight challenges that could emerge as a result of the ongoing global transformation. The scenarios present new situations, dilemmas, or predicaments that would cause upheavals in the global landscape, leading to very different "worlds." None of these is inevitable or even necessarily likely; but, as with many other uncertainties, they are potential game changers.

What the NIC and CIA did was to bring together experts from many fields and invite them to brainstorm possible future scenarios. A link to the documents containing them is included below in case you want to read more. Here is just one summary of a fictionalized scenario to give you a taste:

A World Without the West. In this world, described in a fictional letter from a future head of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), new powers supplant the West as the leaders on the world stage. The US feels overburdened and withdraws from Central Asia, including Afghanistan; Europe will not step up to the plate and take the lead. Russia, China, and others are forced to deal with the potential for spillover and instability in Central Asia. The SCO gains ascendance while NATO’s status declines. Anti-China antagonism in the US and Europe reaches a crescendo; protectionist trade barriers are put in place. Russia and China enter a marriage of convenience; other countries - India and Iran - rally around them. The lack of any stable bloc - whether in the West or the non-Western world - adds to growing instability and disorder, potentially threatening globalization.

Unlike the consequence of a loss of power among Western nations, or the threat of nuclear annihilation, the truth is that the world would go on if physical education were cut from K-12 schools. Of course, it's not something that any of us would want but that doesn’t make it an impossibility.

Over the past few weeks I've had the opportunity to work with a group of K-12 physical and health education teachers enrolled in Central Washington University's online graduate program. One of the challenges I presented them was to respond to two possible future scenarios of physical education. Here were their choices:

1. A World Without Physical Education: Physical education no longer exists in our public schools. However, the importance of getting children to lead healthy and active lifestyles has been recognized and achieved through alternative methods. How did this happen? How did physical education get eliminated? How did alternatives get proposed and accepted? What does it now looked like?
2. A World in which Public School Physical Education is Thriving: Physical education is thriving in a newly reconfigured public-school educational system. As public school education has changed, schools look very different. Student schedules are more individualized. Physical education has been re-imagined to suit the needs of students in this vastly different educational environment.

For your reading pleasure, two of these imagined scenarios are included after this editorial: Both were written by elementary school physical education teachers. If you take the time to read them I think you will see that either outcome is a possibility. In other words, physical education in the next two or three decades could easily end up thriving or be entirely eliminated.

Think back. Obesity rates have tripled since the 1980s. Four-year high school physical education requirements are a memory, and in many schools physical education is optional. Several well-known professional preparation programs are gone. We've also seen some increased support for the connection between physical activity and academic performance. PEP grants are providing some school districts the opportunity to excel. Lots of changes are occurring around us whether or not we notice them.

What concerns me are the potential consequences of taking a passive approach to the future. The passion that we see for deliberating best teaching practices ignores an understanding of the tenuous position we hold in public school education. When schools change - which they will - so will physical education. Are we ready? I think not. It's not dissimilar to those physical education teachers who wondered what happened when their programs were cut. They never saw it coming because they weren't looking. Alan Kay explains the challenge with the following quote attributed to Marshall McLuhan:

"I don't know who discovered water, but it wasn't a fish."

Kay suggests that McLuhan meant that if you're immersed in a setting, you have an extremely difficult time being able to see what's going on. In other words, you have to get out of the trees to see the forest. Something for all of us to consider! Take a look at the attached essays for a possible glimpse into the future.

Steve Jefferies, publisher pelinks4u

	A World Without Physical Education by Derek Byrne
	A World in Which Public School Physical Education is Thriving by Derek Severson

*Alan Kay, Xerox engineer. Address before the 20th annual meeting of the Stanford Computer Forum Xerox (Stanford Engineering, Volume 1, Number 1, Autumn 1989, pp. 1-6). Retrieved from http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm

NIH Documents Online http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2020_project.html

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