The production of Education Physique Sportive Generalisée in France: sports as a educational possibility ¹

ABSTRACT

The present paper aims at analyzing the processes of formulation of Education Physique Sportive Généralisée [Physical Education Generalized Sport] (EPSG) in France, focusing on the subjects and principles that guided its elaboration. For such, we used specifically scientific journals and books related to the conceptual and methodological debate held in France, from the 1940’s to the 1950’s, as well as handbooks of the period that have amplified and refined the analysis of the elaboration of EPSG. We can observe that EPSG was taken as a form to reconfigure other ways of doing Physical Education, reordering the structures and practices that shape the teaching process and focusing on the role of games and sports for youth training.

Keywords:
Physical Education Generalized Sport; Teaching Method; History of Physical Education; France

RESUMO

Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar o processo de formulação da Education Physique Sportive Generalisée (EPSG) na França, colocando em foco os sujeitos e os princípios que nortearam a sua elaboração. Para tanto, foram empregados principalmente periódicos e livros relativos ao debate conceitual e metodológico vivido pela França nas décadas de 1940 e 1950, assim como manuais do período que ampliaram e refinaram as análises da elaboração da EPSG. Pode-se perceber que a EPSG foi tomada como forma de reconfigurar outros modos de fazer Educação Física, reordenando as estruturas e as práticas conformadoras do processo de ensino e centralizando o papel dos jogos e dos esportes na formação dos jovens.

Palavras-chave:
Educação Física Desportiva Generalizada; Método de ensino; História da Educação Física; França

Introduction

“Sports has virtues, but taught ones” (BAQUET, 1951 , p. 11). This Maurice Baquet’s sentence was quoted several times by different scholars, whether or not contemporary to him, to represent the theoretical-methodological perspective of French Physical Education that advocated collective games and sports as means of training and education for social life. Named Éducation Sportive (Sports Education), that perspective housed scholars and teaching education that, from the 1940’s begun to invest in the debate and at the elaboration of principles and propositions for sports teaching in school Physical Education in France. The idea of sports as a means of life training is a reference that stands as a reading key for the comprehension of that theoretical-methodological production that has its beginning in the 1940’s but has reverberated mainly in the 1950’s and the 1960’s at the field of French school Physical Education. The possibility of social training through sports, which aimed at “rediscover the cultural elements that grant the access to an authentic social training”, starts with a representation of sports produced at and by the cultural climate of those years (DUMAZEDIER, 1980, p. XX).

Such aspiration was also observed in the elaboration of policies and action in which sports and Physical Education have gained prominence, have become a significant part of France’s renovation national strategy, both during Vichy France (1940-1944) and after the Liberation and the French Fourth Republic (WIEDER, 2008). It is worth mentioning that sports have already appeared, tough timidly, in the State’s prescriptions as a matter for school teaching in 1925 with the French Method, and, later under the regime of Popular Front (1936-1939) with the elaboration of Brevet Sportif Populaire [Popular Sports License] and with the creation of Office du Sport Scolaire et Universitaire [Department of School and University Sports].

Thierry Terret (1998), at the Brevet Sportive Scolaire was an attempt to establish a “sport for all” that set out to encourage national awareness with the regular organization of sporting events so that everyone could participate. As indicated by Léo Lagrange in the preface to Brevet, the intention was “to lead the masses of the youth movement to physical education and sports initiation” (TERRET, 1998, p. 342).

However, it was only in the 1940’s, with the creation of Commissariat à l’Éducation Générale et Sportive [Commissionership of General Education and sports] during Vichy France and the Official Instructions (I.O) in 1945, on French Public Educational system are a set of texts that define on the teaching structure, the schedule, the programs that should be followed in the schools (CHOBAUX, 1967), that the use of the expression Éducation Physique et Sportive [Physical Education and Sports] began to be used definitively in the official documents and, therefore, firmed sports for once at school, although only the prescription scope (ARNAUD, 1995).

It was a significate change. Physical education, as a school matter, begun to bear the sportive connotation in its name, establishing new perspectives in the process of organization of school activity. The 1945Official Instructions have put an end to the obligatoriness of use the Natural Method only one method for the teaching of Physical Education, imposed upon all teachers in that Vichy period in 1941 (ARNAUD, 1995). Those instructions have preconized great freedom in the organization and conduction of class, being the teacher, the responsibility to choose one or more teaching methods that fit better to her interests and personality. Besides that, sports have become an official teaching matter. In the text body of 1945 IO’s, sports appear as a matter and as a methodological treatment (sports initiation) of outdoor half-day. From that moment on, sports and sportive education began to be guaranteed at school. Such guarantee was reinforced and expanded by each reformulation of the IOs in the years 1959, 1962, and 1967. A few authors as Thierry Terret (1998) and Pierre Arnaud (1995), point the 1967 Official Instruction as the consecration of sports at school.

The possibility of methodological choice afforded by the new guidelines of French education, through 1945 IOs, and the defense for the presence of sports at school Physical Education, put in evidence the sportive perspective, focused at the defense of an education sport, capable of educating for life in society, gaining increasing more adepts and more conceptual apparatus. Sports is retaken as a fundamental element for the French educational system renovation and the training of its youth. However, under that perspective that begun to take shape in the 1940’s and gained more significant prominence in the 1950’s, the educational a priori of sports was not something intrinsic to each manifestation. Sports would be an exceptional means of education, proven it is guided, that is, that the proper adaptations were made for it to take its place in the school context. As Baquet (1951 , p. 11) has affirmed, “[...] sports are a powerful means of education, and it necessary to specify how it can be used.”

It was in that ambiance that Education Physique Sportive Generalisée [Sports General Physical Education] (EPSG), in Brazil known as Generalized Sports Physical Education (EFDG) was conceived and systematized at the Institut Nacional des Sports [Sports National Institute] (INS), having as main authors Maurice Baquet and Auguste Listello. Thus, this paper aims at analyzing the formulation process of EPSG at INS, focusing on the subjects and principles that have guided its elaboration.

For such, we have made use mainly of scientific journals and books related to the conceptual and methodological debate lived in France in the 1940 and 1950, as well as documents of didactic nature, like manuals, that have expanded and refined the analysis of the configuration of EPSG². Such sources were essential for the interpretation of the representation forms and idea appropriation of a sportive education in the formulation of recommendations and prescriptions contained in a teaching method from the codes and intentionality of an institution and its subjects³. The investigation allowed for new comprehension about the uses, strategies, and challenges faced by professors and teaching institutions to reframe their actions on the field. In that historiographic operation, INS and the subject involved with it in their choices, bounds, and professional interests play a substantial role in the comprehension of the elaboration of EPSG. Carried out in and by the attempt to join the multiple fragments that give life to a form, even if it cannot express reality as it was lived, we intent here an operation of historical impregnation, connection, and imagination. About this idea, Sabrina Loriga (2011, p. 227) states that

[...] history can evoke a process of pictorial metamorphosis that essentially rests on two operations: impregnation (we could say that the historian must extend his self beyond himself same) and the connection (to imagine and, perhaps, to fill the gaps of the past that we are able to learn).

From the ingress of Maurice Baquet and Auguste Listello at INS to the organization of EPSG

INS⁴ was an institution composed of different work fronts that shared the same goal - sports -, but that also presented diverse finalities. It was formed by a center for scientific and experimental research regarding sports techniques, a training school for high-level coaches; a higher school for national-level athletics; a Sword-play Higher School, and an establishing for master training in Physical Education and Sports (FORTUNE, 2012; LEVET-LABRY, 2007). At the same time, it preconized a dialogue with the other higher education institutions of Physical Education for the establishment of new knowledge and guidelines for the area. Following the Institute presentation plate, it proposes to dialogue with

higher education school for physical education teachers, master’s higher education schools, regional centers for Physical Education and sports, leaders of a youth movement, big state enterprises, but also with those who are dealing the reality of life (LEVET-LABRY, 2007, p. 132).

That different guidance was bounded to a bigger project for social regeneration through sports. For the new management of the Ministère de la Jeunesse et des Sports [Ministry for Youth and Sports], the “innumerable sports failures” that they credited to “state of degeneration of French people” as a result of “failure and lack of penetration of the physical education methods” on the general population (LEVET-LABRY, 2007, p. 132).

It was urgent the implementation of actions that aimed at “evolving certain ideas and conceptions” of teaching physical education, given sports certain importance on that process. That ambition of scope was expressed by actions that intended to strengthen the population through sports practice aiming at reaching and educating the mass, that is, children and youth from all social classes.

Amongst the multiple work front inside the institute, the production of a conception of Physical Education legitimated by a set of ideas, prescriptions, and practices disseminated in France has instituted a form of pedagogization of sports acknowledged inside and outside the country. In the course of meanings negotiations set in that space, a few subjects and actions consideration allow us to see how that new systematization of sportive education was molded for, then perceive how it participated in that new educative and social project. In that movement, I would like to highlight two scholars that were important for the EPSG elaboration at that institution: the forenamed Auguste Listello and Maurice Baquet. Born in 1897, Maurice Baquet was one of the most referenced french authors concerning the pedagogization of sports. As a diligent practitioner of different sports during his youth, such as football, athletics, and swimming, his professional trajectory echoes the relationship he established with sports throughout his life. All along with his work, he allied the teaching of sports to teacher training as assistant boxing monitor, athletics and football at Joinville School, in 1919; as a Physical Education teacher at École Hoche in Versailles (1931); and in the Université de Paris (1931-1933), with the role of a sports coach, responsible for Polish athletics team at the Olympic Games (1921-1924).

Meanwhile, he had already gained substantial professional acknowledgment inside and outside France (FORTUNE, 2012).

Immediately after the INS creation, he was appointed as technical director, staying the post until 1960. It is worth mentioning that, throughout his professional carrier, Maurice Baquet was known by his colleagues and even by the professors that succeeded him as a militant subject, engaged in the social role of sports in the formal training of youth defense. At INS, we gained space support to develop a few ideas related to the conception of sportive education he was already organizing before his entrance at this institution, more precisely those published in the book Éducation sportive, initiation et entraînement [Sportive Education, initiation and training] of 1942, and in the book Précis de l’initiation sportive à l’usage de l’enseignement primaire e des organisations de jeunesses [Principles for sports initiation to the employment in elementary education and youth organization) of 1943.

After his entrance in INS, Baquet continues to publish regularly his ideas, especially in two journals: Héraclès e Cahier Technique et Pédagogique INS. Now dedicating to deal with the conception of sportive education he had elaborated in partnership with other INS teachers, now addressing other themes, usually related to the social role of sports, Baquet takes those two vehicles as spokespersons of his ideas, especially between 1946 and 1955. Surely, the ideas of Baquet before its entrance at INS were basilar to the elaboration of the concept developed by the institution. However, if in the first moment they inspired the proposal, it is essential to acknowledge that the systematization of a sportive education that would be known as Éducation Physique Sportive Généralisée have extrapolated its origins. It is due to two reasons: to the institutionalization of the proposal, because, from that moment Baquet entered INS, it became domain and reference of the institution and no more of only one author; and the co-authorship of other teachers, in special Auguste Listello, that has incorporated different visions and propositions.

Born in 1913 Boghar, Algeria, Auguste Listello left his country definitively in 1928 to live and work in France. In that year, he entered the French Navy, assuming different posts, many of them related to sports, until 1945. In 1941, concomitantly to his work at the Navy, he worked as an intern at the Collège National des Moniteurs et Athlètes [National College for Monitors and Athletes] (CNMA). From 1945 to 1958, Auguste Listello dedicated himself to his work at INS, where he assumed the roles of teacher, technical-pedagogical director, and chief of the commission for Physical Education and Sports (Study and Experimentation) for the elaboration of “[…] a certain conception of teaching and education from the physical, sportive and leisure activities” (LISTELLO, 1999, p. 4). Concomitantly to his work at the Institute in the 1950s, he was responsible for courses in the National Internships of Union Sportive de l’Enseignement Del Premier Degré [Sportive Union of Elementary Education] (USEP). The different insertions with sports seem to have influenced the individual and collective formulations of Auguste Listello on the conception of sportive education he has developed at INS.

From the basilar ideas to the organization of EPSG

The debate, and the promotion of new ways of doing sports at school, were configured as a cultural practice in which subjects and institutions in their multiple movements allowed for the production of meanings for that encounter between sports and school. Amongst the experiences provoked by that new educational way of doing, INS and its teacher body have proven to precursors by elaborating a sportive education proposal already in the mid-1940.

The first publication, about the systematization of sportive education teaching of INS, was conveyed at the Journal Hèraclès in 1946. The article entitled La doctrine d’Èducation Sportive, written by Baquet, was divided into two issues of the journal - 1 and 2 - and aimed at presenting the basic foundations of the concept promised. According to Baquet, such elaboration arose from a request of the National Education Ministry, having as initial aim to promote sports in society:

In the light of the above, the Sports Director commissioned us to study, in accordance to the coaches of each sportive federation, a doctrine of sportive education addressed to the sportive societies and aiming at preparing sports by sports. […] It is about finding out what our teenagers are capable of practicing, apart from swimming and athletics, which are obligatory, an individual or outdoor sport, a collective and a combat sport. The project settled and experienced by [INS] includes two types of session:

1. One, a sportive education

2. The other, of training or sportive specialization (BAQUET, 1946b ⁵).

As a political motivation, the sportive education intended by INS also met the prerogatives of the General Director of Youth and Sports, linked to the Ministry, that verified certain deficiency in the training of the students of French schools related to the low insertion of youth in sportive practice. Therefore, the elaboration of that proposal was presented as a feasible experience given social, political, and cultural demands increasingly stronger in favor of sports in France. An analysis of the papers published by Listello and Baquet in the French journals, especially Cahier Technique et Pédagogique INS, Héraclès, Les Stagiaires, and Éducation Physique et Sports, allowed for the recognition of shades in the different stages of the construction of the basilar ideas of EPSG. Such publications put a set of pedagogical argumentation and formulation that seem fundamental to those scholars in evidence, both for its recurrence in the different papers and the way they were presented.

One of the recurring elements in their texts was the defense of the educative role of games and sports for the training of children and youth. The authors claimed that, if sports were worked coherently and directed by qualified professors, they could promote the “training of a balanced human being, harmoniously integrated to society,” by “acting subtly upon the body, the spirit and the personality” of children, youth, and also adults (BAQUET, 1947, p. 8, author’s emphasis). In this line of thought, the authors have shown concern in acting upon the education and children and youth embracing the “diverse manifestations of life and the individual is an integral manner” and not only from a limited vision to “technical and/or anatomical mastery” of their bodies. The sports’ training value presented itself from both a “physical” and “technical” point of view, and “social,” “intellectual” of training of the “personality” (BAQUET, 1946a). For such, they sustained the comprehension that sports are an import manifestation of collective life, could not be forgotten, and have its educational possibilities underestimate at the times and spaces related to Physical Education teaching.

An expression such as “Physical Education through sports” and “sports as training means” were representative of the announcement of the ideas of Listello and Baquet. Sports were not in themselves, in the authors’ proposition, the finality nor the absolute content of Physical Education. About that understanding, Listello has published a paper where he synthesized his main concerns and Baquet’s on the proposal elaboration and cleared a few questions that seem to have been put to them:

The exercises we prescribe are the result of experience and of a long observation of body labor in all its forms (physical education, maintenance gymnastics, and sports initiation). They are a synthesis of those different activities and mark an evolution that find, in fact, in many countries.

In other words, it is not new methods as a few have thought, but a wise utilization of old physical education systems.

Due to the appealing power sports exert on the youth’s spirts and also on adults’, we consider it both as an objective as a means; that is why we, as Mr. Baquet has put, want to win the minds of thousands of youths (boys and girls) to the practice of physical activities (LISTELLO, 1948, p. 19, our emphasis).

By seeing it as a synthesis, Listello has found a way of conciliating, proposing, and legitimating the premise that the different forms of body labor of Physical Education were insolvable parts of a whole. However, announcing games and sports as both objective and means was necessary to the project of incorporation of those practices to the daily life of children and youths for, consequently, turn it into a cultural practice imbricated in different social times and spaces. That implies considering EPSG more than a simple methodological convention for teaching sports. The proposal, which was meant to “win the mind of thousands of youths,” both boys and girls, can be read as one of the pillars of a persuasion process for habits change. That excerpt retakes the idea, announced by Dumazedier (1980) and other authors, of social training by sports. Taking that idea as a reference, the sportive practice becomes a part of a social education process, to the extent it grants access for a whole society to the import cultural elements for its dynamics. It would also serve as a starting point for different reflections, especially if such way of looking at sportive education begun in childhood and at the schools. Those debates are taken here as a convergence point between sociological vision and pedagogical vision of sports: changing the daily life, possibility for emancipation, collectiveness feeling, and education of the will. Both visions, from different but not contrary approaches, have announced educational possibilities capable of modifying habits and manners. For such, it was necessary to reformulate, in the more concrete plain, the didactical and methodological guidelines, considering the presence of sports as a possible way of doing Physical Education. The direction of that systematization of the teaching process took as reference the possibility of training citizens, of course, but emancipated ones, capable of action, of choosing, and a sense of collectiveness and solidarity. Ideas that associated discipline, civism, but also the will, conveyed by the will of acting in favor of something, which is collective. The new times required individuals capable of acting, and a conception of Physical Education that adopted the centrality of muscle strength and development, would not be possible to fulfill such objective, training only individualist subjects.

That was, in fact, one of the main arguments of the authors in favor of sportive education when compared to other teaching systems characterized by rigidity, obligatoriness of practice, and limited to the reproduction of body exercises that only aimed at physical development. After all, how could they train emancipated subjects if the educational systems constrained their training subjects all the time? In fact, for EPSG’s authors, the presence of games and sports in Physical Education classes was important, for it promoted teaching situations in which problems and difficulties could be overcome and also promoted learning opportunities that focused on the collective action for a common goal.

The characteristics usually associated with Listello and Baquet to give games and sport its potential as means of training were auto emulation, a way to fight against oneself, and completion, a way of fighting against one another. For those authors, the sportive initiation involved the learning of life since, like the games and sports, it comprises moments of fighting and coping with others and with oneself. The actions of comparing and concurring promoted by the sportive practice were, therefore, the basis for the knowledge of oneself and others. It was in those fight moments that impulses and instincts harmful to the social life could emerge, and thus, would be the role of the professor: to educate and discipline for a sound and honest completion (BAQUET, 1949a). In that sense, fighting against oneself and competition seem to have been inseparable elements for self-knowledge and self-restraint. Knowing oneself and others for controlling ones’ body, his action upon the world. A knowledge mediated by the teachers’ view and aesthetical. In that engendering, ways of acting and being in the world appear as places for educational action guided by and with sports.

To analyze the elaboration of EPSG, we also need to consider the lexicon, for it allows for thinking implications many times imperceptible to a careless reader. In that sense, it is essential to consider that a change of nomenclature does not assure, necessarily, an automatic change in the practices and significations, and the reciprocal is true, that is, the change of manners does not imply a change in nomenclature (BLOCH, 2001). However, in that case, the different names chosen to designate the INS proposal seem fruitful to thinking its role on the intern movement of the institution, through its subjects, and external to it, linked to a broader question in the area, as the debates with the defenders of gymnastics.

The designation of the “generalized” seems to dialogue with two questions dear to its authors. The first one is related to the criticism directed towards sportive education, especially those made by Hébert (1943) and his followers. Such contrary positions were based upon the specialization caused by sports. For them, sports were dangerous for it would lead to a specification of important movements to one or another sportive modality, causing motor fragilities in the general development of the body. According to the defenders of the body natural movement, understood as all movement that respects human anatomy and physiology, the sports movement would certainly space that concept, therefore, being harmful to man’s physical health.

The second question, which complements the first one, refers to the proposal structuration by teaching different sportive modalities, or at least by a set of sports that would develop several physical and technical qualities, characterized by them as basis sports. Even though they emphasize the preference for athletics and swimming, Listello and Baquet claimed that sports modality could be chosen from three groups: collective, individual, and combat sports (for boys) and rhythm (for girls). According to the authors, the sportive practice could and should be performed by children and youth of both genders, however, a few modalities, when worked at the stage of specialization, would not be indicated to the masculine or feminine gender. Despite that differentiation, the thematic of gender does not seem to have been a major concern of that proposal. In different publications, from papers to books, few times we can find didactical- methodological guidelines different for boys and girls. We can observer more significant differentiations concerning age and level of specialization of the sportive modality than related to gender. That choice would ensure not only a bigger variety of sportive gestures but also the possibility for the student to access different sports and, in the future, choose one to be specialized in, that would better fit him and gave him pleasure.

Thus, attention to the term “generalized” is given for the following reasons:

Sportive education must be done in its generalized initial form for two reasons:

1. It is necessary to begin with the different forms of exercise, for nobody know how the growth and morphological, physiological and mental evolution of each individual will be.

2. Besides, it is necessary to correct automatically by compensation and balance sports the adverse repercussion that can eventually be caused by the exclusive practice of only one sport (BAQUET, 1949b, p. 3).

The terms presented above and the delimitation of a generalized sportive education has proven to be contrary to a conception guided by the biological development of the body. The idea that “[…] it is necessary, to begin with, the different forms of exercise for nobody knows how will be the growth and morphological, physiological and mental evolution of each individual” (BAQUET, 1949b, p. 3), has organized a particular way of viewing the training of students for beyond the physical character. Even if thought from a repairing perspective, such sportive education, under the generalized form, has proven to be a pedagogical construction close to a broader vision of sports and of physical education itself.

Systematizing doing: teaching models, learning sessions, and work forms

Teaching models were devices recurrently used for the presentation of what would be a class structured under the INS guidance. From its content point of view, they were essentially descriptive and emphasized a pedagogical sequence directed by the technique of the specific movements of each sportive modality. By translating those ideas to the reader, the authors based on visual language. Each step of the class was presented along with descriptions of the exercises followed by its gestural representation, as can be seen in Figure 1.

FIGURE 1
- MODEL OF GENERALIZED SPORTIVE EDUCATION SESSION

The first part was denominated Mise en train (Warm-up), corresponds to those exercises considered by them as of hygienic effect: muscle, articular and nervous preparation; besides information the body, in a prudent manner, of the beginning of the exercise. The second part, called Assouplissement et Développment musculaire (Muscle Flexibility and Development), considered as a training part, consists of exercises of morphological effect, as well as those of muscle flexibility and toning. Agilité et Cran (Agility and Spunk), as the third part is called, is characterized by the effect on the character utilizing technical activities capable of developing a taste for risk, acquiring self-confidence, and mastery of the body. Finally, Applications Sportives (Sports Application), as the name implies, is intended for making games, individual, collective and combative sports, taking into consideration their competitive and leisure forms, presenting a collective emulation character (BAQUET, 1951, p. 14).

As a set, those four parts possessed a processual logic, being each one of them considered an important training dimension for teaching sports. In that sense, it is worth noting that the French tradition concerning gymnastic exercises was not necessarily abandoned but reconfigured, no more having in its horizon the learning of a corrective gesture, but learning the sportive gesture.

Both in the papers of a more conceptual character and the models of teaching sessions aired in the pages of those journals, it seems evident that the training promoted by INS authors emphasized the sports content from processes of technical learning. The idea of a progression of exercises throughout the session (or sessions) so that, by the end, the student could perform the right execution of the sportive gesture was important for the organization of the teaching. The fragmentation of the sportive gesture was considered by the EPSG authors as a simplified manner, though effective, of getting the students to “assimilate and make quick progress” in the learning of the different sportive techniques (LISTELLO et al., 1949, p. 14).

The “good learning” of the technique implied a “good preparation” for more complex forms of games and sportive physical activities. Moreover, the use of games and sports in the Physical Education classes promoted an education directed on the development of effort and taste, fundamental characteristics for the exercise of social life, according to those scholars. In that sense, technique joins two other elements: effort and social training, to compose the central body of the proposal. It is through those three characteristics that the authors believed that one would reach a full education, capable of “developing attitudes and habits” and of creating “good social and moral automatisms” (BAQUET, 1951, p. 152). Working with the idea of turning habits and attitudes automatic, be them social, moral, or corporal, the Physical Education proposal presented by them seemed to dialogue closer with the dimensions and with the training processes of sports, among them, the mastery of the technique, the efficiency of the gesture, the taste for effort and the work with and for the other. Such finding can be observed when the author signal that sportive initiation should propose the achievement, simultaneously or successively, of three work perspectives: the initiation to collective and social life, the initiation to the effort, and the initiation to technique.

The first one was focused fundamentally on the concepts of self-emulation and competition mentioned before. Under the professor’s direction, the sportive practice could develop a sense of collectiveness and cooperation, dear to live in a society. The second perspective, initiation to the effort, involved “prudent and progressive” work, concerned with developing “efforts” related to “dexterity, velocity, impulsion, flexibility, and coordination.” Such initiation, for the authors, was not addressed only to physical and physiological aspects, but also, of equal importance, to the training of the character, since “the fact of measuring oneself to others during the sportive competition” would cause the development of the “will,” of “discipline spirit” and of “decision.” Finally, in the third perspective, it was understood that, for the learning of technical gesture, the acquisition of technique through a work of “concentration, attention, and willpower” was needed.

Teaching the technique required “a lot of perseverance, patient, and tenacious effort,” instilling the youths “good technical principles” without necessarily, “demanding the ideal gesture of the champion” (BAQUET, 1951, p. 12).

Together, those three work perspectives aimed at arouse interest among the children and youths, creating the need and the habit of sportive practice. As Alexandre Vaz (2001) calls us to think, in modern society technique gains prominence for its role in the training of subjectivity and the incorporation of standards, like measures and criteria that guide social life. Maybe, the teaching of technique can be acknowledged in this conception of Physical Education as an efficient way of producing other ways of living in society, mediated by the idea of self-control as a condition for acknowledging and being with others.

There is a change of characters from 1954 on concerning EPSG structuring. After this year, Auguste Listello and a few collaborators, such as Roger Crenn and Pierre Clerc, took on once for all the role of structuring and divulgating EPSG in the form of journal papers and books. Maurice Baquet was dedicated to publishing papers related to sportive education without referring to EPSG directly. Among the issues 36 (1954) and 47 (1955) of the Cahier Technique et Pédagogique INS those two authors have continued to publish their ideas systematically: Baquet denominating his production as Éducation Sportive and Listello as Éducation Physique Sportive Generalisée.

Such reconfiguration of terms has not led, necessarily, to a total rupture with the theoretical framework elaborated, in large part along with Baquet, for INS physical education project. EPSG continued to defend a model for Physical Education close to Baquet’s propositions. What seems to have changed in those two authors’ production from then on was the organization of teaching. The proposal of sportive education was then developed by Listello and collaborators presented another classification of pedagogical procedures, denominated by them as “work forms,” that would allow the teacher to “enrich” his teaching by promoting an “analysis of advantages” and an “adaption” of the exercises according to the goal set for each content and each class (LISTELLO, 1955, p. 15).

That formatting of EPSG was presented in details in two books published collectively by INS professors under the coordination of Listello et al. (1956, 1959): Récréation et Éducation Physique Sportive, in 1956, and Récréation et Éducation Physique Sportive: orientation sportive, in 1959. Yet another book was published in collaboration with INS teachers, in 1964, entitled Éducation Physique pour tous.

In those works, the Physical Education teaching, based upon the presuppositions of sportive education, was organized in two big learning sessions: the first one, denominated general sportive education or educational, was considered the main form of organization of EPSG teaching at school. In that session, the teaching of different sports and games was made in lessons. Each lesson was composed of the sequence of activities mentioned before: Warm up; Flexibility and Strength; Agility and Spunk, and finally, Sportive Applications. The so-called “calm-down” and the measures for body hygiene were not obligatory components in the EPSG lesson but could be carried at the teacher’s will.

The first moment intended that the students get a general knowledge of all sports, without the worry of specializing in any of them. That was the focus of the second learning session. It was called sportive specialization, where was emphasized the technical and tactical aspects of each sport, being the student free to choose and get specialized at the one he was more interested in (LISTELLO et al., 1956). That moment would not occur, necessarily, inside the curricular program of the school. It could happen in other school times and spaces, or even outside the school, in clubs, for example. Thus, the authors drew attention to the continuous and broad character of their proposal for sportive education. After all, it could begin at the school, but should not end there.

For the composition of those two big learning sessions, EPSG presupposed different work forms, that as a set, could achieve the goals set, namely: game form, which implies freedom of action and competition; collective work form, which aimed at the sportive initiation or enhancement with the intervention of the professor; small groups work form, presupposes assistance, help, participation and cooperation among the members; individual work form, in which the student does the activity without the teacher assistance (LISTELLO et al., 1956). Those work forms organized the teaching of the groups of activities selected by EPSG, namely: recreational games; races and jumps; throws; agility; devices; team games with a ball; fight and strength; folklore; swimming; big outdoor activities. They also proposed that the physical exercises, until then obligatory in the school environment, begin to be made for pleasure, for thus the students’ experiences, needs, and interests would be taken into account.

In the book Éducation Physique pour tous, the authors have defined four fundamental points, which, according to them, all educators should take into consideration for their teaching work organization. The first one is related to all generalized physical activities every individual needs to live healthily; the second point refers to the particular needs provoked by the sportive specialization or by the physical state of each person, in the case of deficiencies; the third point is related to prevent harm; and finally, the fourth point concerns the recreational, complimentary or leisure activities while spending free time. The games and the sports activities, guided by such principles, were considered as the initial basis for the organization of work and as a source of balance for the modern man (LISTELLO; CLERC; CRENN, 1964).

Final considerations

In conclusion, we can infer that since its conception, EPSG was taken as a form of reconfiguration of other ways of doing Physical Education, reordering the structures and the practices that mold the teaching process and centralizing the role of games and sports for youth training. All that in response to a complex exercise of delimiting places and establishing new cultural and political practices, in which the adherence to sports by the school was gradually carried out and becoming accepted by French society. It need to train a population capable of dealing with the new times and the sports, both inside and outside school, presented the codes needed for that transformation.

The sources allow us to confirm that the elaboration of principles for a sportive education by INS was forged from the conjunction of inner motivations and other ones external to the institution itself. As a theoretical scope, the proposal was based upon the works of Maurice Baquet developed previously to his entrance at INS. In the continuum of the divulgation of EPSG, we can observe that the papers written by Baquet were characterized by a theoretical- conceptual explanation of what EPSG dealt with, discussing the role of sports for the training, the goals, and the educational achievements afforded by the sportive initiation in the education of children and youths. The publication of Listello, on the other hand, was directed towards the organization of work, to the presentation of models for teaching sessions and activities proper to each step of the class.

It is worth mentioning that sports were not by themselves, on those teachers’ proposition, the finality nor the absolute content of Physical Education. For them, the value of Physical Education at school, and in the society as a whole, was of a “body order,” that is, linked to its “functional, hygienic, and aesthetical” factors and sports entered in that perspective as a possibility to appeal and train, “for pleasure” and not “for duty”, the future citizens.

REFERÊNCIAS

• ARNAUD, Pierre. Pourquoi dit-on que le sport est éducatif ? Question d’actualité... question d’histoire... Trema, Montepellier, n. 08, 1995.
• BAQUET, Maurice. La doutrine d’éducation sportive. Héraclès, [s.l.], n. 01, 1946a.
• BAQUET, Maurice. La doutrine d’éducation sportive. Héraclès, [s.l.], n. 02, 1946b.
• BAQUET, Maurice. Le Sport et l’éducation sportive. Héraclès, [s.l.], n. 14, 1947.
• BAQUET, Maurice. Éducation Sportive. Premiere etape: l’iniciation sportive. Cahier Technique et Pedagogique INS, [s.l.], n. 3, mai/juin 1949a.
• BAQUET, Maurice. Caracteristics de la séance d’Éducation Sportive. Cahier Technique et Pedagogique INS, [s.l.], n. 06, nov./déc. 1949b.
• BAQUET, Maurice. Principes d’Education Physique Sportive Generalisée. INS, [s.l.], n.13, janv./févr. 1951.
• BLOCH, Marc. Apologia da história, ou, O ofício do historiador Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2001.
• CAHIER TECHNIQUE ET PEDAGOGIQUE , INS n. 1, 1947, p. 13-14.
• CHARTIER, Roger. A história cultural: entre práticas e representações. Lisboa: Difel; Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand do Brasil, 1990 .
• CHOBAUX, Jacqueline. Un système de normes pédagogiques: les instructions officielles dans l’enseignement élémentaire français. Revue Française de Sociologie, Paris, vol. 8, n. 01, 1967. (Numéro Spécial).
• DUMAZEDIER, Jofre. Olhares novos sobre o desporto Prefácio. São Paulo: SESC, 1980.
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• HÉBERT, Georges. Le Sport contre l’Education Physique 3e. éd. Paris: Librairie Vuibert, 1943.
• LEVET-LABRY, Eric. The Ecoles Normales Supérieures of Sports and Physical Education and the National Institute for Sport: comparative study of both institutions, from Vichy Regime to the creation of I.N.S.E.P. (1977). 2007. Thèse (Doctorat en History) - Université de Marne la Vallée, Champs-sur-Marne, 2007.
• LISTELLO, Auguste. Précisions sur la doctrine de l’éducation sportive. Héraclès, [s.l.], n. 26, juin. 1948.
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• LISTELLO, Auguste; CLERC, Pierre; CRENN, Roger. Éducation Physique pour tous Paris: Éditions Amphora, 1964.
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• TERRET, Thierry. Une histoire de l’éducation physique - 1880-2000. Enseignements primaire et secondaire. Revue Spirales, Lyon, n. 13-14, p. 337-363, 1998. Disponível em: Disponível em: http://epsetsociete.fr/IMG/pdf/-7.pdf Acesso em: 25 set. 2020.
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• 6
  Translated by Ernane Henrique de Oliveira. Email: [e-mail].
• 2
  The sources were accessed in the files of France National Library (BNG) and in the personal file of Professor Auguste Listello.
• 3
  I rely on Roger Chartier (1990) to think the concepts of representation and appropriation.
• 4
  Created in 1945, INS was held in the city of Joinville, close to ENSEPS for training of male professors. The Institute has inherited from the Collège National des Moniteurs et Athlètes both its physical structure and its staff. In its first conception, its main goal was the development of researchers focused on sports techniques, aimed at the enhancement and training of athletes. However, from the start, its actions surpassed its scope, seeking also to achieve the school system. That expansion allowed for, beyond its concern with the training of athletes, INS to dedicate to the elaboration of a conception of Physical Education, had had as guiding axis the teaching of sports.
• 5
  There is no page identification in the original publication.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  20 Aug 2021
• Date of issue
  2021

History

• Received
  02 Oct 2020
• Accepted
  06 Jan 2021