In 1961, President Kennedy declared physical fitness to be a national priority. He urged all schools to create fitness programs. This was one of the advertisements for the program.
The schools took immediate action. In honor of President Kennedy’s challenge, the high school age students from the army base I lived in at the time walked en masse to their school in Las Cruces, 45 miles away. The younger kids went to school on the base, so we did not participate in that walk; but I remember feeling so excited about it. Our president wanted us to be healthy and he was showing us the way!
When I watched this video two years ago, I was struck by how thin we were during those years.
As I was putting together this post, a friend told me about a video of a boys high school physical education class in the 60’s.
I wonder what school physical education programs look like in 2016.
Written for Challenge for Growth Prompt #12: Honoring My Body
Living, Learning and Letting Go 
Just had a discussion about this with 10 year old Luca. Phys Ed is his favorite class but to be able to take it he had to jump through many hoops!!! Wait, WHAT??!!
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I’m glad he is taking it, hoops or not.
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🙂 I tried it. Did it work?
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Yes!
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I may share this on my fb page. My son is a physical education teacher.
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I am fascinated every time I see these videos. It has been decades since PE has been like that, I assume. I believe it is not even required in most of the U.S.
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I wonder what they would look like as well. I don’t remember much about PE in elementary except for playing dodge ball. I liked that one. In Jr. High and High School, it was then the 70’s and we spent most of the period (40 minutes) playing some kind of sport, and the exercise mats. Those guys in those videos look like they are doing PT in boot camp! I know because I went to boot camp in Orlanda, FL, during the months of July and August. We did it outside in the heat.
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Yes, it looked very much like boot camp in the video. Someone that saw it said they were preparing the high schoolers for the Vietnam War but that seems too early for that.
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No, I don’t actually think it was too early, as the Vietnam war was mostly in the 60’s.
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That’s true…. yes they must have been getting the male students ready for the war.
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