Sport, Health and the Body in the History of Education

Historians in recent years have paid considerable attention to sport and leisure in the past, and historians of education are no exception. The chapters in this book showcase the breadth and depth of scholarship in this area, bringing new perspectives to bear on the history of physical education in several different European countries. Ranging from schoolgirl cricket in early postwar England to the varying approaches to physical education in the nineteenth-century Netherlands, the contributions all emphasise the importance of physical education to wider conceptions of education for citizenship. A number of chapters tackle issues in gender history, while others focus on the effects – often unintended – of policy-makers and the conflicts that could arise from the imposition of new physical education curricula. Covering England, Scotland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Greece, this book features the work of both established and emerging scholars, and is an important contribution to the historiography of both education and sport.

This book was originally published as a special issue of History of Education.

Mark Freeman is a senior lecturer in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Institute of Education, University of London. He is currently the co-editor of History of Education, and has published widely on many areas of modern British social, educational and business history. He is currently working on a collaborative AHRC-funded project entitled ‘The Redress of the Past: Historical Pageants in Britain 1905-2016’.