Physical Education and Social Transformations in the World which is coming: Welfare state, collective well-being and selective habitus (1945 - 1979)

We enter the binary world of the post-war period. Democracy is put to the test. The United States defines the international order. The “Thirty Glorious”. From decolonization to the North-South divide. The dispute flourishes in the world. Slow disintegration of the Soviet bloc.

The welfare state is taking shape. It is a culmination of social struggles. A compromise between the forces of capital and labor. Redistribute productivity gains. Income inequality is decreasing. The standard of living is rising in Western countries.

The 50s and 60s are prosperous. The welfare state regulates production and seems to guarantee growth. It finances infrastructure for industrial development. The labor force flows from the countryside and the Southern countries. 

The apparent mastery of the economy legitimizes an ambitious and costly social policy. The state is supposed to advance socialization. Providence is foremost a system of supervision and integration of the working class. Economic growth increases social consumption: education, public health, housing, sport.

To socialize the masses, the welfare state defines sports policies that structure physical education. Undercover of democratization, sport is a tool of political and social reproduction. Three examples.

Germany, on the ruins of the Reich. Federal Republic and Democratic Republic oppose. Forty years of crises. Wall construction. Clash between the victors of Nazism. Threats to world peace.

On both sides, social structures organize cognitive ones. State versus civil society. Democratic Centralism versus Decentralization. Control versus autonomy. 

In sport victory versus participating. Leipzig versus Cologne. The confrontation is measured by the number of medals won at the Munich Games. On the stadium the war is far from cold.

After the war, France is growing. Full employment. Social conquests. The standard of living is progressing. Baby boom. Large housing estates are invading the suburbs. The youth revolts. Women conquer their rights.

The sporting practice is juvenilized and feminized. The state is committed to sport. Law of equipment. Sports in the programs. A sport doctrine.

Pierre Seurin is President of the FIEP during the 1970s. Previously, he promoted a methodical physical education which summarizes the 1960s. It opposes massive sportivisation. The controversy helps to grasp the expected social transformations.

1950. Swedish gymnastics, natural method, English games and sports. Seurin overcomes the diversity of systems. He changes the cognitive structures. Gymnastics and sports are only means. Basic qualities versus technical acquisitions. Sports education, elsewhere than at school.

Sportivisation intervenes in this context. In de Gaulle's France, democratization of school. Heterogeneity because massification. Sport as tool of equality. Unique objects of education, sports become structuring.

The bet is ideological. The high-level elitist culture serves as a reference. The government promotes the accession of the masses to sport. Everyone must develop their maximum potential.

Teaching changes. A sports lesson, modelled on federal practices. The class is organized in sports clubs. Sport initiation phase to detect. Values of competition and performance. But also solidarity, and equality. Bodies evaluated according right gestures.

Sportivisation creates a break. Cognitive structures are upset. Sportsman versus student. Specialization versus eclecticism. Performance versus mastery.

The cognitive break reinforces social structures. Teachers are seduced. Sport is the missing link between school and a political project of social transformation. Social practices entered the school.

The sportivisation of physical education is paradoxical. Selected tool of democratization, sport was a factor aggravating the inequalities. Uniformity of the sport model. Emphasis on natural differences. Low consideration of social and gender differences of students. Discipline transformations relay societal ones. At stake, the lack of teaching content coherent with democratization objectives.

There is no time to tackle other controversies. Mérand versus Parlebas. Techniques versus motor situations. Sports didactics versus motor praxeology. This will be exported to other countries. In Spain, in Argentina. Like Le Boulch, Pick, Vayer exported psychomotricity to Mexico.