Exercise - the West Indian experience: Position Statement

ABSTRACT

The west Indians have a sports heritage which we must protect and enhance. Sports is considered a part of education. Many of us in the caribbean either studied physical education or played some sport in England. therefore, our programmes in physical education and sports are originally patterned on the British. In 1944, two supervisors of physical training, Mr. I.G.P. Hugh and Miss Bach from Great Britain, were provided under the colonial Development and Welfare Act for the improvement and modernization of physical training throughout the schools in Jamaica. The then Director of Education, Mr. B.H. Easter, organized a conference of heads of training colleges with a view to drawing up a programme for physical training in the teacher training colleges. Subsequently, in-service training courses in physical training were conducted at various centres throughout the island and syllabuses for infant, lower middle and upper divisions, as they were then called, were compiled and distributed to the infant and elementary schools for the guidance of teachers. These syllabuses were based on the historic 1933 syllabus of physical training in England. At the expiration of the contracts two supervisors, a male and a female, were appointed to continue the programme in Jamaica. The curriculum then consisted of physical exercises, cricket, netball, major games, athletics and some folk and country dancing. By the early fifties, in-service teachers were being awarded scholarship annually to pursue one year supplementary courses in physical education under the British Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme. One such teacher was hired by the Ministry of Education as an Education Officer for physical education in 1956. since then, the scope of physical education has been widened and it now embraces a comprehensive range of physical activities including movement education, educational gymnastics, games (major and minor), athletics (i.e. track and field), dance (modern, educational, folk, etc.), aquatics (swimming and life saving), camping and hiking.(AU)