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Exercise and education: facilities for the young female body in Scotland, 1930–1960

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 41; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0046760x.2012.745170

1464-5130

Eilidh Macrae,

Sports, Gender, and Society

Abstract This article uses testimony gathered from oral history interviews and contemporary physical education sources to explore the schooling of the young female body in Scotland between 1930 and 1960. It looks at the ways in which girls were educated about their own bodies and their physical capabilities at school, taking into account official understandings of the adolescent female body and how these may have affected girls' experiences of exercise. The article examines the ways through which girls negotiated the particularities of their adolescent female bodies throughout their exercise experiences, and specifically how they learned about and coped with menstruation and body changes. It argues that the school environment within which most Scottish girls would first have been exposed to exercise would hardly have been conducive to the formation of a healthy relationship between girls and their bodies. Keywords: bodyeducationadolescenceoral historyfemale Notes 1Jennifer Hargreaves, Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women's Sports (London: Routledge, 1994); John Welshman, 'Physical Culture and Sport in Schools in England and Wales, 1900–1940', International Journal of the History of Sport 15, (1998): 54–75; Kathleen McCrone, Playing the Game: Sport and the Physical Emancipation of English Women, 1870–1914 (Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1988); Charles Webster, 'The Health of the School Child During the Depression', in The Fitness of the Nation: Physical Education in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. N. Parry and D. McNair (Leicester: History of Education Society, 1983), 76–81. 2Sheila Fletcher, Women First: The Female Tradition in English Physical Education 1880–1980 (London: Athlone Press, 1984). 3Sheila Scraton, Shaping up to Womanhood: Gender and Girls' Physical Education (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992). 4David Kirk, Defining Physical Education: The Social Construction of a School Subject in Postwar Britain (London: Falmer Press, 1992); David Kirk, 'Physical Education: A Gendered History', in Gender and Physical Education: Contemporary Issues and Future Directions, ed. D. Penney (London: Routledge, 2002), 24–37; David Kirk, The Body, Schooling and Culture (Victoria: Deakin University Press, 1993). 5David Kirk, 'Gender Associations: Sport, State Schools and Australian Culture', International Journal of the History of Sport 17, no. 2 (2000): 49–64. 6Fiona Skillen, '"A Sound System of Physical Training": The Development of Girls' Physical Education in Interwar Scotland', History of Education, 38, no. 3 (2009), 403–18; Fiona Skillen, '"When Women Look their Worst": Women and Sports Participation in Interwar Scotland' (PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2008). 7Ibid. 8Edinburgh University Special Collections (EUSC) (currently not catalogued) Dunfermline College of Hygiene 1914–1936, Old Students Association, Dunfermline Physical Training College, 18th Annual Report: 1929–1930, 26. 9EUSC Dunfermline College of Hygiene 1914–1936, Old Students Association, Dunfermline Physical Training College, 20th Annual Report: 1931–32, 19. 10Ibid., 16. 11Kirk, 'Physical Education: A Gendered History', 25. 12Skillen, 'When Women Look their Worst', 17. 13S. Fletcher, 'The Making and Breaking of a Female Tradition: Women's Physical Education in England 1880–1980', in From 'Fair Sex' to Feminism: Sport and the Socialization of Women in the Industrial and Post-Industrial Era, ed. J.A. Mangan and R.J. Park (London: Frank Cass, 1987), 148. 14One such example was Flora Ogston, an upper-middle-class woman from Aberdeen, who attended Chelsea College of Physical Education from 1901 to 1903 but returned to Scotland to teach; I.C. MacLean, The History of Dunfermline College of Physical Education (1976), 34. 15National Archives of Scotland (NAS), ED71/23, Report of the Royal Commission on Physical Training in Scotland (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1903), 27–8. 16MacLean, The History of Dunfermline College of Physical Education, 34. 17Fletcher, 'The Making and Breaking of a Female Tradition', 148. 18Scraton, Shaping up to Womanhood, 13. 19Fletcher, 'The Making and Breaking of a Female Tradition', 147, 152. 20D. Kirk, 'Curriculum History in Physical Education: A Source of Struggle and a Force for Change', in Research in Physical Education and Sport: Exploring Alternative Visions, ed. A.C. Sparkes (London: Falmer Press, 1992), 221. 21J.A. Mangan and C. Loughlan, 'Fashion and Fealty: The Glaswegian Bourgeoisie, Middle-Class Schools and the Games-Ethic in the Victorian and Edwardian Eras', International Journal of the History of Sport 5, no. 1 (1988): 133–5. 22For discussion of the 'separate spheres' discourse see L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (London: Hutchinson, 1987); E. Gordon and G. Nair, Public Lives: Women, Family and Society in Victorian Britain (London: Yale University Press, 2003); M. Vicinus, ed., Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age (London: Indiana University Press, 1973). 23Mangan and Loughlan, 'Fashion and Fealty', 135. 24Fletcher, Women First, 16. 25Ibid. 26 St Leonard's School Magazine, 1920–1938 (St Leonards School Archive), in Skillen, 'When Women Look their Worst', 32. 27M. Treagus, 'Playing like Ladies: Basketball, Netball and Feminine Restraint', International Journal of the History of Sport 22, no. 1 (2005): 90. 28NAS, ED8/15, Report of the Third Advisory Council on Education in Scotland: Sub-Committee on Physical Education and Character Training in Schools (1932), 2. 29Ibid. 30'Anne', interview by the author, October 28, 2010 (all interviews were conducted in confidentiality and so pseudonyms have been used throughout). 31M. McCrae, The National Health Service in Scotland: Origins and Ideals, 1900–1950 (East Lothian: Tuckwell Press, 2003), 6. 32 Report of the Royal Commission on Physical Training (Scotland) (1903), Cd. 1507, in McCrae, The National Health Service in Scotland, 12. 33 Report of the Inter Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, 1904, Cd. 2175, in McCrae, The National Health Service in Scotland, 13. 34Skillen, 'When Women Look their Worst', 21–2. 35'School Medical Examinations, Scotland, 1929', Annual Report of the Department of Health for Scotland, 1929, in McCrae, The National Health Service in Scotland, 13. 36McCrae, The National Health Service in Scotland, 142. 37Ibid., 143. 38L.P. Jacks, 'The Liberal Education of the Body', Lancet, November 26, 1932, 1146. 39J. Stevenson and C. Cook, The Slump: Britain in the Great Depression (London: Longman, 2010), 53. 40Ibid. 41Stevenson and Cook, The Slump: Britain in the Great Depression, 53. 42'Bases of National Fitness', Lancet, November 21, 1936, 1219. 43For a full discussion of the national fitness campaign in Scotland see E. Macrae, '"Scotland for Fitness": The National Fitness Campaign and Scottish Women', Women's History Magazine (Spring, 2010): 26–36. 44R. Holt and T. Mason, Sport in Britain 1945–2000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 146. 45Skillen, 'When Women Look their Worst', 19. 46NAS GD1/1022/3, Association of School Medical Officers of Scotland, 'Minutes of Meeting 27th April 1929'. 47NAS CRE 3/1/3 Publications of the Scottish Council for Research in Education, Curriculum for Pupils of Twelve to Fifteen Years, 1931, Reprint no 8: Physical Education, 4. 48Ibid. 49Ibid. 50M. Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), 23. 51See for example 'President's address, delivered at The Fifty-fourth Annual meeting of the British Medical Association, Held in Brighton, August 10th–13th, 1886', British Medical Journal 2 (August 14, 1886): 296. 52'Education of the Body', Lancet, July 26, 1947, 139. 54 Curriculum for Pupils of Twelve to Fifteen Years, 1931, 6. 53See for example 'President's address, delivered at The Fifty-fourth Annual meeting of the British Medical Association'; 'Treatment of Cases of Abortion', Lancet, September 20, 1930, 654; 'Menstruation and Athletics', Lancet, February 13, 1932, 357–8. 55NAS ED/8/15 Advisory Council, Education Authority of Glasgow: Syllabus of Physical Training for Elementary Schools 1920. 56'Helen', interview by the author, May 18, 2010. 57Ibid. 58NAS ED/48/178 Health Education Curriculum, 'Speech Written for Mr Tom Fraser the Under-Secretary of State, 14/4/49', 2. 59NAS ED/48/178 Health Education Curriculum, Report of the Scottish Council for Health Education, Scheme of Health Education for Schools. 15/7/50. 61NAS ED/48/178, Health Education Curriculum, The Scottish Council for Health Education: Report of the Committee on Health Education in Schools (Edinburgh, 1950), 22–3. 60'Speech written for Mr Tom Fraser the Under-Secretary of State, 14/4/49', 2. 62Roger Davidson and Gayle Davis, '"This Thorniest of Problems": School Sex Education Policy in Scotland 1939–80', Scottish Historical Review 84, no. 2 (October, 2005): 221–46. 63 Scottish Council for Health Education: Report of the Committee on Health Education in Schools, 23–4. 64Ibid., 24. 65Ibid., 24. 66NAS ED/48/178, Health Education Curriculum, 'Report of the Scottish Council for Health Education, Scheme of Health Education for Schools. Report of Meeting with EIS Representatives, 15/7/50'. 67Davidson and Davis, '"This Thorniest of Problems"', 244. 69'Mary', interview by the author, May 20, 2010. 68'Speech written for Mr Tom Fraser the Under-Secretary of State, 14/4/49', 4. 74Ibid., 926–7. 70'Supply and Disposal of Sanitary Towels in Schools', Lancet, May 28, 1949, 925–7. 71'Supply and Disposal of Sanitary Towels in Schools', 926. 72Ibid. 73Ibid. 75'Helen', interview by the author, May 18, 2010. 77'Betty', interview by the author, May 17, 2010. 76Ibid. 80'Margaret B.', interview by the author, July 27, 2010. 78'Margaret H.', interview by the author, May 17, 2010. 79'Christine', interview by the author, July 2, 2010. 81See for example NAS, ED27 375, Assistance for Sport: Prototype Sports Centre, 1968–70, Bellahouston Sport Centre. 82'Linda', interview by the author, October 25, 2010. 83Davidson and Davis, '"This Thorniest of Problems"', 244.