| This project traces the connection between social studies curriculum and coaching, and explores how history, social studies, and athletics at the secondary school level grew from the rhetoric of classics and statesmanship in the early nineteenth century into the pedagogy of citizenship and democracy during the Progressive era in early twentieth century. This project also explores how the Cold War and the passing of the National Defense Education Act in 1958 deemphasized social studies as a curricular priority in schools and created a space for the coupling of social studies, coaching, and athletics.;Thomas Arnold introduced both a history curriculum and an athletic program into the Rugby School in England during the early nineteenth century to focus on preparing aristocratic and middle class boys to become bourgeois "states-men." To further train statesmen in the values of selflessness and service, Arnold added athletics to the school curriculum, specifically Rugby football, as a character-building measure that put Arnold's ideal of classical virtue into practice. I also argue that American Progressive pedagogues of the early twentieth century also used both social studies and athletics for civic purposes. These reformers, including John Dewey, Luther Gulick, and James Naismith, adapted the idea of statesmanship to that of citizenship, thereby making athletics and social studies classrooms modes of assimilation. While Dewey focused on participatory democracy within a social studies classroom, encouraging students to work together and build community, Gulick and Naismith argued that the playgrounds and athletic fields also developed citizenship through teamwork and cooperation, focusing on the game of basketball.;Finally, the Cold War changed conceptions of citizenship while new perceptions of athletics radically shifted the purpose of athletics and the job of a coach. As both social studies and athletics endured changes, a new image of coach emerged: grounded in competition and technical skill, the goal of the coach was to win first, and foster good citizens or "states-men" second. Bobby Knight, the legendary coach of Indiana University, embodied this development. This image of the teacher-coach still permeates today. |
