Training and Professionalization in the Education of Bodies at the Beginning of the 20th Century

Abstract

This paper is part of the Physical Education 5 course of the Physical Education Department of the Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences of the National University of La Plata (FaHCE-UNLP). The objective of this paper is to critical analyze the letter written by the then General Inspector of Secondary and Normal Education, Pablo Armando Pizzurno, to the Minister of Justice and Public Instruction of the country, Juan Eugenio Serú, on September 21, 1901, in order to make visible and problematize the meanings and discourses about what kind of knowledge and knowledge those in charge of educating bodies in schools should have, and consequently, how the training of Physical Education teachers should be. Training that until then was strongly influenced by the Army School of Gymnastics and Fencing. The hypothesis is that the letter reflects the demand of pedagogues, hygienists, physiologists and physicians to form a Physical Education at the service of the Nation. With science as a guarantor, the incipient professional and disciplinary training should, through a correct, methodical, scientific and hygienic application of natural exercises, prolong and regulate not only the individual life and body, but more than anything else the national life and body.