Early 20th Century World War 1 to Golden 20’s

In the early 20th century, Jessie Bancroft and Elizabeth Burchenal stressed the
mportance of intramural games rather than interscholastic competition for girls.
Most institutions of higher learning provided some program of gymnastics for their
students and sports, athletics and team games became more important.

Jessie Hubbell Bancroft (1867-1952)

was an American educator, a pioneer of physical education and a founder and a

president of the American Posture League.She was born in Winona, Minnesota and
was exposed to the Delsarte System of Physical Culture while studying at Winona
Normal School
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During 1893-1903 she was Director of Physical Training of the Brooklyn Schools and
from 1904 until retirement in 1928 she was Assistant Director of Physical Education
of the schools of Greater New York City. She was an author of many professional
publications on posture, including her insightful 1913 book, The Posture of School
Children, as well as other literature on physical education.

Thomas Denison Wood (1699 – 1765)

Born in Leeds, a city in West Yorkshire, England). Denison's father William was a
clothier described as "an opulent merchant at Leeds". Denison, the younger of two
sons, was educated at the Leeds Grammar School, and entered the Inner Temple in
1718 to receive his legal education; he was thereafter called to the bar.

He was successful as a lawyer, and in December 1741 he was appointed to succeed

Sir Francis Page on the Court of the King's Bench, taking office on 16 February
1742. He served in that capacity for over twenty-three years, under chief justices, Sir
William Lee, Sir Dudley Ryder, and Lord Mansfield, resigning on 14 February 1765
on the account of poor health and failing eyesight

Clark W. Hetherington (1870-1942)

As a pioneer in the American play movement, Dr. Clark W. Hetherington was a

philosopher, teacher, and physical education administrator at the university, state,
and national levels. Dr. Hetherington believed that “Play is the central element in the
scheme of human nature that makes volition possible... Without play man is
inconceivable; play makes volition and rational living possible. There is no meaning
to the phrase 'mere play,' for play is the most important activity in life.”
Earning a bachelor’s degree in Education from Stanford University in 1895, Dr.
Hetherington continued to assist in the university's Physical Training Department for
the next year. He moved from Stanford, California to be the Director of Physical
Training at the Whittier Reform School, which at that time was just outside of Los
Angeles. For two years Dr. Hetherington, in the words of a contemporary Dr.
George J. Fisher, “organized the play of the inmates, the first time such a thing had
 been dreamed of in a reformatory. His work had a profound effect both upon the
boys and upon the institution

Burchenal, Elizabeth (1876–1959)

Elizabeth Burchenal was born in Richmond, Indiana, in 1876, the second of six
children, to Judge Charles Burchenal and his wife, Mary. She was educated in the
Richmond public schools and attended Earlham College in Richmond as a "Day
Dodger," received her A.B. degree in English Literature in 1896, studied at the
Sargent Normal School of Physical Education (later affiliated with Boston
University), and graduated in 1898. She taught in Chicago and New York and
studied at the Gilbert Normal School of dancing.

In 1903, she became an instructor of physical education at Teachers College,

Columbia University, where she introduced folk dance into the curriculum. While
there, her childhood interests in people from other countries took her into the many
foreign settlements in New York City, which she found to be rich sources of
folklore. Through her friendships with people from other countries, she constantly
added to her store of knowledge about their lives, their music, and their dances. She
left Teachers College to become Executive Secretary to the Girls' Branch of the
Public School Athletic League

Rosalind Frances Cassidy (1895 – 1980)

Cassidy began teaching physical education courses at her alma mater, Mills College,
immediately after graduating. She was also an assistant to the college's president,
Aurelia Henry Reinhardt. She became head of the physical education department in
1923,and convenor of the School of Education and Community Services.Following
in her mentor Elizabeth Rheem Stoner's footsteps, she promoted modern dance at
Mills; she recruited Hanya Holm, Tina Flade, and Marian van Tuyl to teach at Mills
in the 1930s, and she directed summer arts programs for dancers, writers, musicians,
and visual artists.

Cassidy became a professor at UCLA in 1947. There, she taught physical education
courses, and guided the merging of the men's and women's physical education
programs into one department of kinesiology, the name she preferred for her
field.She retired from UCLA in 1962. She gave an oral history interview to UCLA in
1967

World War I (1916 to 1919)

Although sports and military preparedness have been intertwined throughout human
history, armed combat between 1916 and 1919 made federally financed sports and
athletics central components of morale and military preparedness for the first time in
American history. American soldiers had participated in various sports and athletic
contests between the Civil War and World War I, but no formal policy existed and
few commanders were interested in promoting an athletic component as an antidote to
saber exercises, revolver practice, line skirmishes, and mounted drills. By the turn of
the twentieth century, a new generation of officers maintained that physical training
should precede all specifically military activities—an idea incorporated in the
mandatory physical training regimen instituted by Lieutenant H. J. Koehler of West
Point. Prior to World War I, surveys reported that between one-third and one-half of
all military recruits were physically unfit; military leaders and physical educators
waged prewar preparedness crusades that linked the strenuous life to military
readiness, patriotism, manliness, morals, honor, ethnic assimilation, and national
physical vitality.

Golden Twenties (1920-1929)

Move away from formal systems of gymnastics toward games, sports, and valuable
recreation and leisure time. “New” physical education emphasized contribution to the
total development of the individual; “education through the physical” vs. “education
of the physical”.
More games, sports, and free play became popular during this period. Measurement in
physical education was emphasized as a means of grouping the students, measuring
achievements, and motivating performance. Programs of physical education and
sports continued to expand in schools and colleges. Elementary school and secondary
schools PE program stressed formal activities; periodic lectures on hygiene were
added in the secondary schools