The Biggest Challenges of PE and Sport Development in a Changing Social and Cultural Context

In this article, I examine the concept of “changing social and cultural context” and its relation to physical education (PE) and sport development. The concern is that the technologic changes of our time are too rapid and our educational system seems to be unable to cope with them, especially from a PE perspective. The failure of PE system leads to “physical illiteracy” which is a major problem of our time, just like other major problems such as air pollution, global warming, discrimination, and poverty. In this article, it is shown that all these problems originate from the “gap between science and society” or better to say the “gap between application of technologic sciences and humanity sciences”. Technologic sciences are applied in industries as soon as they are developed and the productions of the industries find their ways to the market and the society within months or a few years, at most. But, the gap between pioneer humanity scientists (education, sociology, psychology, etc.) and their target population (Legislators, politicians, managers, … and ordinary citizens) seems to be tens of years. Consequently, it seems that the technology rapidly changes our instrumentation but we are unable to adapt our lifestyle to these big changes, as the eyes and ears are closed to humanity scientists who offer apposite cultural suggestions. In the industrialized world, evidences have revealed that a growing proportion of children and adults is physically, psychologically, and socially unhealthy. To overcome this challenge, pioneers of PE and exercise sciences have introduced the concept of “physical literacy” since 2001. They suggested that physical activity and exercise should be a vital and not a luxury part of the lifestyle. Physical Literacy can be described as the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge and understanding to value and take responsibility for engagement in physical activities for life. In Iran, we have given our children a ticket to failure, as they have no or a little physical literacy and we have done very little to overcome this deficiency in the educational system. I wish there are some ears out there to listen to this sincere call for a campaign for physical literacy.