Reviving The Presidential Fitness Test Will Help Shape Better Citizens

Late last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order re-establishing a program that some people remember fondly, others not so fondly: the Presidential Fitness Test.

According to the White House, the order directs the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition “to create school-based programs that reward excellence in physical education and develop criteria for a Presidential Fitness Award,” and further “reestablishes the Presidential Fitness Test, which shall be administered by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.”

The order caused some minor controversy, particularly among those for whom, as the New York Times noted, the test’s resurrection “revives painful memories.” But the order also occasions reflection on the role of physical fitness in the education of an American citizen.

Those who most openly speak of fitness and politics today are often part of the New Right’s “vitalist” movement, engaging with the works of Bronze Age Pervert and other internet “anons” with statue profile pictures.

But there is no reason these “pajama-boy Nietzscheans” need to monopolize the conversation. Amid an ongoing national conversation around civic education for citizenship in the American republic, there are plentiful resources from the classical and American traditions to help us recover the place of fitness in education.

Those who read the history of political and philosophical thought on education today are likely to be struck by the strong and repeated emphasis on physical education. Plato’s Republic famously outlines a program of education in both “gymnastic” and “music,” that is, both physical and intellectual arts. Aristotle praises the Greek city-states for providing for the physical education of their young men in state-sponsored gymnasiums.

Another example of this emphasis on physical education comes from Xenophon, in a section often quoted loosely among fitness influencers. In his Memorabilia, Xenophon portrays Socrates going about his life in Athens, questioning his fellow citizens in short dialogues.

In one memorable portion, Socrates confronts his friend Epigenes, accusing him of being an “amateur” in physical matters — that is, Epigenes has grown pudgy. Epigenes defends himself by saying that he is an amateur; that is, he is not an athlete preparing to compete in the Olympics or any other competition, so he has no calling to physical excellence.

Socrates’ rebuttal to Epigenes takes two distinct approaches. The first is one that we might call civic or republican: Socrates asks Epigenes if he will be physically ready to fight, should Athens be invaded. Here, Epigenes is asked to feel shame at the possibility that he could not protect his homeland and his fellow citizens because of his physical condition.

But the second part of Socrates’ argument is more democratic. Instead of appealing to the duties of a citizen, Socrates argues that being physically fit is just good for an individual. Whether someone is pursuing hobbies or work, intellectual or physical activity, having a body in good shape rather than poor shape is an aid.

This argument is not just a historical curiosity, relevant only for those under threat of invasion in premodern city-states. Being physically fit is both good for those who might need to do the physical duties of citizenship, including military service, and good for those who engage in quite literally any other activity.

In American history, we can see similar threads of the civic and the individualistic concerns around physical fitness. Thomas Jefferson, for example, regularly praised and engaged in moderate physical activity, encouraging his nephew Peter Carr to devote two hours each day to exercise, “for health must not be sacrificed to learning.”

Benjamin Franklin offered his own endorsement in his “Proposals Relating to the Education of the Youth in Pennsylvania,” suggesting “That to keep [the young] in Health, and to strengthen and render active their Bodies, they be frequently exercis’d in Running, Leaping, Wrestling, and Swimming, &c.”

It may be that the hardy, challenging life in the early American republic encouraged a level of general fitness. But as time marched on and economic circumstances changed, Americans grew more sedentary and less fit as a baseline. President Theodore Roosevelt confronted this in very intentional efforts to publicly encourage physical fitness.

In the wake of the Korean War, military officials raised concerns about the poor fitness of those drafted into service. Scientific studies published around that time reflected poorly on the physical state of young people in America and around the world.

In response to these concerns, President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, & Nutrition in 1956, the body that later administered the famed Presidential Fitness Test. This test was used as both a measuring tool and an aspiration, later introducing an award for the highest performers in certain physical feats.

Over time, the fitness test itself was democratized, with marketing under the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations aimed at encouraging students to engage in at least some level of physical activity every day and providing awards for consistency rather than excellence. Eventually, the award for excellence was completely excised, and the leveling of the program was complete.

The efforts to democratize fitness among the young have at the very least been unable to keep up with a rising tide of obesity. In other words, while the lowered standards of the fitness test may not be causally to blame for decreasing fitness and increasing fatness, the efforts to get more children more engaged in physical activity at some bare minimum level have not been effective at encouraging or maintaining fitness.

But the concern of those who have historically championed physical education as a crucial component of a complete curriculum is not with bare fitness itself, but rather with the virtues inculcated in those who participate in physical activities, especially competitive and cooperative sporting events.

As an example, take a 1941 article in The Clearing House, “Physical Education: Opportunity for Teaching Citizenship,” wherein a school principal reports on an observation of a gym class and a conversation between a gym teacher, history teacher, and their supervisor.

In the gym class, the young boys were given a ball and left to their own devices. In time, they formed teams, developed rules, and began playing a quite successful game, even refereeing their own violations of the rules. This, the gym teacher explains, is designed to teach civic virtues of leadership, cooperation, rule-following negotiation, and more. The history teacher and the gym teacher come to agree that truthfully, they aim at the same thing in their respective classrooms: forming good citizens with virtues that will fit them for that citizenship.

Things have changed. The author of a 2006 study of contemporary physical education proudly announces that older, competitive games have been replaced with more cooperative games that teach virtues including “honesty, kindness, generosity, freedom, equality, and respect.” Lost in this list are those virtues distinctly physical, martial, or civic.

Similarly, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee recently reported on a “listening session” with physical education “experts,” noting that “throughout the session, there was an overarching focus on equity.” Calls for excellence seem to have been replaced with calls for equity without clearly discernable benefits to physical fitness.

This is not to naively glorify all forms of older, more “traditional” physical education. Undoubtedly the gym classes of the mid-20th century left much to be desired. It is, however, to say that there is room to consider how we can call democratic citizens to physical excellence, and the past gives us ample examples for study.

In engaging in “discourse” around the topic of fitness, one risks falling into step with a host of loud public voices making quite different sorts of arguments. But those engaged in the education of the young need not abandon the topic of physical excellence to the vitalists and “Perverts” who have claimed it.

The tradition that gave rise to the American republic, the tradition within which students will be educated should they be given what can properly be called a “civic education,” gives grounds to call young people to physical excellence as a democratic virtue. Such a project would require reform at both the intellectual and curricular level, first in thinking anew of the purpose and place of physical education within a broader educational project, then in restructuring what sort of physical education is offered in service of those aims.

Philip D. Bunn is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where he teaches political theory and American politics.