Research On Thomas Arnold's Sports Education Thought

The period,lasting from the late 18th century to the early 19th century,is a revolutionary stage in the British history.In this period,along with the completement of the industrial revolution and the uprising of the social state of the bourgeoisie,they strongly blamed the British educational system which fell far behind the social economic development,and tried to be independent from the public education governed by the aristocracy with the economic advantages they have gained.Furthermore,the old public education,which has been existing in Britain for several centuries,was facing unprecedented crises because of the old education courses,low entrance ratio,the immorality and low physical conditions of the students,as well as the mushrooming of the bourgeois school.It was during this period that Thomas Arnold began to accept the Rugby School.As a sincere Christian as well as an admirer to the ancient Greeian and Roman culture,he proposed to strengthen the Christian moral among the students in order to solve the problems in the royal schools.Regarding that the modern sports,which newly emerged in the European continent and had spreaded to Britain as a good tool to promote the christian educational thought,based on the theories and practices of the past and contemporary sports thinkers,he proposed his sports educational thoughts in the reform of the Rugby schools and put them into practice.After gaining a complete success,a great number of his sports educational thoughts had been brought into the reforms of lots of Britain Public Schools and finally been spreaded to other parts of the world through related research and also by the graduates from the Rugby School.This paper can be devided into the following six parts:The first part introduces the background of Thomas Arnold's physical education condition,the development of modern sports and the crises of the public school system in Britain during the period from the late 18th to the rarly 19th century in order to analyze the objective courses of the birth of Arnold's physical education thought.The second part studies the root of Arnold's thought.Since Arnold is both a Christian and an educational reformer,his physical education thoughts inherited those of the past religions and sport thinkers,which is the subjective causes of the birth of his thoughts,namely the selectivity.The third part introduces the main contents of Arnold's thoughts based on the first two parts and discusses the disputed problem in the domestic research field. The forth part points out the main characteristics of Arnold's thoughts according to the analysis of the contents and the background,especially the core problem—religiousm.The fifth part introduces the influence of Arnold's thoughts to modern Europe as well the world,introducing the influence to his oldest son,British educationer Mathew,the graduate from Rugby School,Hughes—the writer of"Tom Brown's School Days","Father of the modern Olympics"—Coubertin,and also the Muscular Christianity Movement prevciling in the 19th and 20th centuries in Britain and America.The sixth part makes a brief conclusion of this research.