The ymca and globalisation of pysical education

THE YMCA AND GLOBALISATION OF PYSICAL EDUCATION

In order to understand the role of the YMCA physical education, it is necessary to realise that it was not just one activity. Nor it was emphasising sports as an end itself. Physical education was one significant part of fulfilling the YMCA mission to serve the whole young man, his body, mind and spirit.

YMCA mission, in turn, was a reaction of evangelical lay Christianity to the challenges of the modernity, especially those that the growing middle-class faced. Many of the contemporary YMCA emphases were developed during the first decades of its existence and almost all the rest during the first hundred years of its history. The YMCA physical education is no exception. Therefore, it is necessary to focus first on the historical situations of the emerging movement².

Context of the YMCA

First YMCAs Before 1855

The YMCA was a child of modernism. The movement emerged in a situation where industrialism had caused an uncontrolled migration to towns⁵. The London YMCA was a typical peer-group of the time which aimed to solve the problems of its own constituency⁶. After its founding, the association spread quickly with the help of political attitude to solve social problems with philanthropic associations⁷. The speciality in the YMCA was the impact that arose from the interest of the growing business-class to utilise their entrepreneurial skills in the field of religion⁸. This, on one hand, gave YMCA the organisational skills that the new merchant-class utilised in their business. On the other hand, the middle class formed the growing adherency of the movement as well as clientele of its services. This created a solid economic basis that enabled long-term planning and growth of the movement⁹.

The YMCA emerged in the time that was characterised by betterment of communication channels - telegram, railway and steam ships. This increasingly helped associations in the new movement to keep touch with each other¹⁰. Along with industrialism, the prosperity in North America and Europe increased, and people got surplus money, which was partly directed to voluntary organisations as donations¹¹. the North American YMCA in particular took advantage of the ideology of Welfare Capitalism, which saw social service as the field of voluntary organisations¹².

Along with economic factors, there were five major cultural forces that have influenced the YMCA: urbanisation, expansion of education, Westernisation, its counter-effect indigenisation, and scepticism. The YMCA, primarily as urban movement, benefited from the migration that supplied it with a new recruit basis. When young people got the opportunity to educate themselves¹³, the YMCA used universities and schools as strategic points of recruiting new leaders and influencing the growing middle class¹⁴. On the international level, the trend of Westernisation paved the way for the YMCA when it extended to new countries. When the tide turned, the new YMCAs in these countries indigenised themselves and often managed to survive and expand. Finally, scepticism was a trend after the Second World War when the illusions of modern man’s development had vanished into the Holocaust of concentration camps. It was a time when traditional institutions had lost their strength to maintain social values. In this context, the YMCA was a perfect tool for middle-class to protect its traditional values.

The political emphasis on voluntary organisations as solvers of social problems in Britain, Germany and the USA helped the YMCA acquire legitimacy in these countries. When WW I broke, the YMCA was respected and ready to serve youth in armies, which, in turn, increased the legitimacy of the movement. After WW II, the YMCA war service organisation was modified to meet the next large challenge, that of refugees.

Religiously, the YMCA was a fruit of 19^th century revivalism. The Evangelical spirit remained in the YMCA during most of the period¹⁵ although there were already signs of separation when the YMCA developed its Four-fold Programme and started focusing on the service of the whole man¹⁶. Another movement, witch influenced in the YMCA, was the Muscular Christianity, which aimed to make religion more masculine¹⁷. This movement had a great impact on the development of the Four-fold Programme and YMCA physical education¹⁸. Third major input came from Social Gospel movement¹⁹ which influenced the YMCA by challenging it to study social problems and modify its policies. Other movements that had an impact on the YMCA were Sunday School Movement²⁰; Student Volunteer Movement²¹, which arose inside the YMCA and helped the movement to expand to new ‘unoccupied lands²²’; the Ecumenical movement; liberal theology²³ and the Missionary Movement²⁴. The YMCA was so intermingled with these movements that it is impossible to say where the chicken is and where the egg is. Their leaders, especially John R. Mott, were YMCA leaders as well.

Although Christian movement, the YMCA was free from the direction of church leaders and sought lay responses to the challenge of secularisation and secularist ideologies, especially those of Nationalism and Communism. This freedom enabled the YMCA to develop such new working methods which would have been difficult to launch in churches.

The YMCA leaders interpreted their environment and made strategic and tactical choices based on their deep values. A host of methods and activities were developed to ‘extend His Kingdom’, as the Paris Basis states. When time passed, these strategies and activities institutionalised, became ends in themselves and the YMCA had to continuously question itself: where is the ‘C’?