Physical Education and Value Diversity: A Response to Andrew Reid

In a series of recent papers in the European Physical Education Review Andrew Reid has argued that contemporary discussion of the educational value of physical education has been seriously impeded by a tangle of educational philosophical mistakes - concerning the nature of physical activities and education in general — central to which has been conflation of distinctions between the theoretical and the practical and the educational and the non-educational. Drawing upon a remarkable range of recent work in analytical philosophy, he has argued in an interesting and original way for a 'value-pluralist' account of the educational significance of physical activities which might aspire to by-pass some of these difficulties. However, to whatever extent Reid may have succeeded in exposing some of the inadequacies of post-war conceptual analyses of physical education, I argue here that his own account is equally if not more problematic not least insofar as it inclines to an equally fatal blurring of the indispensable distinction between what is and what is not of educational value.