Reginald Roper and the Secondary Schoolmasters’ Physical Education Association: physical literacy for the whole man, 1905–1939

ABSTRACT Reginald Roper (1875–1950) was the first British schoolmaster to train at the Royal Central Gymnastic Institute in Stockholm. This essay traces his career at Eton College and Bedales School before examining his seminal book, Physical Education in Relation to School Life. Roper was the leading light of the Secondary Schoolmasters’ Physical Education Association (SSPEA), founded to match the women’s Ling Physical Education Association. The SSPEA worked with the Board of Education to provide courses and conferences, and it published lectures, pamphlets and books. Support for the association was secured from leaders in universities, schools, medicine and government; and regular advocacy in national newspapers brought the need for properly qualified physical education teachers for boys to an influential readership. The repeated call for a men’s college to match the women’s colleges was answered in 1933 with the opening of Carnegie Physical Training College. The contribution of Roper and the SSPEA to physical education is properly acknowledged by McIntosh (1952/68) and Smith (1974) in their text-books but a search of the literature has revealed neither an extended analysis of their work nor a modern assessment. This essay celebrates the creation of a physical education tradition for boys.