Physical Education Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Idealism was developed by Plato.

Plato (about 427-347 BCE) held that true reality lies in unchanging ideas or Forms, of which the material world is only an imperfect copy. Ideas and the mind are therefore primary, which is the core of idealism; in education it stresses the development of mind, character and values, with physical education valued for building a sound body in the service of the mind.

Thomas Aquinas is associated with scholastic realism, Darwin with the theory of evolution by natural selection, and Maslow with the humanistic hierarchy of needs. None of them founded idealism.

Answer: D

The central theme of physical education is Man in motion.

Physical education is education through physical activity: it studies and develops the whole person, physically, mentally, socially and emotionally, through movement. Its subject is therefore neither movement alone nor the person alone, but the human being in movement, which is why textbooks describe 'man in motion' as its central theme.

Fitness is one outcome of physical education, not its whole theme. 'Man' alone leaves out movement, and 'motion' alone leaves out the person, as in physics or mechanics.

Answer: C

The LNCPE, Gwalior was established in 1957.

The Lakshmibai National College of Physical Education was set up by the Government of India at Gwalior in 1957, the centenary year of the 1857 uprising, and named after Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi. It later became a deemed university as the Lakshmibai National Institute of Physical Education (LNIPE).

1914 is the year the Hanuman Vyayam Prasarak Mandal was founded at Amravati, and 1920 the year the YMCA College of Physical Education opened in Madras. 1947 is the year of independence, not of the college's founding.

Answer: B

The President was John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy made youth fitness a national cause. Before taking office he wrote 'The Soft American' (1960), warning that American children were physically unfit, and as President he strengthened the President's Council on Physical Fitness and pressed schools to give children daily vigorous physical education. His campaign is the one standard histories of physical education credit with putting physical education into public school programmes.

Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan (printed 'Regan') and Bill Clinton came decades later, after physical education was already established in American schools.

Answer: D

The book was written by Weiss.

Paul Weiss, an American philosopher, published Sport: A Philosophic Inquiry in 1969. It is regarded as the first full-length philosophical study of sport, examining why people pursue athletic excellence, and it helped found the philosophy of sport as a field.

Charles Bucher is known for his textbook Foundations of Physical Education, not for this book. The other two names are not the authors of a philosophical inquiry into sport.

Answer: D

It happened at the Munich Olympics of 1972.

On 5 September 1972 members of the Palestinian group Black September broke into the Israeli team's quarters in the Olympic Village. They killed two members of the team during the break-in and took nine others hostage; all nine were killed during the failed rescue attempt at Furstenfeldbruck airfield.

Montreal hosted the 1976 Games, which were boycotted by many African countries; Moscow hosted the boycotted 1980 Games; and Mexico City hosted the 1968 Games. None of these was the scene of the attack.

Answer: B

The scheme began in 1953.

The Rajkumari Amrit Kaur Coaching Scheme was started by the Government of India in 1953, named after the then Union Health Minister who championed it. It provided trained coaches to raise the standard of sports in the country, and its coaching programme later passed to the National Institute of Sports, Patiala (1961) and then to the Sports Authority of India.

1952, 1954 and 1955 are near misses; the All India Council of Sports was set up in 1954, which is a common source of confusion.

Answer: C

The first gymnastic school is placed in Germany.

Modern gymnastics took shape in the German states in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Johann GutsMuths taught gymnastics at the Schnepfenthal school from 1786 and wrote the first textbook of gymnastics, and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn opened the first Turnplatz, an open-air gymnastic ground, in Berlin in 1811, founding the Turnverein movement.

France, the USA and China took up systematic gymnastics later; in the United States the German Turner movement itself brought gymnastics in the nineteenth century. Of the four options, Germany is the one where gymnastic schools began.

Answer: B

The National Plan was first formed in 1956.

The Central Advisory Board of Physical Education and Recreation drew up the National Plan of Physical Education and Recreation, published by the Ministry of Education in 1956. It set out the aims of physical education in India and laid down standards for the training of physical education teachers and for programmes in schools.

1947 is the year of independence, and 1914 and 1920 belong to the colonial period, when YMCA physical education work in India was beginning (the YMCA College of Physical Education, Madras, opened in 1920).

Answer: D

The code is a-2, b-1, c-4, d-3.

• 1936: Berlin, the Games of Jesse Owens's four gold medals.
• 1948: London, the first Games after the Second World War.
• 1980: Moscow, boycotted by the United States and many other countries.
• 1988: Seoul.

Los Angeles is a distractor in List-II; it hosted in 1932 and 1984, neither of which is listed. Option A gives 1936 to London, B gives 1948 to Moscow and C gives 1936 to Moscow, so only D is right.