Frances Kellor's Basketball Lesson

This blog post will illustrate one use of the "Essential Questions" handout in the Lesson Plans section of www.franceskellor.com.  We will use the "Essential Questions" handout to discuss the 1903 article "Girl Students Find and Esthetic Side to Physical Exercise."  This can be found in the Articles section of www.franceskellor.com .  And it includes a very handsome photo of Kellor!

This article lists Kellor as an Instructor in Physical Culture at the University of Chicago.  Today, we call this position a Coach of Physical Education or PE Coach.  Coach Kellor pushed the phrase physical culture because she believed that sports contained cultural lessons that could remake society.  In particular, she thought that sports could help women become more active in the public arenas of commerce and politics.

But with this exercise, we are to simply look at the evidence in the article to answer one of the Chapter Two "Essential Questions" found at the Kellor site and here. For this exercise we'll choose "2) In what ways do sports change men and women's character?  What are the possible moral implications?  If sports can influence character, does this give validity to critics of women's basketball such as Coach Hill?"  In class you could discuss such issues with your fellow students and make a poster for a presentation of your findings.  

In my reading of the article, Kellor says "Yes" to the idea of changing men and women's character.  Sports, she tells us, make everyone "harmonious."  But they only make women "artistic."  Her sports friends agree and call this artistic value "aesthetic."  What does aesthetic mean?  Well in this case, it means that sports make women carry themselves and present themselves in a certain way.  It is close to the word "decorum."  In this context, what does Kellor's photo tell you about her aesthetic?  

Some clues help us answer the second part of "Essential Question 2," about moral implications.  Coach Kellor says that sports teach both men and women the social value of being harmounious.  They encourage both strong individual effort and "machine like teamwork."  So if everyone in society did sports, Coach seems to imply that we'd be both stronger individually and learn how to work together better.  We'd be efficient socially. 

The last portion of the question requires some background knowledge.  Coach Hill helped Kellor start the Cornell rowing team.  But she thought basketball, in particular, made women too "masculine."  If we accept Kellor's argument that sports change women, could sports change people in both a good and a bad way?  I think Kellor pushes for a feminine aesthetic decorum to fight off the bad influences sports could have.  What do you think people of 1903 might have thought these were.

Herein, I have come to the end of my ability to carry out this lesson plan in isolation.  To really explore the current and historical impact of sports, I need a classroom of people to discuss ideas with.  Until that happens, I would settle for some thoughtful comments on this blog post.  And, I hope this article has helped you see how you could use Kellor in your own classroom.

Frances Kellor, Citizenship, and Me

I just finished writing my newest book, Founding Mother: Frances Kellor and the Quest for Progressive Democracy.  And the end of this book has occasioned some personal philosophical reflecting. You see, Frances Kellor argued that citizenship required political participation.  Personally, she dedicated her life to designing and implementing social reform.  And, I have lived by these precepts too. But my friends just want to have fun.  Is that okay?

In some ways circumstances call me to action.  If your neighbor’s house were on fire, would you not feel compelled to act?  Well, I believe the nation is going up in flames.  Therefore, I am compelled to act.  Kellor’s impoverished upbringing likely led to her making her first two books about defending exploited women.  My sense of emergency and her despair over injustice provide legitimate motives to social action.

Kellor implicitly denigrated domestic life.  She did not overtly say that women should leave their homes.  But she did descry domestic values that focused more on rumors of fidelity than those of tainted milk and immigrant exploitation.  She sought to shake women out of their private worlds via engaging them in basketball.  Women particularly needed to switch from the private to a public orientations to reach their potential and help America reach its.  

Kellor’s private life is partially obscured.  She lived with her girlfriend Mary Dreier for 47 years.  And they took vacations together.  But her private letters rarely mention activism and her activism only implicitly addressed her lesbian romance. Kellor founded the National Urban League and international arbitration, ran the Americanization program, two Presidential campaigns and more. She had no children as she dedicated her life to public service. And for that she deserves our respect.

But people in my life watch T.V. and never mention politics.  And, without engagement I personally feel useless and unimportant.  Perhaps my constant striving for a cause has a touch of insecurity attached to it; I want to matter.  Writing Founding Mothers, and so sharing Frances Kellor, gave me a sense of doing something important for the public. With its completion questions about public life and identity come to the fore.

At what point do we, Kellor and I, let people rest and live as private citizens?  Television is passive. But do I consider all who watch it worthless? How much public activism must one mix with their meaningless private consumerism and family raising to be considered a good citizen? 

John Kenneth Press, Ph.D. is the author of Founding Mother: Frances Kellor and the Quest for Participatory Democracy.  www.franceskellor.com has more information.