L’educazione fisica nella riflessione pedagogica di Giovanni Calò

Physical Education is one of the most important theme studied by Giovanni Calò during his academic career, from the beginnings to the ages of his maturity, when he became director of ISEF in Florence. The anthropological basis of his thought is related to the centrality of man as individual unity of body and spirit, typical of his “realistic spiritualism” in contrast to Gentile’s neoidealism. During the Fascism, Calò struggled against a reductive conception of sport as athletism, and proposed an improvement of P.E. in Italian schools. In the latest years of his scholarship, Calò focussed his attention on the training of P.E. young teachers, in particular of secondary schools, accordingly to the new programmes of ISEF. He underlined the importance of combining scientific, technological and pedagogical dimensions of P.E.